Today's second update, call for me!

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The protagonist soon arrives at the scene of the incident with the Praetorian Guard.

This is a pasture on the west side of [Nansen City], which belongs to the transition zone of forest and grass, with dense herbaceous plants and scattered trees, not far from the river, which is almost invisible due to the impact of drought, and is verdant.

A large herd of tens of thousands of insects in the Legion of the Divine Envoy King has recently moved here from the move to graze, and the aphids and scale insects in it are of a wide variety of species, ranging from herbaceous to tree-loving.

The ants that were controlled by the peculiar caterpillars were all ants grazing on the trees here, and now they have been subdued and taken away by other ants.

The culprit behind these ants' laziness and aggressiveness is a small, seemingly non-threatening caterpillar.

This caterpillar is only the size of a large-headed ant, and its body is short, fat, and translucent yellow-green, which is a good protective color, and it is very inconspicuous when mixed with the branches and leaves of young trees. Caterpillars have soft spines all over their bodies, but their defenses are so weak that any ant seems to be able to kill them in defiance of their soft spines.

But its deadliest weapon is not a soft thorn, but a sweet weapon.

This caterpillar has nectar glands on its back, which secretes a kind of honeydew, and just smelling it makes it more attractive than the highly sweet honeydew of aphids or scale insects, and even the protagonist wants to take a sip.

The ants who came here to manage the herd have found that any ant that sucks the honeydew will show symptoms of sluggishness, fatigue, reluctance to return to the nest, compete for the honeydew, and will also show aggression towards their companions who are close to the caterpillar.

These honeydew are obviously unusual, and it is the ants who drink them that are crazy about it.

The protagonist didn't dare to taste this honeydew, and for some reason the information about this caterpillar automatically popped up in his mind.

This caterpillar turned out to be the larvae of the Japanese Purple Gray Butterfly. The scientific name of the Japanese purple gray butterfly is Arhopalajaponica, also known as the Japanese gray butterfly, purple small gray butterfly, etc., which is a species of the purple gray butterfly of the gray butterfly family.

The adult of this purple gray butterfly does not have much special except for its beautiful wings, but its larvae are really powerful, and it is one of the few insects that knows "hypnotism".

The sweet body fluids secreted by the nectar glands on the back of the larvae attract many species of ants, and ants that eat this honeydew will stay around the larvae for a long time and attack the natural predators of the larvae, thus avoiding predation. This is the self-preservation that the weak purple gray butterfly larvae have evolved, but it is a sweet poison for ants.

The reason why this honeydew has this effect is that it contains a special substance that significantly reduces the amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to desire and pleasure, in the ant's brain, and brings addiction.

Addicted ants then become less active, stay near the larvae for a long time, gradually lose the ability to return to the nest, and become more aggressive. And ants that consume this honeydew for a long time end up gradually emaciating until they die.

How much does this honeydew sound like a duck slice (sensitive, you know)!

The protagonist immediately gives this honeydew a name "Raven Honey" in his heart.

The temptation of crow honeydew is very strong for ordinary professional ants, and it is forbidden for grazing ants to eat honeydew privately, and all honeydew should be collected in containers and brought back to the nest to dry or bake into concentrated honeydew, and then used for sale or internal distribution.

But as soon as they met the crows, the ants forgot the rules and impatiently went up to drink the sweet poison.

Those ants who have become addicted can only be brought back to the nest to force them out of addiction. And for the purple gray butterfly larvae that produce crow honey, the protagonist suddenly has a good idea.

He asked the Shengong ants to search nearby, and found dozens of purple gray butterfly larvae one after another, and the protagonist specially designated a few Shengong ants who would not be tempted by crow honey as herders, grazing these purple gray butterfly larvae in a designated area, and all the crow honey was collected and stored separately.

Although these crows are harmful to the health of the ants they eat, they are an excellent trade product!

At present, the fist product exported by the Divine Envoy King Legion is concentrated honeydew, and no matter how much it is produced, the huge Red Fire Ant Country can digest it.

Think about it, if the red fire ant country has millions of ants, then the ruling class has at least tens of thousands, and if a ruling class ant consumes one drop of diluted honeydew a day, the whole country will consume tens of thousands of drops of honeydew a day, which is equivalent to thousands of drops of concentrated honeydew, or dozens of concentrated honeydew from snail shells.

At present, the amount of honeydew that the Divine Envoy King Legion can export on the basis of ensuring domestic demand, that is, the concentrated honeydew of three or four snail shells a day, there is still a large gap between supply and demand.

However, the pastures near [Xinyang City] have reached their limit, and the herds near [Nansen City] are still expanding, and they cannot make up for the gap in a short period of time, and a new nectar source can make up for it slightly.

At the same time, the protagonist values the allure, addiction and toxicity of crow honey more.

This kind of crow honey is very tempting to ants, and will certainly be supplied to the top ruling class of red fire ants as the most precious honeydew, and its addictive nature will make the ants who smoke it want to stop and must import crow honey for a long time and at all costs, consuming their domestic resources.

This kind of crow honey will continue to weaken the supreme ruling class of the Red Fire Ants, which will indirectly weaken this very powerful country, and win opportunities for the future expansion of the Divine Envoy King Legion.

The protagonist knows that the Divine Legion of Kings cannot be confined to this corner forever, and that once it expands, conflicts with the Red Fire Ants and the Leafcutter Ants are inevitable. Until then, any means that can weaken the two potential opponents, the protagonist will not let go.

Crow honey exports, this method of killing multiple birds with one stone, gives the protagonist a new weapon.

- I'm the dividing line -

The Legion of the Divine Envoy King soon reached a new trade deal with the Legion of the Bellies, and even though the price of the Legion of the Divine Envoy King was two or three times that of the concentrated honeydew, its unique flavor still won over the leaders of the Elder Heart and other Bell-Raising Ants, who agreed to participate in the trade.

The reason why the protagonist set a higher price for crown honey, instead of dumping it at a low price to occupy the market, is really a last resort.

The production of crow honey is very limited, with only a few dozen purple gray butterfly larvae producing honey, and they cannot reproduce as quickly as aphids. Once these purple gray butterflies pupate in autumn, at least until the beginning of next spring, there will be no new crow honey production.

The protagonist estimates that he can only collect five snail shells of crow honey before the winter of this year, and he really has no ability to dump it.

Once the price is too low, the protagonist will also have to worry that the bellied ants themselves will consume all the crow honey. Only by raising the price can the relatively poor belly-lifting ants not be willing to occupy too much, and obediently sell them to the red fire ants, so as to achieve the insidious purpose of the protagonist!

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