Chapter 982: Earth Elemental Plane (11)

After the zombie child instructs the sub-people to sow new seeds, he also teaches them to make all kinds of more elaborate tools, with his strength stronger than ordinary people, and he barely has the ability to protect himself, and more, it depends on his own "creation".

His brother "Big Head" and other siblings, as well as his mother, have become his "faithful believers", as well as the entire dungeon settlement.

"Let's go," Leo said, "it's time to get down to business." ”

Leaving this tiny dungeon, we continue our search for a target.

After nearly ten hours of sneaking underground, we encountered several large and small dungeons, including one with a military strength that was not weaker than that of the dark elf towns, and finally, we finally found our target.

Interestingly, we were looking deep underground, but we didn't get there first, but we found the target in a formation less than two kilometers above the ground, surrounded by volcanoes and hot springs.

What we're looking for is one - an anthill.

Before he arrived, Leo had already planned to find such an anthill and complete an experiment we wanted to do.

And the idea came about not because of Camfer's insect research, but because of a simple record I saw in the plane travel guide - in the earth elemental plane, there are super-large-scale anthills, which did not give birth to Warcraft ants, but with their super-large-scale numbers, they became "overlords".

There is no shortage of ants in the main plane, and there are even many who have become demonic beasts, and some ants can grow up to half a meter long, like a small beast.

But pure ordinary ants, which can form super giant anthills, is just such a record.

Following this clue, we finally found it.

"There is nowhere to find the iron shoes, and it takes no effort to get them!" Leo said, "I knew I shouldn't have dived that deep." ”

I didn't have time to talk to him, and I started to observe this giant anthill.

This is an "underground complex" with a diameter of more than 500 meters, or rather, a three-dimensional net, a small three-dimensional labyrinth. Countless pipes connect fifty spherical rooms larger than the body of Tyrannosaurus rex, like the molecular model of polymer compounds shown by Leo in a science and education movie, each room has a fixed purpose, some are their plantations, some are their breeding bases, and there are queen palaces, nurseries, storage rooms, fermentation rooms...... It is quite functional, and it is no less than the dungeons of those subhumans.

There are too many ants here to count, but they are all less than five millimeters long, and the largest queen is a little larger than the Tyrannosaurus rex, and the entire anthill is filled with naturally flowing elemental energy, but there is no trace of control by them.

It is said that an anthill of this size should have been able to appear individuals who have awakened to the level of Warcraft, but there is no, this is worth studying, and what we have to study is more than that.

The range of the anthill is very large, but it is still difficult to infiltrate with the escape technique, because the passages and rooms are too dense to pass through with a simple escape technique, and if you are not careful, you may even destroy the anthill.

"It can only be operated remotely," Leo said, "It is said that it would be much easier to make it bigger and smaller like the Huaxia Immortal Arts, but unfortunately, the wizarding world does not seem to pay much attention to this part." ”

"Come on," I said, "my telekinesis is not within reach of the queen, and even if I could, it would be too far away, and it would be too small to handle." ”

"You can study a few small ones," Leo sighed, "and I'll have to come at the critical moment." ”

I locked on two tiny ants with telekinesis, and without alarming them, I made detailed observations of their brains and nervous systems, as well as simple modifications.

The brain of insects is very small, and the nervous system is extremely simple, but there are many things that can be accomplished, and social insects like ants and bees, each individual is like a human brain cell, cooperating with other individuals, connecting the whole group into a super brain, and completing more advanced thinking activities - for example, the advanced activities of this ant colony are planting and breeding, and their cooperation and management are no different from the farmers on the grassland, except that they grow hyphae and breed aphids. And their division of labor is not much different from that of intelligent creatures, the ruler queen, the armed soldier ants, and the laborer ants all have their own different division of labor, operating in an orderly manner, and the whole anthill is like a sophisticated instrument, or a bustling big city.

What's even more amazing is that no matter how sophisticated and prosperous human cities are, there are also small-scale failures and blockages, because people have personalities, and they will also affect the surrounding people or public affairs because of their negligence and mistakes - such as a person who suddenly falls ill or a car accident, an accidental fire, but ants are much stronger than people in this regard, because they will deal with problems in the fastest and most efficient way and keep the whole system running.

Of course, efficiency does not mean strength, and human personality is not a drag.

Just like the two little ants I am studying, their cerebral nervous system is extremely rudimentary, and it is impossible to produce the same personality as intelligent creatures, so that they only need to obey orders and work step by step every day, and the chance of error is even less pitiful, but they are really just a cell of the entire anthill "brain", no personality, and will not have their own offspring, although the whole anthill will never lack newborns, but the genes of newborns are almost all from the queen ant, lacking change and evolution, that is, the opportunity for genetic mutation, reflected on the whole, that is-they have been using such a survival and reproduction mode, they can't become bigger in size, even if a few special ones can become magical beasts, they can only rely on numbers to win, in the face of a strong external threat, the loss of the anthill is quite huge.

Of course, it is not particularly difficult to rebuild the anthill, but the whole ant colony is passed down from generation to generation with such difficulty and even some humility.

On the other hand, intelligent creatures, although individuals make mistakes, laziness and other situations that reduce efficiency, but the mutation or innovation caused by personality will guide the whole city to continue to move forward, continue to improve, and even continue to evolve, and the ability of intelligent creatures to resist disasters is much higher than that of the anthill - whether it is from a direct comparison or a simulation comparison after enlarging the anthill.

What I want to do now is to give these ants "personality", or rather, the ability to think.

Of course, such a simple and crude approach will not have too significant results, and it is not even optimistic, after all, the anthill has its own rules, and two guys who suddenly become "smart" will not become the pioneers of the trend, but will be regarded as deviant freaks by the entire ant colony, or even crazy patients, who will be ruthlessly eliminated from the system!

However, I just tried it to see how quickly the ant colony reacted, and what Leo did was the key.

What he wants to do is to transform the queen ant.

As the core of the anthill, as well as the old grandmother of the ant colony, the reproductive ability and management ability of the ant queen are equally powerful and important, and the anthill is a brain, and the core part is the queen ant, so if you want to make changes, you must also start from it.

This transformation is slightly different from the last transformation of the Eye Demon Xijiao, of course, in terms of intelligence and comprehension, but it is necessary to limit the perception of the ether.

In other words, our transformation of the ant colony is not to create a group of easily awakened magical beasts, but a group of intelligent "ordinary" ants.

This line of thinking is actually inherited from our attitude towards Yangcun, which is different from the previous subhumans.

Originally, I also planned to plant poisonous mushroom spores from the wood elemental plane here, but Leo vetoed it.

Leo's reasoning was: "It's better to be careful with this mushroom before we fully understand it." ”

The transformation went very smoothly, there was not much change on the queen's side, and the two ants also showed a relatively distinct personality, as a result, they began to be lazy at work, stealing food, going backwards, and leaving their posts to observe a piece of fine sand like glass outside the cave...... Soon, they were spotted by the "enforcers" of the colony and thrown into a morgue-like place where dead or sick ants were home.

The two ants began to study their dying companions around them, and even studied the corpses of their dead companions.

Then, as if they couldn't figure anything more, they began to think about how to get out of here.

The soldier ants guarding the morgue will never allow them to leave, and those corpses are likely to infect them, and they will die here.

Then, I modified nearly a hundred more ants.

One by one, the ants were also thrown into different morgues, and after a while, they gathered near the entrance and exit, waiting for death to approach.

Soon after, in the "palace" where the queen ant was, a group of hundreds of sturdy "Praetorian Guard" soldiers left their posts and hurried towards the morgues.

When they arrived, the soldiers touched their tentacles with the guard ants and stayed there.

"What's going on?" I asked Leo, "Doesn't that mean that these modified worker ants will be reused?" ”

"You can't take it out right now, can you?" Leo said, "If they have bacteria and viruses on them, won't they be doomed?" ”

I was stunned.

After more than an hour, more than a dozen modified ants died of infection, and the rest were taken back to the anthill palace by the strong Praetorian Guards.

Then a special class was born in the ant colony - they were second only to the queen, above the soldier ants and the worker ants, and were mainly responsible for exploration, research and invention.

That is, a group of scholars.