Two days after the cold wave, the temperature really rose a lot regularly, at least at noon there was still a temperature of nearly 20 degrees.

It's a tug-of-war between autumn and winter, with winter being unstoppable, but autumn always stubbornly resisting, and occasionally a counterattack or two. It's the same in every season, and after three months, don't you have to see the spring and the cold of spring like this?

The ants of the Ant Alliance are seizing the last opportunity and are busy preparing for winter.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, the Flying Knight messengers set off from the main nest [Xinyang City] and headed for dozens of secondary nests in all directions.

On average, each Flying Knight will visit three or four sub-nests, and they will have to convey the latest spirit of the recent joint meeting of the various clans to the local sub-nest meeting, as well as the winter mission instructions of the Divine Envoy King, and then return to [Xinyang City] before the sunset cools down today.

The transport team formed by the "old heart" also set off almost at the same time, and they had to work harder to carry a large amount of burned charcoal to [February Lancheng], and these goods were not light.

Nowadays, because of the dual location advantages of being close to iron ore ore areas and convenient transportation, the number of iron-making blast furnaces has exceeded that of the main nest [Xinyangcheng], and the iron output is twice that of [Xinyangcheng], becoming the largest iron-making center in China.

However, the fuel resources in the vicinity of [February] are not abundant, especially the lack of forests to provide sufficient firewood for charcoal, and as iron production rises, the local area is increasingly dependent on external fuel imports.

Originally, there was a batch of charcoal in Xinyangcheng, which was fired in a charcoal kiln built in the Black Forest area, and it was previously transported by the water transport team along the second phase of the canal, which had already been built, and it was originally planned to continue to be transported to [February Lancheng] through the canal.

At that time, it caught up with the cold snap, and the water transport team and charcoal cargo were stranded in [Xinyangcheng]. Now that the water of the canal has nearly dried up with the decrease in the flow of water from the source mountain stream, we can only use ants to transport these important materials related to whether the blast furnace can start normally in winter.

A small pile of charcoal is packed in a net pocket the size of broad beans, and more than 20 worker ants bite and carry it with their big jaws, and it is not fast to walk, and it takes about two days to arrive at [February Lancheng], which is not far away, and has to rest overnight in a secondary nest halfway.

Thousands of paving ants have been put into the work, which is currently the largest number of one-time paver ants outside of the canal construction site.

Sending off the convoy, the protagonist goes to inspect the farm again.

Winter is already very close, and although the farm is underground, the room temperature can be guaranteed to be roughly constant, and it is not a problem to continue raising mealworms even in winter.

However, because the worker ants cannot go out to collect feed for mealworms in winter, and it is too wasteful for the ants to feed mealworms with their own food, so every winter, only about one-twentieth of the mealworms are left in the farm, and they are fed by the garbage and corpses produced by the ant nest.

Of course, there are still hundreds of thousands of mealworm eggs in the warehouse next to the farm, and the scale of breeding can be restored soon in spring.

In winter, mealworms still prefer fresh and clean food, but when they don't have to eat, they can only be willing to become the ants' garbage processors, which just solves the problem of garbage accumulation in the ant nest in winter.

The vast majority of mealworms in breeding are about to usher in a wave of slaughter.

Ants should take advantage of the early winter when the sun is still fierce and the outside is dry, and make mealworms into dried meat or salted jerky.

I saw a large number of big-headed ants and worker ants working inside and outside the farm at this time.

A twisted and struggling mealworm was no match for the strength of the ants, and was dragged from the soft and comfortable hay-covered room to the slaughterhouse outside.

There was a strong smell of blood in the slaughterhouse, and although there was a vent connected to the outside, it still smelled bad.

The protagonist stands at the door of the slaughterhouse and looks inside, only to see the mealworms being dragged in struggling to be pressed to the ground by a dozen or so worker ants.

A veteran ant with a thick iron blade on its jaw crawled up to the mealworm and easily found the dead hole behind the mealworm's head.

The mealworm seems to sense the bad intentions of the ants on its back and tries to shrink its neck. But when it was too late, I saw the veteran ants lower their heads, aim at the position, and close their jaws one by one.

The mealworm didn't move much in an instant, and only the body's conditioned reflex was still twitching and pumping.

As soon as the veteran ant butcher took his mouth, the jaw knife cut off the nerves connected to the body of the mealworm's head, because the insect physiology is relatively primitive, this can not completely destroy its nervous system and motor ability, but it has made it impossible to escape or resist.

While the mealworms were not dead and the flesh was still fresh and hot, the ants hurried to start the next process.

This mealworm has just finished molting its last shell before pupa, and it is the time when it is the strongest, the fattest and the softest carapace. Most mealworms will be slaughtered at this time, otherwise the carapace will be hard and will soon pupate!

The ants easily tore off the thin yellowish ring-shaped carapace with their big jaws, and the flesh of the mealworms kept shrinking because of the pain, but gradually lost their breath.

The intensive slaughter in winter causes some mealworms to be about to molt, and it is when the carapace is the hardest, and sometimes the ants have to scorch their carapace with torches before removing the shell.

After processing the carapace, the ants sent the bloody mealworm flesh with the carapace peeled off and the head cut off to the next nest.

Here, by the time mealworms are brought to a stone platform, they are completely dead.

On both sides of the stone platform, several worker ants carried a slightly heavy round stone stick onto the mealworm carcass, and rolled the stone sticks from both sides of the stone platform to press the mealworm flesh.

Some of the mealworm's stomach entrails and filth are squeezed out of the excretion port, and the ants clean up the mealworm's flesh and the filth on the stone platform, and the mealworm meat strips are completely disposed of.

The cleaned meat is wiped clean with water and sent outside, where thousands of ants tend to dry the dried meat and turn it around to chase away the insects that are still alive and hungry for food.

Most of the jerky needs to be dried for more than three days to be completely dry, and it is not a problem to store it for a winter, which is the main meat of the ant nest in winter.

A small portion is transported back to the ground after a day's drying, where it is salted in special wooden barrels with coarse salt obtained from the trade. This bacon tastes better and is the exclusive food of noble ants.

Sometimes, the combustion chamber is used to make some bacon, and the protagonist loves bacon.

Looking at this busy scene, the protagonist instantly feels really like pickled bacon before the Chinese New Year in his previous life!