While everything is calm on the Black Creek front, the western border of the Leafcutter Ant Kingdom is gradually experiencing an undercurrent. Zhu Jue is in the country, inspecting major projects in various places.
In [Hardware City], the new smelting center and military industry center have begun to take shape, which can provide weapons for the Black Creek front line nearby.
At the same time, the canal and canal branch lines running through the territory on the south bank of Qinghe River are also under intensive construction and are expected to be initially connected to the Internet before winter this year.
The progress of the canal construction is much faster than Zhu Jue expected at the beginning of the year. Behind this is the sacrifice and death of countless unknown ants day after day. It can be said that every centimeter of the canal bank is buried with the bones of an ant worker.
These ants who work on the most difficult canal construction site are not formal members of the Ant Alliance. They have a common name - slaves.
As the scale of the slave trade between the Ant Alliance and the Thin-footed Ant Nation gradually expanded, the Maolin Ant Clan and the Army Ant Clan also successively joined this trading system. With the crow wine, food, weapons, gold, etc. produced by the Ant Alliance, tens of thousands of ant eggs can be traded every month.
This kind of trade not only enriches the slave population of the Ant Alliance, but is also very profitable for the three countries of Thin-footed Ants, Hairy Forest Ants and Army Ants.
For example, the Thin-footed Ant Clan has a tradition of robbing slaves for their own use. They have several slave ant clans in the country. A large number of slaves will reproduce day and night, and it is not difficult to sell 100,000 ant eggs a month. Willing to make profit from this. It's just that the Ant Alliance cannot digest so much, and the air transportation capacity between the two countries is not enough. It is a pity that the scale of trade cannot be expanded infinitely.
The army ants do not keep slaves, but they live in no fixed place most of the time. They only return to their nests in winter. In other seasons, they wander over a wide area, attacking and conquering the indigenous ant tribes. In the past, the ant eggs of various races they captured were eaten as food. Now, if they sell them, they can get more food, and even more precious crow wine and other materials, so they are naturally happy to make this deal.
The Maulin ants are not slaves and do not like to plunder native ants, but they are good at trade and have connections with many civilized ant tribes in the surrounding areas. As long as there is a business opportunity, they will find ways to buy slave ant eggs from other ant tribes and sell them to the Ant Alliance. Zhu Jue even made a malicious guess that if the price was right, the hairy forest ants might even be able to sell their own ant eggs!
The ant families of slave ants obtained from trade are diverse, and most of them are common harvest ants, disc ants, abdominal ants, forest ants, big-headed ants, etc. The Ant Federation will assign different jobs based on the specialties of slave ants of each race, and some of the work will be done together with the ordinary working ant residents of the Ant Federation.
But there are also some very hard and dangerous jobs that are basically undertaken entirely by slave ants, such as mining, digging canals, building bridges, etc. These places are also where slave ants are most used.
To the north of [Mujiangzi City], about a six-day walk away, there is a busy canal branch construction site.
This branch line of the canal branches from [Pioneer City], all the way south, passing through a pond in the middle, and then connects to [Magnet City], and then passes through several important sub-nests, and is ultimately planned to extend to [Mujiangzi City] and [Wild Onion] City], integrating the most important spice production base in the southern part of the territory into the canal transportation network.
Now, only the last stretch of this branch line remains, which will be completed in about one and a half months.
Countless ant slaves of all races walked back and forth in the dusty ditch, mechanically scooping up the soil, picking it up, turning around in crowds, crossing the constantly surging ant current, climbing up the river bank, discarding the sand, and then turning back to continue working. .
Although there are different races of slave ants, as many as two-thirds of them are actually small, black-yellow ants.
These are Argentine ants, which look a bit like small house ants and a bit like pavement ants. Different from the common pavement ant slaves in the past, these Argentine ant slaves only came to the Ant Alliance this year, but they quickly became the main labor force among the slaves.
In the slave trade, the ant eggs sold to the Ant Alliance by the three tribes including the Thin-legged Ants are all worker ant eggs, not eggs of breeding ants. In this way, the Ant United Nation cannot breed slaves on its own and must continue to purchase them. This is an unwritten tacit understanding among the three tribes.
Zhu Jue didn't care. Ant United States spent very little to purchase slave ant eggs. The price of ant eggs in international trade was a little more expensive than mealworm jerky by weight. After all, they were used as food in the past.
Even if you just buy it, it will not cost much more than breeding it in China. Moreover, if these slaves have breeding ants and have an organization, Zhu Jue will have to consider whether to include this ant clan into the civilized ant clan.
Therefore, the ready-made slave trade and usage have always been relatively stable.
Until the beginning of July, after a batch of Argentine ant eggs newly purchased from the ants were hatched and the young ants were fed to pupae, the nursery worker ants discovered something was wrong!
In this batch of ant eggs, 6 queen ant eggs and 6 female ant eggs were accidentally mixed in, and all of them successfully emerged from the pupae.
It may be because there is not much difference between the reproductive ant eggs and worker ant eggs of Argentine ants, unlike some ant tribes where the two egg sizes are very different, and the reason for the lax inspection of the thin-footed ants.
At this time, an ant tribe suddenly appeared in the Ant Alliance. Zhu Jue was surprised and wondered if it was God's will. While he was on the front line, he passed a bill to the highest authority in the country, the Assembly of All Ethnic Groups. , applied for the Argentine ants to get rid of their status as slave ants and join the Ant United Nation collective.
Although it was the intention of the Divine Envoy King, there were many objections from the representatives at the various ethnic gatherings in the Ant United Kingdom. Instead of forming a resolution on the spot, they returned to Zhu Jue.
For example, the Minister of Engineering and the male pavement ant "Floating Leaf II" said that exempting tens of thousands of Argentine ant slaves at once would greatly affect the progress of various projects.
Some representatives of pavement ants, bellied ants, leafcutter ants, red forest ants and other tribes who are now proud to be members of the ant alliance are not willing to sit on an equal footing with a group of lowly ants who were originally slaves, and have expressed these The Argentine Ant has not contributed to the Ant Alliance and opposes the proposal.
In addition, many ants report that Argentine ants have a bad temper. As slaves and without the leadership of noble ants, they are prone to conflicts with other ants. What if they join the Ant Alliance and become a formal member?
When Zhu Jue saw this and the fierce fighting at that time, he stopped insisting. The Argentine ants were still slaves, but they could reproduce on their own, and soon reached a replenishment rate of tens of thousands per month, becoming the largest slave ant clan!
