Quiet, a certain level of quietness, too quiet, which in itself is extremely abnormal.

Nature has all kinds of figures all the time, the sound of the wind, the sound of water, the sound of swaying grass and trees, and ...... The chirping of insects.

The first few sounds were still there, so they paralyzed my nerves, and I didn't notice for a while that the insects in the vicinity had all disappeared, or rather, there had been no insects since we came to the valley.

My antennae were raised high and probed around, but I didn't pick up the vibrations of the insects in the air.

Crickets, crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas, these songworms seem to disappear in an instant.

I stopped, put my tentacles on the queen's antennae, and told her about the unusual situation.

She also looked nervous, and a fool knew something was wrong. We quickly decided to return, and although we didn't catch any prey, it was clear that life was more important.

Moreover, even if you continue to hunt, you will probably have to return empty-handed, and not only will the songworms disappear, but the nearby insects will seem to have been driven away by everything.

I don't know what it is, I've never seen such a situation, even the bark mantis, the red dragon centipede, and the pincer scorpion are infested, and it is impossible to scare all the insects away, and there are many strong insects that are not afraid of these predators.

So, we can only guess that there is a more terrifying existence than these predators nearby, what could it be?

Either way, we must flee back and report back to the Horde.

So, we followed the route we came, still cautiously observing step by step, and slowly touched the mountainside. At this time, you must not flee in embarrassment, the more you expose your body, the easier it is to be targeted by the terrifying existence in the shadows.

Luckily, we escaped back to where we encountered the bark mantis and the German cockroach without any danger, and half of the German cockroach's body was dead and dead.

After resting for a while, the queen swallowed the unpalatable upper body of the German cockroach in anger, and then we returned to the tribe's nest at the top of the mountain.

Entering through the entrance in the middle of the cone-shaped enclosure, the underground part of the nest was not large, and we quickly found the eldest queen ant and reported the situation to her.

The elder queen ant received the message from the two of us, and stood there quietly, thinking motionlessly. After a while, she told me to summon the other queens along with the three most heroic warriors (including me), and the two males who were allowed to stay in the nest.

It wasn't until near evening that I found all the ants, because some of the warriors had gone out hunting, and they didn't come back until the sun went down.

We finally gathered at the eldest queen, and then we formed a circle, with the left antennae connected to the left antennae of the left ant, and the right antennae connected to the left antennae of the right ant, forming a meeting circle.

The eldest queen asked me and the younger queen to recount what happened to us that afternoon. Afterwards, everyone expressed their opinions.

The nasty warrior who often came to me to duel, but always lost more than he won, and was missing a mid-limb, had a very unfriendly message, saying that we were too cowardly, and that we were scared home without knowing anything, and that I didn't bring any useful information back.

I know she did it on purpose, and she always wanted to use every opportunity to defeat me and occupy my current position.

But she was right, aside from the feeling of the two of us, and the sound of disappearing insects, the young queen and I really didn't bring back any more useful information. But my instincts didn't allow me to stay in that place much longer.

The other ants were not close to the valley where their neighbors were, and they had no opinions to express.

It was a male ant, the older male, older than the queen, he said.

He extracted some useful information from my packet: the pheromones I smelled from neighboring tribes marking the edges of their territories were very faint, which should not be. As is customary, every member of the tribe who comes here is obliged to use excrement to strengthen the territorial marking.

In his opinion, members of our neighboring tribes have not come to the border for some time.

However, we don't pay attention to the words of the male ants, and we don't have a good opinion of this parasite. These males have huge bodies, but they are cowardly, weak, and completely incapable of hunting, and can only survive by begging the soldiers to give him some leftovers.

No tribe would be willing to feed these parasitic males unless the newborn queens had to mate with the males.

Now, we don't know what happened to the neighboring tribes in the valley area, but something must have happened.

So, the tribe appointed me, along with the nasty warrior who was missing a mid-limb, to go and find out tomorrow.

Well, shit, I'm going to have to go back there.

- I'm the dividing line -

The next day, we set off early in the morning.

I don't like to act with this nasty guy, I might as well be with the young queen.

The young queen would sting me lightly and ask me to do this, do that. But this guy in front of me is even more annoying, she always tries to climb in front of me.

Of course I can't bear it, she often loses to me in duels, so I'm in a higher position, and I should be ahead of the line and let her head go to my ass.

The guy is the toughest opponent I've ever seen, and despite missing a leg, he's always very tenacious in duels and often has to expend a lot of physical strength to win.

Even now, she kept trying to overtake me and climb ahead, and I could only keep speeding up to get rid of her. Fortunately, she was missing a leg, and although it didn't affect crawling and jumping, it always slowed down her speed.

In this way, the two of us chased me all the way to the border of the territory. At this time, the two of us were finally not in the mood to compete, and began to search in a fighting posture.

After entering the valley, I heard a different movement than yesterday - the chirping of crickets.

The Broken Leg Warrior shook his head at me, as if thinking that I had been frightened by myself yesterday and had brought back false information.

I didn't care, there were no insects yesterday. Even if there were crickets chirping today, the sound was too lonely. Our tribe once lived in a valley, and we know that the density of insect chirping is much higher than this in normal times.

I crawled straight to a small tree in the grass, which usually had a territory sign underneath it.

Sure enough, I smelled the pheromones of the territory identification left by the neighboring tribes, which was a mixture of their feces and urine, and there was a smell exclusive to their tribe. The smell was very light, and it seemed that no new excrement had been replenished for three or four days.

The Broken Leg Warrior sniffed it as well, and became solemn. The soldiers who have survived to this day are not fools who do not know the height of the sky.

In the valley, something really happened!