Now is the time when the Legion of the Divine Envoy King has begun to smelt steel and replace stone tools, wood tools, and bronze tools with steel in large quantities. The demand for iron ore is huge, and the existing import volume is not enough, let alone reducing it. Trade volume!
The actions of the Leaf-Cutter Ant Nation were like pulling firewood from the bottom of a cauldron, making the Divine Envoy King's army extremely uncomfortable.
The protagonist can guess some of the reasons why the Leafcutter Ant Nation does this. After all, they have been adding troops to the front line. However, the leaf cutter ant nation did not disclose the reason to the "little flower" of the trade team, and seemed very arrogant.
Maybe the queens and females of the leaf-cutting ants don't feel the need to explain anything to the Angel King's army. The two parties are just trading partners. If they are happy, they will trade more points. If they are not happy, they will reduce the transactions or even suspend the transactions. The leaf-cutting ant country can Trading with the Divine Envoy King's Legion is already a great blessing.
This is very similar to the central dynasty in the protagonist's previous life, which regarded trade with small surrounding countries as a gift: the big country has everything, but you only need to do some trade if you need it. If you don't trade, you will suffer.
It was not until after being beaten that the great power, which had learned from the pain for a long time, finally completely rejected its previous approach and rejoined world trade as an equal.
The protagonist has no way to wake up his only partner now, otherwise the supply of iron ore will really be cut off. He could only send "Little Flower" to negotiate and see if he could think of a way to get the best of both worlds.
For example, you can send ant hands to mine iron ore for the Leafcutter Ant Nation, or even control the iron ore mines through contracting and leasing.
The protagonist has come up with several plans that he thinks can be a win-win situation. As long as the Leafcutter Ant Nation agrees to any of these plans, the God Envoy King Army can guarantee its own supply of iron ore and even increase production.
But in mid-July, "Little Flower" came back and said that the Leaf Cutter Ant Nation rejected any plan proposed by the Angel King Legion. Their representative female ant said that the Leaf Cutter Ant Nation could only trade as much as they were willing to trade. "Little Flower" thought about it. Some methods cannot change the other party's determination.
Before the negotiations, the iron ore trading volume between the Leaf-Cutter Ant Nation and the Angel King's Army had rapidly dropped to between one-third and one-half of its peak, and has since stabilized at this volume.
After the negotiation broke down, the protagonist's perception of the leaf-cutter ant country also dropped rapidly along with the amount of iron ore imports. He used to think that the leaf-cutter ant country was cute and arrogant, but now he only thinks that they are blind, arrogant, arrogant and unreasonable.
After the iron ore trade volume dropped, the protagonist could only delay the progress of comprehensive popularization of iron ore. At the same time, he began to allocate part of the small share of iron ore imports to not be sent to smelting for the time being, but to hoard it just in case. .
This also shows that he no longer trusts the Leafcutter Ant Nation from the bottom of his heart.
In order to fundamentally relieve the current situation of iron ore stuck in the neck, the protagonist sends a large number of scouts and flying knights to search for iron ore in and around the territory.
It stands to reason that an iron ore book belt may cover a large area. The distance between the iron mines in the Leafcutter Ant Kingdom and the territory of the Divine Envoy King's Legion is only about two or three kilometers. Maybe there are iron ore deposits in my own territory?
A large number of ants are searching everywhere, and if they find red stones or gravel, they will report it, and the protagonist will go and verify it personally.
After more than a week of work, no real iron ore was found. The red stones or particles the ants found were basically chicken liver stones. They even found some red agate near the river bank, but no real hematite. stone.
There are some extra rewards. For example, the small red agate particles found were transported back to [Xinyang City] by the protagonist to decorate the dormitories of high-level male ants, which were very popular.
The protagonist sees that the male ants like this bright stone, and thinks that the leaf-cutting ants like the shiny gold, so will they also like the beautiful and bright agate?
After testing the water, the leaf-cutter ants accepted the red agate and were willing to trade some hematite powder for small red agate particles.
They began to use agate particles with a more vivid red color to draw magic symbols where needed, using the technique of inlaying ant glue. For this reason, they even gave up their previous tradition of using hematite powder to draw red talismans.
In the leafcutter ant's opinion, as long as the talisman is red, the redder the better. The talisman made of red agate is not only more beautiful, but also unlike the talisman made of hematite powder, which will be washed away in the rainy season.
The leaf-cutting ants' demand for hematite powder dropped sharply, so they simply traded part of their output for red agate, and both parties were happy.
Seeing that the most important use of hematite in the leaf-cutter ant country has been lost, the protagonist once again came up with the idea of purchasing, leasing, or contracting hematite.
In the end, they were rejected. The leafcutter ants were unwilling to give up their forest territory in any way, nor were they willing for any other species of ants to live in the forest for a long time.
The Legion of the Divine Envoy King had to continue to rely on the only source of iron ore to survive.
Another bonus is that the flying knights also flew across the river to search for traces of iron ore on the other side of the river.
Although they didn't find iron ore, they did find multiple ant races on the south bank of the river.
Previously, the protagonist did not care about the situation on the south bank because the river was difficult to cross. This time, the flying knights were able to grasp the general information of the South Bank by mistake.
From the perspective of ant racial distribution, across the river facing the [Xinyangcheng] peninsula is a group of burrowing ants, to the west is a group of pavement ants, in the woods to the east is a group of leaf-cutter ants, in addition to big-headed ants and corn hairy ants. , the existence of Camponotus ants.
The scope of the Flying Knight's exploration was not large, but he found so many ant tribes living in such an area. From this point of view, there is not a particularly powerful country on the south coast, but the coexistence of various tribes.
However, this may also be related to the terrain of dense rivers and scattered forests on the south bank. Different terrains are fragmented and not divided into large blocks. Ants of various races have an advantage in the terrain that is most suitable for them, making it difficult to expand, but not easy to conquer.
The level of civilization of these ant tribes is not high, and the flying knights did not find that they have magical symbols, majestic giant nests, or domesticated insects like the ants on the north shore, which are higher characteristics of civilization. Their level of civilization may be close to the Big-headed Ant Kingdom or the Pavement Ant Barbarian Kingdom in their homeland period.
The value of this additional discovery is limited. The protagonist has no interest in the ant country or tribe on the south bank of the river for the time being. The other party cannot threaten him, and he does not need to go to the south bank of the river.
——I am the dividing line——
Time entered August, and after both the leafcutter ant country and the red imported fire ant country continued to increase their troops and hoard supplies on the border, the red imported fire ant country finally took the lead in launching a large-scale offensive. Although the Leafcutter Ant Nation had a larger army, it was actually defeated this time.
This battle triggered a series of chain reactions, almost completely subverting the relationship between the leaf-cutting ant country, the red fire ant country and the Angel King's army!
