With the arrival of the first cold wave at the end of October, this year's winter came earlier than in previous years.
This is the sixth winter since the protagonist came to this ant world, and also the second winter in this new land.
Today's protagonist has become more and more accustomed to the life of ants and to his role as the King of Gods.
The arrival of the cold wave drives away all living creatures on the ground, causing leaves to fall, weeds to wither, and animals to hide.
The Legion of the God Envoy King huddled underground, and each nest was temporarily isolated from each other. The underground world is not as cold and windy as the outside, but still warm as spring. Especially in [Xinyang City] and [February Lan City] where there are blast furnaces, some places actually make the ants feel hot.
The ants underground are still busy. They use the materials they have hoarded in advance and follow the instructions given by the God's Messenger King before winter to continue to reproduce, live, and produce.
For example, the area near the blast furnace was converted into a temporary breeding farm in winter to raise mealworms that originally grew slowly in winter and continuously provide fresh meat.
After the cold wave passes, when the temperature rises or there is sunshine, the pavement ants will go out and continue to dig canals in sections next to their nests.
Fortunately, the climate this year is a bit dry and the soil does not contain much water. Especially the topsoil is very dry, so the pavement ants can dig out without much effort. If the soil is rich in moisture, it may have been frozen hard by the north wind at this time, and even an iron jaw knife will be unable to do anything.
The reason why construction has to be carried out in winter is because winter came too early this year. The protagonist thought that construction could be carried out until early November this year, so that the canal could be completed in the summer of June and July.
Now that the progress is behind schedule, the protagonist does not want to delay the construction period until next fall or even winter, so he allows the pavement ants to continue construction when winter conditions are suitable.
Pavement ants are not only busy at canal construction sites, but also take on almost all outdoor work when winter comes. The communication between nests must be done by pavement ants as messengers, and some necessary outdoor building maintenance must be completed by pavement ants. Pavement ants are arguably the busiest ants throughout the winter.
The workload of other ant tribes has been greatly reduced. Currently, only a few industries such as blast furnace ironmaking are maintaining normal workloads. Breeding farms and fungus cultivation have been reduced in scale, and many workshops have nothing to do.
The scientific research team is still busy and there is no winter vacation.
This year, the scientific research team led by "Secretary II", under the guidance of the protagonist, has improved a lot of processes and achieved some new results.
For example, the beetle armor requested by the protagonist was quickly produced with the joint efforts of the scientific research team and the iron-making team. The craftsmanship of this thing is not difficult, it is just some large iron pieces.
The scientific research team also continued to improve the crossbow. Now, in addition to the bow string, the crossbow is no longer bound and fixed with ropes or ant glue, and the fixing parts are replaced with iron parts. The application of a large number of iron parts further improves the performance of the crossbow.
"Secretary II" has great ideas. Without prompting from the protagonist, he actually led the scientific research team to invent new gadgets such as enlarged model ballistae and multi-spring group ballistae.
Although these experimental products still have serious problems and are far less mature than the previous crossbows and cannot be used in actual combat for the time being, the protagonist greatly rewarded the scientific research team and encouraged them to continue their research and strive to achieve greater progress in scientific research as soon as possible.
The main achievements made by the science and technology team this year are basically improvements to some mature processes, which can improve work efficiency or the quality of finished products. They had not had time to be popularized before, and they were used for promotion and transformation in winter when work was shut down everywhere.
For example, the ballistae in [Xinyang City] were all upgraded to new ballistae with pure iron and wood structure throughout the winter.
The most surprising achievement of the scientific research team for the protagonist is that they discovered a secret of the liquid in the mysterious ball.
The liquid in the mysterious ball is extremely self-igniting and can even self-explode. It has always been regarded as a top-level dangerous item. However, in some situations where explosions or fires are needed, the mystery ball and the liquid inside it are also very useful.
Although there are quite a few mysterious balls currently in stock in the Divine Envoy King's Army, if there is no battle with the Destroyer, they will not be captured, and there will be no way to replenish them. Use less and less. Therefore, unless it is very necessary, the protagonist is reluctant to use these mysterious balls that can be used as high-explosive bombs.
After the scientific research team was reestablished in this new land, there was a team responsible for studying the mysterious ball liquid, but progress has been slow.
The biggest result they have discovered before is that after dry charcoal is used to absorb the mysterious ball liquid mixed with grease and lime, it can be stored for a long time without spontaneous combustion, and can also be used as a high-calorie fuel. This achievement can further increase the furnace temperature during iron-making, and can even be used to make steel, but the Legion of God's Envoy King is obviously not so wealthy as to use the scarce mysterious balls for metallurgy.
The protagonist has always hoped to be able to produce the liquid in the mysterious ball by himself, so that explosives can be made, which will be very important whether it is used in the military field or engineering field.
Winter has just begun, and although the protagonist's wish has not yet come true, it finally has some clues.
It turned out that a magical worker ant from the Mystery Ball scientific research team accidentally touched a drop of charcoal adsorbed with the non-spontaneous ignition Mystery Ball liquid mixture with its tentacles and tasted it.
In the past, how could the magical ants dare to touch this thing directly with their tentacles? At that time, reliable anti-spontaneous combustion technology had not been developed. Even if the liquid was covered with grease to prevent oxidation, once the mysterious ball liquid was exposed to the air, it would quickly spontaneously ignite. .
That is to say, this magical worker ant was lucky. It happened to have invented the technology of charcoal to absorb liquid mixture, so her antennae were not burned.
Coincidentally, the protagonist used to think that the fluorescent bacteria in the room were not bright enough, so he asked the scientific research team to study how to prepare a culture medium to make the fluorescent bacteria emit brighter light, and finally succeeded. This magical worker ant was part of the scientific research team that played with a large number of different strains of fluorescent bacteria.
The magic worker ants discovered that the taste of this mysterious ball mixture, if the interference of grease and lime is removed, is somewhat similar to the taste of the liquid in fluorescent bacteria.
The Mystery Ball scientific research team immediately squeezed a lot of fluorescent bacteria, mixed the extracted liquid with grease and lime, and then adsorbed it with charcoal. Then many magic worker ants used their tentacles to touch the Mystery Ball liquid mixture charcoal and the fluorescent bacteria extract mixture charcoal respectively. I found that the taste is somewhat similar, but the latter is lighter.
However, the magic worker ants discovered that the fluorescent bacteria extract does not spontaneously ignite. Apart from its color, its properties are not very similar to the Mystery Ball liquid.
When the protagonist learned about it, an idea flashed in his mind, and he immediately asked the scientific research team to try to concentrate the fluorescent bacteria extract by distillation in a safe place!
