This fire is undoubtedly a catastrophe for the ants on the south bank of Qinghe River.
Many ant tribes have suffered severe population attrition.
Fortunately, soil-dwelling ants are protected by underground nests. Except for a few who did not escape into the nest, most ants are still safe and sound. After all, these tribes only have tens of thousands of ant colonies, so they will not be as crowded as [Pioneer City], and some ants will be injured or killed if they are too close to the ground.
Among the arboreal ants, some have underground winter nests. If they hide in in time, that's all. If they don't have time to enter the ground, or there is no winter nest, everything can be destroyed in this situation, and towering ancient trees can be destroyed from the roots to the ground. There was no way they would be spared from the fire that engulfed the entire tree crown!
The fire itself is not the most terrifying thing. After the fire, the problem of survival is faced by all ant tribes.
After surviving the fire safely, and after the ground surface cooled down from the rain, the surviving ants were happy at first because food could be found everywhere on the ground.
Burnt insect corpses, nuts cracked by high temperatures, edible parts of blooming shrub trunks... Food has never been so easy to come by!
But not long after the brief carnival, the ants will face the current situation of hunger.
The benefits brought by fires will soon be consumed, and many of the insects driven away by fires will not survive the winter. Even long-lived insects will not come back for a while after barely escaping from a fire.
The ground is bare, and the trees have burned their leaves. Although the surviving grass roots and tree trunks are working hard to sprout new grass blades, they lack the food, shelter and activity venues that most insects need. Most insects will still not return. here.
Whether it is an ant tribe that eats plants or insects as its main food, it will soon face the threat of starvation. Now let alone survive this winter, most tribes do not even have enough food to last through the autumn.
Even the prospects for spring next year are bleak. The fires destroyed many eggs laid by insects during the summer breeding season. Those eggs laid on the backs of leaves, shallow layers of soil, and tree holes were basically wiped out, leaving only hidden eggs. Only a small number of eggs deep in the soil and tree trunks survive.
Next year, only when insects from other places slowly migrate to replenish the area can the ecology of this area be gradually restored.
Although nature is tenacious, it often takes decades to completely repair the damage caused by a fire.
For example, if the original forest is burned, it can only return to the state of secondary forest for a long time.
But the hungry ants have no time to worry about winter or even next year, they are already hungry!
Today, there is only one most abundant food resource on the entire south bank of Qinghe River - the ants themselves!
————
The Flying Knight has now reduced its scope of activities on the south coast, focusing on frequent reconnaissance near [Pioneer City] to protect the safety of this south coast enclave.
Nowadays, wars are raging around [Pioneer City], tribal conflicts continue, and there are always tribes coveting this lair that is rich in food.
[Pioneer City] also lost a lot of food in the fire, but with the support of the North Shore Territory, enough food was quickly transported by air. Together with the insect carcasses collected after the fire, [Pioneer City] has enough food to last until early summer next year. !
This is in sharp contrast to other hungry ant tribes. Although the nearby ant tribes do not know the inside story of [Pioneer City], through occasional contact, they see that the worker ants of [Pioneer City] are plump and in good spirits. , we can also infer two or three.
What's more, these worker ants themselves are regarded as food by other hungry ants.
Many tribes have begun to use ants that prey on other tribes as their only source of food. This is a cruel season!
Nowadays, many of the ant tribes near [Pioneer City] are no longer their previous neighbors. Some of the previous neighbors were destroyed by fires, some were defeated by new raiders, and some migrated away knowing that the Ant Alliance was not easy to mess with. Steal resources from other places.
Many newly arrived tribesmen started to regard [Pioneer City] as a big fat sheep like a fool!
On September 28, the first tribe to invade [Pioneer City] appeared.
This is a tribe of humpbacked ants. The largest warrior among them has a size advantage comparable to that of the Destroyer. With his advantage, he can crush most ants and has plundered many other tribes along the way.
When Toxoplasma ants appeared at the border of [Pioneering City], the pavement ant herders who were grazing aphids on the new grass plants resisted, but were quickly killed.
The ants happily feasted on the carcasses of the pavement ants and ate the aphids one by one as a dessert.
There were not many ants that came in, only about twenty, but they quickly summoned hundreds of companions and swept around the area.
The Angel King's Legion also quickly received a warning. The 8th Legion was training outside the city and immediately came to support.
Although the 8th Army was only lightly armed and had no artillery support, the Big-headed Ant warriors were not as big as their opponents.
However, these bow-backed ants only rely on their size to bluff people. Previously, the remnants of the Northern Expedition Army could easily wipe out an entire tribe of bow-backed ants, not to mention the warriors of the God's Envoy King who are good at fighting.
The tight front line of the 8th Army left the ants that were accustomed to fighting alone helpless. If they dared to rush forward, they would be immediately besieged. The result of gathering together was to be surrounded and then killed.
After the 8th Legion wiped out most of the invading Campoback ants, they followed the fleeing Campoback ants to their tribe's temporary base and killed them.
In the end, only a few ants protected the queen and escaped through the back door, never daring to come back again.
But the invasion of the Camponotus ants was like turning on a switch, and more and more indigenous tribes kept coming to [Pioneering City] like moths flying into the fire.
After all, [Pioneer City], which has developed agriculture and animal husbandry, breeds a large number of aphids outside, and there are many ant colonies, which are as eye-catching as torches in the dark on the south bank where there is a lack of food.
Those defeated indigenous tribes will not tell other tribes how dangerous it is here, and the vacuum left after they escape will be quickly filled by other arriving tribes.
The indigenous ant tribes, which were migrating around like headless flies due to famine, swept through nearby areas, destroying the remaining production of almost all the land and creating more tribes that had to move and plunder.
[Pioneer City], which still has normal production activities and a large number of ants working, has become a recognized target of nearby tribes just like a billboard saying "I have food here".
Frequent invasions began. Although the scale was small and the combat effectiveness of most tribes was worrying, [Pioneer City] soon became overwhelmed!
