Recently, the "wisdom elders" are busy leading the people to raise and store winter supplies.
This batch of supplies is of great importance, not only to ensure that the entire ant family survives the cold winter, but also to have enough wealth. Replenishing it after the beginning of the next spring will be enough to support the entire family's westward march.
Fortunately, this territory is relatively fertile, and there are not many fire ant colonies now, so the territory's production is sufficient. In addition, he has sent troops to the suzerain country many times this year and has been rewarded with a lot of food and honeydew. It is not difficult to raise the expected amount of food.
It was already dark at this time, and fire ant soldiers came to routinely report the number of returning ants today. The red fire ant is a state-owned system. The ant colonies must be counted every night to find out the number of new and dead ant colonies every day, so that the elders can keep track of the number of soldiers and slaves available for fighting at any time. This is one of the strict internal control measures of the fire ant family, and it is also a major reason for its strong combat effectiveness.
"Today, 36 ant eggs were born in this clan, 28 pupae were formed, and 31 pupae were broken." This data is within the normal range. As winter is about to begin, the war recruitment of the suzerain country has also stopped, and the red fire ant clan is already deliberately reducing the ant population. The number of births is reduced to reduce the size of the ant colony and save food in the winter when there is no income.
"17 of our clan died today and 8 are missing." This loss number is roughly normal, but the number of missing animals is slightly higher than the previous average.
Moreover, more than 5 fire ants have disappeared for 3 consecutive days! ?
Although ants can easily disappear without seeing their bodies due to weather, fierce insects and other reasons, it is still unusual for them to appear in the past few days, which makes the "wisdom elder" alert.
He compared the recent data in his mind and suddenly thought of something, so he asked the reporting fire ant to explain the situation of the slave ant tribe in detail.
Sure enough, in addition to the normal birth, old age, illness and death of each slave ant clan, as many as thirty or fifty slave ants of various clans have disappeared every day in the past three days. The number of these missing people is not too large, and the life and death of the slave ants are not important, so they did not attract the attention of the "wise elders" before.
Now connecting these data together, it is obvious that these missing data are unusual!
The "Wisdom Elder" raised his tentacles and ordered his tribe and slave ant tribes to investigate the approximate whereabouts of the missing ants. He could not let this hidden danger continue to devour the mouth of his own ants.
Late at night, the collected intelligence was handed over - most of the missing ants went to the west of the territory and did not return!
West! ?
The "Wisdom Elder" hesitated for a while. Outside the western border of his country's territory, there was a border sub-nest of the suzerain country. When this area was originally designated as a territory for the red fire ant clan, the black fire ants that originally lived here were moved to the auxiliary nest to the west.
Previously, the local black fire ants were dissatisfied with the behavior of the main nest and had small-scale conflicts with the red fire ants. The main nest of the suzerain country does not have strong control over the secondary nest, and is unable to restrain the frequent provocations of this secondary nest. That is to say, the red imported fire ants are difficult to provoke, which is why the other side finally swallows their anger.
Could it be that the black fire ants in the sub-nest are looking for revenge! ?
The "wisdom elder" thought for a while and decided to send an elite team to find out tomorrow. Those black fire ants had better not mess with him, otherwise the red fire ants will not be afraid.
Last time, our clan killed more than 20 black fire ants in the secondary nest. Even if it was the main nest of the suzerain country, there was no punishment because of the secrets provided by the clan and the soldiers sent.
This gives the "wisdom elder" confidence!
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This book is written by [], read the book and get cash red envelopes!
On October 6, the envoy Wang Zhujue officially began his tour of the Ant Alliance.
Before setting off, he asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade "Xiaohua" to be temporarily responsible for domestic and [New Yangcheng] affairs. If there were any major matters, he would immediately send knights to report to him.
The Finance Minister "Xiao Sheng" is based in [Pioneer City] on the south bank of Qinghe River and continues to preside over the large-scale development of the south bank.
With these two important officials from the Mesozoic era sitting in charge, Zhu Jue could temporarily escape from the busy paperwork.
Now, with the formalization of the various systems of the Ant Alliance, after losing the old deployments such as Gun and Lambofi, Zhu Jue has once again trained a group of new capable subordinates to share his considerable share of administrative and military affairs. pressure.
The Divine Envoy King Zhu Jue, escorted by 1 infantry legion, 2 fly-tiger knight squads, 2 medium-sized beetle squads, and 4 flying knight squads, took some of his attendants, as well as the outstanding nobles of the younger generation, and embarked on a parade.
The mount he chose this time was a large two-pronged rhinoceros beetle with a smooth and comfortable sedan on its back, instead of riding a fly, bee or fly-tiger mount.
Zhu Jue's travel route is to clear the north bank of the river first, and then the south bank of the river. He plans to complete this domestic tour before the weather gets cold.
A line of ants crossed the pontoon bridge on the canal north of [Xinyang City] and moved westward along the north bank of the canal.
Before nightfall that day, Zhu Jue and his entourage entered [Yue Lan City].
This was once one of the only iron smelting bases in the Ant Alliance. Now it has developed into the largest iron smelting industry nest. It is also the iron smelting center on the north bank of Qinghe River. The iron smelting industry in the main nest [Xinyang City] has been gradually expanded. It moved south to [Pioneer City], only one blast furnace was retained and it was no longer a metallurgical base.
After dinner, Zhu Jue went to inspect the six blast furnaces here.
Six blast furnaces are lined up on the west side of the underground underground of the lair, separated from each other by insulated earth walls, but as soon as you approach here, you can still feel the heat rumbling. On this mid-autumn night, near the blast furnace, you can feel the heat that exceeds that of midsummer.
Six blast furnaces are taking turns to ignite and smelt iron. Now one of them has just finished cooling and is feeding material. A large number of ants and beetles carried large and small hematite particles and coal into the blast furnace and stacked them layer by layer.
Another blast furnace is producing molten iron, and the dazzling molten iron happily pours into the previously buried grinding molds. According to the official in charge, this furnace of molten iron is enough to cast tens of thousands of jaw knives and other iron tools.
The temperature of the molten iron coming out of the furnace was too high. The ants opened the water gate and poured the water from the canal into a nearby pool. The worker ants kept holding water drops and sprinkled them outside the blast furnace and on the mold to prevent the room temperature from being too high and harming the ants. , or bursting the mold.
The outside of this blast furnace soon became filled with water vapor, and the white mist floated upward from the chimney mouth opened at the top of the underground blast furnace area. It was cooled outdoors on the autumn night and took away excess heat.
If it's a cold winter, there's no need to bother. The low-temperature upper soil layer is enough to cool down the extra heat.
After inspecting the blast furnace, Zhu Jue recorded several areas for improvement and asked his attendant Noble Ant to write them down and pass them on to the scientific research department by messenger tomorrow.
Later, he met with the local deputy nest assembly representatives and members of the Ten Ant Group in the temporary palace where he stayed to learn about the local situation and make some deployment instructions.
The next day, Zhu Jue and his party continued to set off towards the mining center of the Ant Alliance - [Hematite City].
