The second update today, call me!
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The protagonist quickly led the guards team to the scene of the incident.
This is a pasture to the west of [Nansen City]. It belongs to the transition zone between forest and grass. There are both dense herbaceous plants and scattered trees. It is not far from the river. The impact of the drought is almost invisible, and it is lush and green.
A large herd of tens of thousands of insects belonging to the Legion of God's Emissary has recently been moved here to graze. Among them, there are a variety of aphids and scale insects, including those that like herbaceous plants and some that like trees.
The ants controlled by the strange caterpillars were all ants that grazed in the trees here, and have now been subdued and taken away by other ants.
The culprit behind these lazy and aggressive ants is a small, seemingly harmless caterpillar.
This caterpillar is only the size of a big-headed soldier ant, has a short and fat body, and is translucent yellow-green. This is a good protective color and is very inconspicuous when mixed among the branches and leaves of trees. The caterpillar has soft spines all over its body, but its defense is very weak. It seems that any ant can ignore its soft spines and kill it.
But its most deadly weapon is not a soft thorn, but a sweet weapon.
This caterpillar has nectaries on its back, which can secrete a kind of honeydew. Just the smell is actually more attractive than the highly sweet honeydew of aphids or scale insects. Even the protagonist wants to take a sip.
The magic worker ants who came here before to manage the herd have discovered that any ant that has sucked this kind of honeydew will have symptoms of slowness and fatigue, unwillingness to return to the nest, competition for honeydew, and will also be aggressive towards the caterpillars. Peer shows aggression.
These honeydews are obviously unusual, which makes the ants who drink them crazy.
The protagonist didn't dare to taste this kind of honeydew. For some reason, information about this caterpillar popped up in his mind.
This caterpillar turns out to be the larvae of the Japanese purple butterfly. The scientific name of the Japanese ash butterfly is Arhopala japonica. It is also known as the Japanese ash butterfly, the Japanese ash butterfly, etc. It is a species of the genus Arhopala japonica in the family Arhopala japonica.
The adults of this purple-grey butterfly don't have much special features except for their beautiful wings, but their larvae are really powerful and they are one of the few insects that know how to "hypnotize".
The sweet body fluid secreted by the nectary glands on the back of the butterfly larvae can attract many types of ants. The ants that eat this honeydew will stay around the larvae for a long time and attack the natural enemies of the butterfly larvae, thus preventing the larvae from being harmed. to prey. This is a self-protection method evolved by the weak larvae of the purple gray butterfly, but it is sweet poison for the ants.
The reason why this kind of honeydew has this effect is that it contains special substances that significantly reduce the amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to desire and pleasure, in the ants' brains, and can cause addiction.
The addicted ants then reduce their activity, stay near the larvae for a long time, gradually lose the ability to return to the ant nest, and become more aggressive. Ants that consume this honeydew for a long time will gradually become thinner and die.
The properties of this honeydew sound so much like duck slices (for fear of sensitivity, you know)!
The protagonist immediately gave this kind of honey the name "crow honey".
Crow honey is extremely attractive to ordinary worker ants. Originally grazing ants are prohibited from eating honeydew privately. All honeydew should be collected in containers and brought back to the nest to be dried or baked into concentrated honeydew before use. for sale or internal distribution.
But when they encountered crow honey, these ants forgot the rules and eagerly jumped on them to drink the sweet poison.
Those ants who are already addicted can only be taken back to the nest to force themselves out of addiction. As for the purple gray butterfly larvae that produce crow honey, the protagonist suddenly has a good idea.
He asked the magic worker ants to search nearby and discovered dozens of purple gray butterfly larvae one after another. The protagonist specially designated a few magic worker ants that would not be tempted by crow honey as herders to graze these purple gray butterfly larvae in a designated area. Crow honey is collected and stored separately.
Although this crow honey will harm the health of the ants who eat it, it is an excellent trade product!
At present, the flagship product of the Divine Envoy King's Legion is concentrated honeydew. No matter how much it is produced, the huge red fire ant country can digest it.
Think about it, if there are millions of ants in the red fire ant country, then the ruling class must have at least tens of thousands. If a ruling class ant consumes one drop of diluted honeydew a day, the country will consume tens of thousands of drops of honeydew a day, which is equivalent to From thousands of drops of concentrated honeydew, or from dozens of snail shells.
The amount of honeydew that the Divine Envoy King Legion can currently export on the basis of ensuring domestic demand, which is the concentrated honeydew of three or four snail shells a day, still leaves a large gap between supply and demand.
But the pastures near [Xinyang City] have reached their limit, and the herds near [Nansen City] are still expanding. They cannot make up for the gap in a short time. A new honey source can just make up for it.
At the same time, what the protagonist values more is the allure, addiction and toxicity of crow honey.
This kind of crow honey is extremely tempting to ants, and it will definitely be supplied as the most precious honeydew to the supreme ruling class of fire ants. Its addictive nature will make the sucking ants unable to stop, and they must consume it for a long time and at all costs. Importing crow honey consumes its domestic resources.
This kind of crow honey will continue to weaken the top ruling class of the red fire ants, which will indirectly weaken this very powerful country and win opportunities for the future expansion of the God Envoy King's army.
The protagonist knows that the Angel King's army cannot stay in this corner forever. Once it expands, conflicts with fire ants and leaf-cutting ants are inevitable. Before that, the protagonist will not let go of any means that can weaken the two potential opponents.
Crow honey export, this multi-purpose method gives the protagonist a new weapon.
——I am the dividing line——
The Angel King’s Legion soon reached a new trade agreement with the Belly Ants. Even though the price of crow honey given by the God’s Angel King’s Legion was two or three times that of concentrated honeydew, its unique flavor still conquered the hearts of “old hearts”. "Wait for the leaders of the Belly Ants to agree to participate in this trade.
The reason why the protagonist sets a higher price for crow honey instead of dumping it at a low price to occupy the market is because he has no choice but to do so.
The production of crow honey is very limited. Currently, only a few dozen larvae of the purple gray butterfly produce honey, and they cannot reproduce as quickly as aphids. Once these purple-grey butterflies pupate in the fall, there will be no new crow honey production until at least the beginning of next spring.
The protagonist estimates that he can only collect five snail shells of crow honey before winter this year, and he really has no ability to sell it.
Once the price is too low, the protagonist will have to worry about the ants themselves consuming all the crow honey. Only by raising the price can the relatively poor ants be reluctant to occupy it too much and obediently sell it to red fire ants, thus achieving the protagonist's insidious purpose!
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