The Legion of the Divine Envoy King had already had farming (mealworms, maggots, and bees), herding (aphids and scale insects), and planting (all kinds of grass seeds), and had been able to obtain much more food than they had gathered, and had tasted the sweetness of primitive agriculture.

Although the original farming and animal husbandry industries have been abandoned because they are now forced to stay away from their homeland, the reconstruction of these primitive agricultural and pastoral economies has begun in the swampy areas.

Even in the walnut fleet, it occupies a lot of cabin capacity to hold all kinds of insect eggs and plant seeds as a backup. With these eggs and seeds, the walnut fleet can even replicate the original farming industry in any suitable place.

The fungal cultivation agriculture of leaf cutting ants is completely different from the previous agricultural model of the Divine Envoy King, what is needed is some fresh plant flowers and leaves, which will not rob the resources needed by other industries, and can even use the normal metabolism of flowers and leaves in the grass seed farmland as raw materials.

The fungus produced can also enrich the diet of the Divine Envoy King's army, providing an additional way to produce food, and also expanding the food source, so that it is not prone to crises due to the lack of food.

This is exactly what makes the protagonist excited.

As the ship moves slowly, ready to anchor in a nearby tree, the protagonist takes the opportunity to take a closer look at the colony.

Extrapolating from the large number of working ants outdoors, this colony of Barche leaf ants has at least 20,000 ants.

Such a large ant colony, as the protagonist had previously speculated, was obviously not something that the Divine Envoy King warriors on the current Walnut fleet could match.

The protagonist wants to subdue this race, and he is not so hot-headed as to attack it, his goal is only to capture the opponent's queen, or capture at least one queen egg, preferably a batch of eggs. There are many ways to achieve this limited goal, and it is not necessary to completely conquer and destroy this kingdom of the Barche leaf ants, such as stealing a few eggs, which is much less difficult.

Based on the actions of the Bacher Leaf Ants, the protagonist speculates that the balls of leaves are the fields where they cultivate fungi, and that the Workers carry the collected leaves to them, and that the holes are their real nests.

The leaves collected by the Barcheleaf ants are not from the ash tree where they live, but from some nearby ash trees, and apparently they are aware of the harm they have to collect leaves, so they will try to protect the trees they consider as nests as much as possible, and will go to great lengths to collect leaves from other ash trees.

As for the leaves of metasequoia and water pine, they are not suitable, and I have not seen Bache leaf ants to collect them.

But to make the leaf balls, you have to use the leaves of the native ash. The protagonist observes the process of making a leaf ball.

It was next to a ball of leaves that had almost completely withered, and the ants inside kept pouring out, and then climbed up the nearby leaves and started working.

These barchet leaf ants are connected to each other, like an ant line, on two adjacent leaves, and then pull the two leaves together.

Another professional ant came with a white larvae, and the tentacles flapped the larvae, so that the larvae secreted ant glue, and these ant glue "sewed" the two leaves together.

The Barcheleaf ants "sew" a hemispherical bowl with four adjacent leaves, which can also be seen as a top pedestal. And there are no other leaves in the vicinity that can be pulled directly. These barcische leaf ants cut off the whole leaf from other places, and then lift it together and sew it together to continue to complete the lower half of the leaf ball.

Soon a complete spherical body was first seen. A small hole will be bitten out of the top of the leaf ball for the Barcischea leaf ants to enter and exit. Just an hour later, a ball of leaves slightly larger than the ocean ball was finished.

The protagonist also understands that the size of these leaf balls depends on their top base, and the size of the top seat depends on the number and size of the natural leaves in the position of the branch, so it is no wonder that these leaf balls are different in size.

After finishing the new leaf ball, Barche Leaf Ant put the chopped fresh leaves and put them in, and I don't know what they were tinkering with.

Then, after a while, the Barche leaf ants began to transport white clumps of fungus like the mycelium on moldy tofu from the old leaf balls, as if they were carrying small clumps of cotton.

After that, the Barcheleaf ants bit off the petioles of the top three leaves of the old leaf ball, and the old leaf ball "snapped" and fell into the water, floating intact on the surface of the water, drifting with the tide and not sinking.

At this time, the walnut fleet had stopped sailing on a metasequoia, and the old leaf balls that had fallen into the water were slowly drifting here.

After about an hour, the sun is setting in the west, and after the protagonist has finalized the details of tonight's "egg stealing operation", the old leaf ball floats over and hits the walnut boat.

The protagonist and the Praetorian Guard team climb up the old leaf ball, ready to inspect the leaf ball.

Unbeknownst to the protagonist, the Barche leaf ants usually nest on the ground, and the fungal farm is also underground, and there is no habit of building a leaf ball farm on trees. However, weaving ants in the tropics behave similarly, using leaves and ant gum secreted by larvae to build leaf nests. I don't know if the Barche leaf ants here have evolved in order to adapt to the environment of the water forest.

The protagonist climbs up to the old leaf nest, and the leaves on the surface are completely yellow, but they still retain moisture, and there are no large gaps in the joints of the leaves.

He led a few Praetorian Guards through the opening in and out of the Barcheleaf Ants, which was pitch black, with only the faint light filtering through the crevices and holes.

But the protagonist's eyesight is barely affected, and he looks around, and it is almost empty, with some mycelium remaining on the four walls, not only the white fungus that the Barcheleaf ants have removed, but also some miscellaneous fungi of other colors.

There is a lot of water at the bottom of the leaf ball, but the leaf ball itself is very light and still floats so that it will not sink.

Through the thin layer of water, you can see the remaining medium at the bottom of the leaf ball, which is black and glued together, and the material is almost invisible. But getting closer, the protagonist looks carefully, and can't help but feel a little disgusted.

In the black medium, there are also some corpses mixed together, some insects, some Bache leaf ants, it seems that Bache leaf ants even use the corpses of their companions to cultivate fungi. The corpses had turned black, as if they had fallen into asphalt.

It's a bit disgusting, but the Legion of the Divine Angel King can also use some useless prey or livestock carcasses to cultivate fungi in the future. As for the corpse of the Divine Envoy King's warriors, it obviously can't be treated like this, after all, the Divine Envoy King's legion already has a certain sense of funeral, and the dead cannot be desecrated.

Having the Praetorian Guard collect some of the white edible fungus's mycelium and bring it back to the cabin for keeping, the protagonist leaves the old leaf ball and pushes it with a stick.