Although the food in the woods is very different from what they had eaten on the south bank of the river in their homeland, the delicious insect meat and the sweet honeydew of the brown helmet wax scale still make the ants who have suffered from the bumps forget their hard work for a while.

The inspection and overhaul of the walnut ship is also progressing smoothly, and by the evening of this day, nearly half of the ships have been inspected, repaired and cleaned.

The next day, May 25, the ants continued to forage and repair the ship, and at this pace, they could set sail again tomorrow morning.

However, the days in the water pine forest are not completely peaceful, and in the morning, the protagonist is basking in the cracks in the bark of the water pine trees in the company of the Praetorian Guard, when he receives an alert that a small army of people who are out foraging for food has been attacked by indigenous ants.

The protagonist immediately sends a messenger to call for the spade elephant, and in a hurry, he and the spade elephant rush to the place of attack with the Praetorian Guard and a hundred or so soldiers who have arrived after hearing the news.

According to the guidance of pheromones, the troops climbed to the high place of the water pine, followed a branch sticking out to the east, climbed to the branch of a nearby ash tree, and then passed another water pine, climbed up and down, circled, and finally arrived at the target location - a metasequoia.

The attack took place on a low branch of Metasequoia.

By the time the protagonist and the stag elephant arrive with reinforcements, the battle is over, and a foraging force of eleven soldier and worker ants is on standby, with the corpses of six attackers lying on the branches beneath their feet.

Eight indigenous ants were reported to have attacked, two of which fell from a branch during the battle and one of the foraging squads fell into the water with the enemy during the struggle.

The protagonist looks down and finds the soldier ant floating motionless on the water, presumably drowned. The two native ants only saw the corpse of one of them, and the other did not know whether it had been washed away or sunk.

The protagonist then looks at the corpse of the native ant in the tree, which is a brownish-red ant that looks a bit like a big-headed ant if you don't look closely, but the first segment of its back abdomen is very wide, and the surface is smooth and wrinkle-free.

What is more peculiar is that unlike the large-headed ants, there are only two types of worker ants and soldier ants with smaller bodies, and the carcasses of these six indigenous ants can be divided into three types according to their size, let's call them large ants, medium ants and small ants.

The large ant has a foot of 1.5 cm long, a head with a huge proportion like a large-headed ant, and a large jaw, making it a good fighter at first glance.

Medium-sized ants are only about 7 mm long, and their head proportions are much smaller than those of large ants, which is close to the proportion of worker ants of large-headed ants.

Small ants are only about 5 mm in size, and their body proportions are similar to those of large-headed workers.

According to the report of the attacked big-headed ants, among the three types of ants, the small ants are the most fearless of death.

The protagonist didn't recognize what kind of ant it was, after all, there are too many types of ants, and many of them look the same. If a professional anttologist sees this ant, he will definitely be able to recognize it, and even name it to know the protagonist.

This is a leaf-cutting ant, or more precisely, a giant Leafcutter ant in the genus Barchet.

Leafcutter ants are known to collect leaves for fungus, but in fact most species in the leafcutter ant subfamily do not grow fungi. For example, the big-headed ant to which the protagonist belongs, as well as the paver ant, also belong to the subfamily of leafcutter ants.

Only some leafcutter ants have fungal planting behaviors, and the patterns are very different. There are a total of 5 "farming patterns" for these leafcutter ant species:

The first is "low-level agriculture", with a total of 76 species of leafcutter ants having this pattern, and their "agricultural activities" have many primitive characteristics, cultivating many umbrella fungi (i.e., fungi with caps, which also belong to umbrella mushrooms). Their cultivation methods are relatively ancient, and there are no exclusive strains of fungi, which come from fungi that can grow independently in the environment, and in the process of cultivating mushrooms, they can also be infected with mold and cause diseases, but these ants do not seem to have any good coping methods.

The second is "coralium agriculture", the so-called corals are some fungi that do not have a cap and look very similar to corals, such as Hericium erinaceus. Engaged in this cultivation activity are ants belonging to the genus Pterocutter, a family that does not have the conspicuous spines of most fungal ants. Interestingly, a total of 34 species of pterocutter ants feed on corals, while the remaining members cultivate fungi similar to those of other trophers, suggesting that cultivating corals is a newly evolved behavior of this ant family.

The third is "yeast agriculture", which is more special, and it is no longer a large fungus that is cultivated, but a single-celled "yeast", and there are 18 species of ants engaged in this industry, which belong to camel leaf cutting ants. This "yeast" can restore hyphal growth on artificial media, which is very similar to the mycelial morphology of multicellular fungi, and is actually a variant of the traditional species of leafcutter ants.

The above three kinds of "fungal agriculture" are sometimes collectively referred to as "low-level agriculture", they do not use live plants, but fallen leaves, flower petals, etc., and also use insect feces and corpses as a culture medium, the number of general groups is less than 100, and the life is relatively low-key and hidden, belonging to a relatively vulnerable group.

The fourth is "near-advanced agriculture", which is very similar to the highest level of leafcutter ants, except that they do not harvest the leaves of plants, and are mainly composed of three types of ants: wrinkled leafcutters, soft leafcutters and pseudo-barbarcuters.

The last model is "advanced agriculture", which is also the most advanced form of fungal culture, which not only has its own strains, but also the act of harvesting fresh leaves and flowers to cultivate fungi. These ants, known as the Barcisphic Ant and the Top Leafcutter Ant, are able to form large colonies, numbering more than 10,000 individuals, which are very different from the "low-level farmers" who operate dismally.

The protagonist doesn't recognize this ant species, and if he knew, maybe he wouldn't be so calm. After all, the giant head of the Bacche leaf ant is not an indigenous tribe, but a large clan with tens of thousands of ants at every turn, and it is not something that the current god envoy king army can easily provoke.

The protagonist understands the whole story, and it turns out that both the Divine Envoy King warriors and the other party have found a large piece of honeydew of the brown helmet wax scale, and then they are attacked by the other party, and the Divine Envoy King warriors use their numerical superiority and weapon advantage to completely annihilate each other.

The protagonist tells the warriors to throw all the corpses into the water and then return the way they came, trying not to attract the revenge of the "indigenous tribes".

After all, they're just passers-by, they're leaving tomorrow, and they're not going to get into trouble!