After arranging the pre-battle preparations, the protagonist flies in the direction of "Waterfront City" on Xiaoqing II.

This is not the first time the protagonist has flown to "Waterfront City", so the route is familiar to him.

If you are afraid of getting lost, just fly east from "Dongyang City" to the sky above the Great Lake, then find the first small river in the north, follow the winding river roughly due north-west, until you reach the big river where it joins, and you can see the dense and magnificent banyan tree of "Waterfront City". There are landmarks along the way, so don't get lost, but it's a bit far.

For the old bird like the protagonist, he prefers to fly straight north to the big river, and then turn to the west, and he can also find the target, while saving nearly half of the time on the road.

The eye-catching and rare banyan tree in "Waterfront City" soon appears at the feet of the protagonist.

As the name suggests, the northernmost secondary nest of the kingdom is located on the edge of the great river that the ants call it, in the middle of the river to be exact.

The big river is the boundary river between the big-headed ant kingdom and the paving ant barbarian country, about fifteen or sixteen meters wide, in the eyes of humans is just a small river ditch, but for any kind of ant, this is an insurmountable moat - water, and flowing water, is the most feared obstacle for ants.

Due to the physiological structure of ants, most ants cannot float on the surface of the water for a long time. The water will dissolve the oil on their bodies, causing them to sink to the bottom little by little. Before that, the suffocation caused by the abdominal stomata submerged under the water had killed most of the ants that fell into the water.

And even if they survive for a short time, ants can't decide their fate in the water. Even if they are not attacked and eaten by vicious aquatic creatures, the direction of the wind and the current of the water determine where the ants end up drifting to, and if they drift away from the nest, the stray ants will not live long.

Therefore, except in the winter when the river freezes, big-headed ants and paver ants will not try to cross the river. But in the eyes of the protagonist, this is not a difficult task, and only a simple pontoon bridge needs to be built to be able to cross this original chasm.

"Waterfront City" is located on a small island in this large river, about half a meter away from the south bank where the Big-headed Ant Kingdom is located, and about 15 meters away from the north bank where the Paving Ant Kingdom is located.

The whole island is actually composed of a huge rock plate in the water, and a huge banyan tree has grown tenaciously in the gap of the rock plate, and the roots of the banyan tree are firmly rooted in the cracks of the stone, and some thick roots are exposed to the surface, entrenched on the rocks, and finally plunged into the mud under the water surface. The entire island is Banyan's sphere of influence.

In addition, there was originally a dead willow tree more than one meter long on the stone island, because it could not resist the competition of the banyan tree, this small willow tree died a long time ago, and after countless years of erosion, finally the half-decayed willow trunk collapsed, and formed a natural bridge between the island and the south shore.

There is very little dirt on this stone island, only scattered soil around the stone surface and tree trunks, as well as filling in the crevices between the stones and tree roots.

Due to the lack of soil on the island, the "Waterfront City" was not built underground, but was crisscrossed by tunnels and nests under the rough bark of the large banyan tree. So, this is both a water city and a tree city.

This structure caused a lot of trouble for winter defense plans, and in the cold winter, even if the ground was already freezing and snowy, it was still warm deep underground.

For example, when the ground is freezing, the temperature at one meter underground can still be maintained at about four or five degrees, which is barely enough to allow the big-headed ants to move without freezing, so it is planned that each secondary nest will be defended at a depth of less than one meter underground. And the temperature at a depth of three meters is already above 10 degrees, which can be used as a camp for the army to take turns to rest and recuperate.

But the thin bark of the banyan tree is clearly not able to withstand the cold. Since all the defenders here were killed in battle, the protagonist has no way of knowing what tactics the previous defenders used to resist, but he knows that relying on the nests on the periphery of the trunk will not be able to place the Legion of the Divine Envoy King and ensure the mobility of the warriors.

The main character, accompanied by the king of "Waterfront City", walks through the inside and outside of this sub-nest. He thought about it and felt that there were two ways to try to increase the size of the secondary nest and maintain a certain temperature.

The first option is to try digging down through cracks in the rocks in the ground to find a way to dig deep underground and build a nest.

The advantage of this is that the ants are good at earthwork, and as long as they find a suitable location, the construction progress will be very fast. Moreover, the temperature of the underground is relatively constant, which is conducive to ensuring the combat effectiveness of the Divine Envoy King Legion.

But there are also problems with this solution. For example, since the island is located in a river, will the water table be too high to build a nest? For example, if the foundation of the island is completely rocky, what if there are no gaps to penetrate deep into the soil?

The second option is to expand the nest inside the trunk of the banyan tree. This banyan tree is hugged by about four people, and the diameter of the trunk is more than two meters, and if you can dig a secondary nest in the center of the tree, the one-meter-thick trunk around it can also play a good role in insulating heat. If you build a combustion chamber inside the center of the tree to provide heating, it is believed that a high room temperature can be maintained.

However, this is a difficult task, as the ants' jaws can easily dig through the soil, but it is difficult to work on solid wood. In the past, the construction of the "Waterfront City" was carried out along the decaying wood to reduce the workload.

And build a combustion chamber inside the heart of the tree, how to ensure that the entire tree will not be burned from the inside out also needs to be paid attention to, otherwise the protagonist and the army of the god envoy king will be killed in the fire, and it will be too late to escape.

In fact, the most suitable nest to build on a tree is the kind of nest of arboreal ants that sew together leaves with ant silk, this kind of nest is effortless to build, makes full use of the resources and space on the tree, and can accommodate more ants by building a few more as needed. However, this kind of arboreal ant nest is also not insulated, so it is often only used by ants who live in tropical areas without worrying about winter.

The protagonist finally decides to do both, on the one hand, let the worker ants of "Waterfront City" dig holes in the soil on the island to test whether they can build an underground nest; On the other hand, the worker ants tried to drill holes into the trunk of the banyan tree and calculated the amount of work and labor required through experiments.

Since the "Waterfront City" has received the order of the main nest, the kings here say that they obey the orders of the protagonist, and they immediately start organizing the ants to start construction according to the protagonist's request.