Under the protection of the parasitic soldier ants in full armor, Zhu Jue and his entourage carefully approached the black ant mound.
His followers are all hidden parasitic species, all magic soldier ants. These followers have a secret identity. They usually live at the bottom of a remote nest in the Ant Alliance. They do not obey any orders except those issued by Zhu Jue himself. They are also not allowed to go out. There are also two field legions stationed in this lair as a response measure in case of emergency.
At this time, Zhu Jue and his followers all looked like normal ants, but they were walking among the "fluffy" parasites with hyphae around them. The other party turned a blind eye to them, because in a sense, they were also "similar".
Arriving at the outskirts of the black ant mound, there are many corpses of carved leaf-cutting ants (referred to as "cutting ants") and termite soldier ants scattered on the ground. The parasitic army has just repelled a counterattack by the defenders, and here is the place. It's a battlefield.
Zhu Jue noticed that most of the jaws of the defenders' corpses had black shiny rock attachments. He was moved in his heart and carefully groped with his tentacles, feeling the sharp edge of the black stone.
Yes, these black stones are obsidian, a natural volcanic glass that is very sharp when used to make stone weapons. The defenders were equipped with such weapons and were fixed with gum. What puzzles Zhu Jue is that although obsidian weapons are not discovered in the ant tribe for the first time, obsidian production areas are usually close to volcanoes. Is there a volcano nearby?
Or maybe not, Zhu Jue's eyes turned back to the black ant mound, which also shone with the luster of obsidian in the sunlight.
To be cautious, Zhu Jue continued to move forward under tight protection. Soon the ground under his feet turned into crystal black, integrating with the black of the anthill not far away.
Zhu Jue brushed off the dust on the ground. The dust was not thick to begin with and seemed to have been covered in recent days. He confirmed again that the material under his feet was obsidian, covering about several hundred square meters of land including the ant mounds, and was roughly connected into one piece, but there were already cracks in many places, and some fine obsidian fragments could be seen at any time and were available everywhere. .
It seems that the obsidian weapons used by carver ants and termites are mined nearby. Judging from the exposed obsidian rock surface, there is a layer of ordinary quartz sandstone under the rock layer about a few centimeters thick. This obsidian piece of several hundred square meters was like a lid falling out of thin air, firmly covering the ground.
How are these obsidian stones formed? Could this valley actually be a hidden crater? Zhu Jue recalled the path he took when he came here, but he did not find the cone-shaped terrain with a typical volcanic crater, nor did he see other side evidence such as sulfur or hot springs.
Or was it caused by a lightning strike? There are traces of lightning radioactivity in the lines and edges of obsidian, but Zhu Jue doesn't know whether thunder and lightning can produce obsidian.
Fortunately, he is not a geologist, and does not need to delve into the origin of obsidian. It is enough to know the composition of the hard shell of the black ant mound. The rest is to find a way to break this hard shell, and rush after completing this side mission. Returning to the homeland - Zhu Jue knew that with his status, it was no longer suitable to leave the base camp. If the contact with the parasitic creature had not been extremely confidential, and it was extremely necessary to maintain a quasi-ally, Zhu Jue would not have come in person.
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This ant mound was called the "Black Glazed City" by Zhu Jue. The reason why it was not called "Obsidian City" was purely a matter of Zhu Jue's personal preference.
The goal of this operation is to cooperate with the parasitic army to conquer [Black Glazed City]. As a natural glass, obsidian is very hard, but it should also be very brittle. Zhu Jue asked the parasitic army to fire the large ballistae again. He wanted to understand the effect of the ballistae shooting and see if it could be directly defeated.
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Due to accuracy and operational reasons, the ballistae failed to hit the target even once out of ten, and the only shells that hit the target were bounced away. Zhu Jue used his eyesight to observe, and he still saw some clues-occasionally, shells hit some original damaged areas, which can break open some gravel, and it is estimated that the obsidian armor of [Black Glazed City] is one or two centimeters thick. .
If you want to use a crossbow to blast away this layer of hard thick armor, you either need to hit the same part continuously, slowly carve out the opening, and finally cause the surrounding obsidian to chain collapse, which means dozens of consecutive hits are enough. However, judging from the low accuracy of the large ballista and the slower movements of the parasitic organisms than normal organisms, it is simply not up to the task.
Or there is another simple and crude way left - directly increase the weight of the cannonball. Cannonballs as big as broad beans cannot break through the defense, but cannonballs as big as potatoes will definitely be effective. If they hit, they will be like big jaws biting through insect eggs. Pulp effect.
Currently, the size of the parasitic army's crossbows that use insect tendons as charged projectiles has reached its limit. These tendons were obtained by slaughtering the largest locusts in the parasite beasts. It is impossible to make larger ballistae. , a ballista shell larger than a broad bean cannot be fired by this ballista at all.
The technical route of the ballista has reached a bottleneck, but Zhu Jue still has a superior cold weapon siege weapon in his mind - the trebuchet. Whether it is a human-powered trebuchet or a counterweight-type trebuchet, the manufacturing difficulty is almost the same. Zhu Jue has an impression in his mind, so it should not be difficult to restore it.
Zhu Jue originally wanted to build a slightly more primitive human-powered trebuchet. Now it should be called an insect-powered trebuchet, so as not to increase the force of the parasitic army too quickly. However, after making a crude prototype, Zhu Jue discovered that although many parasite beasts were powerful, they lacked explosive power and were unable to use this trebuchet.
There was no choice but to modify it into a counterweight trebuchet, and this time it was successful.
A zigzag-shaped support as tall as a stool in the human world was erected on the ground, about 20 meters away from [Black Glazed City], and was closely guarded by the parasitic army inside and outside.
The ground part of the bracket is supported by a triangular truss, while the top part is a moment arm made of a half-meter-long bamboo tube cut in half. It took three days to process this arm alone. The parasitic army etched it with acid, excavated nearby obsidian as a tool, and cut and polished it a little bit before it was finally completed.
The front end of the lever arm is a counterweight made of stones held in a net bag, and there is also a net bag at the other end, which can hold walnut-sized pebbles. In the end, Zhu Jue did not use potato-sized stone bullets because they could not be loaded. Walnut stone bullets were already the maximum carrying limit for the largest parasitic beetle.
Before the launch, there were hundreds of medium-sized parasitic beetles behind the super-large trebuchet pulling the rope. Under the command of the parasitic brain, they laboriously pulled the arm apart, and then two large parasitic beetles pushed the stone bullets into the net bag.
Then comes the launch!
