Chapter 201: Barbarian Invasion
This fire is undoubtedly a catastrophe for the ants on the south bank of the Qing River.
Many ant tribes have suffered severe ant population attrition.
Fortunately, the native ants have the shelter of underground nests, except for a few who did not escape into the nest, most of the ants can still be unharmed. After all, these tribes are only a few tens of thousands of ants, so they are not as crowded as [Pioneer City], and some ants will be killed or injured if they are too close to the ground.
And among the arboreal ants, some have underground winter nests, if they hide in time, it is enough, if they don't have time to enter the ground, or there is no winter nest, in the face of this fire that can destroy everything, can swallow all the towering ancient trees from the roots to the crown, they will not be spared!
And the fire itself is not the most terrible, after the fire, the problem of survival is placed in front of all ant tribes.
After surviving the fire and waiting for the surface to cool down under the rain, the surviving ants were happy at first, because food could be found everywhere on the ground.
Burned dead insect carcasses, nuts cracked by heat, edible parts of blooming bush trunks... Food has never been so readily available!
But not long after the short carnival, the ants are facing starvation.
The benefits of the fire will soon be consumed, and many of the insects driven away by the fire will not survive the winter, and even if the long-lived insects barely escape from a fire, they will not return for the time being.
The ground is bare, the trees have been burned with their leaves, and while the surviving grass roots and trunks are struggling to sprout new blades of grass, most of them will not return to the area without the food, shelter and activity space that most insects need.
Whether it is a staple diet of plants or insects, the ant tribe will soon face the threat of starvation, and now let alone survive this winter, the vast majority of the tribes will not even have enough food to survive the autumn.
Even the outlook for next year's spring is bleak, as the fires destroy many of the eggs laid during the summer breeding season, and those laid on the backs of leaves, in shallow soils, and in tree cavities are almost completely wiped out, and only a few eggs hidden deep in the soil and trunks will survive.
Next year, the area will be gradually restored only when insects from other places slowly migrate to replenish it.
Nature is tenacious, but it often takes decades to completely repair the wounds of a fire.
For example, if the primary forest is burned, it can only be restored to the state of secondary forest for a long time.
But hungry ants don't have time to pay attention to winter or even next year, they are already hungry!
Nowadays, on the south bank of the Qinghe River, there is only one most abundant food resource - the ants themselves!
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The Flying Knights have now reduced their range of activities on the South Coast, concentrating on frequent reconnaissance near [Pioneer City] to protect the security of this South Shore enclave.
Nowadays, around [Pioneer City], there are many wars and tribal conflicts, and there are always tribes coveting this well-stocked lair.
[Pioneer City] also lost a lot of food in the fire, but with the support of the North Shore Territory, enough food was soon airlifted, and with the insect corpses collected after the fire, [Pioneer City] has enough food to last until early summer next year!
This is in stark contrast to other hungry ant tribes, although the nearby ant tribes do not know the inside story of [Pioneer City], but in occasional contact, seeing that the worker ants in [Pioneer City] are in good spirits, they can also infer two or three.
What's more, these worker ants themselves are seen as food by other hungry ants.
Many tribes have begun to use ants that prey on other tribes as their only source of food, and this is the cruel season!
Today, many of the ant tribes near [Pioneer City] are not their former neighbors, some of whom were destroyed by fires, some were defeated by new raiders, and some knew that the ant alliance was not easy to mess with, so they migrated away to rob the resources of other places.
Many of the newcomers began to think of [Pioneer City] as a big fat sheep!
On September 28th, the first tribe to invade [Pioneer City] appeared.
It's a tribe of bowback ants, and their biggest warrior has a size advantage comparable to that of the Destroyer, which can crush most of the ants, and has already looted many other tribes along the way.
When the hunchback ant appeared on the border of [Pioneer City], the paver ant herders, who were grazing aphids on the newborn grass, resisted, but were quickly killed.
The hunchback ants happily feasted on the carcasses of the paver ants, and ate the aphids as an after-dinner dessert one by one.
There weren't many humpback ants that came in, only about two dozen of them, but they quickly summoned hundreds of companions and wreaked havoc around the neighborhood.
The Divine Envoy King's Legion also quickly received a warning, and the 8th Legion was training outside the city and immediately rushed to support.
Although the 8th Legion was only lightly armed, without artillery support, the big-headed ant warriors were not as large as the other side.
However, these bowback ants are also relying on their size to bluff people, and the remnants of the Northern Expeditionary Army can easily wipe out an entire bowback ant tribe, not to mention the Divine Envoy King warriors who can fight well.
The tight front of the 8th Legion made it impossible for the bowback ants, who were accustomed to fighting alone, to rush forward and be besieged immediately, and the end of gathering together was to be surrounded and then killed.
After the 8th Legion eliminated most of the invading Humpback Ants, they tracked down the fleeing Humpback Ants to their tribe's temporary location and killed them.
In the end, only a few hunchback ants covered the queen ant to escape through the back door and never dared to come back.
But the invasion of the hunchback ant is like flipping a switch, and more and more indigenous tribes continue to come to [Pioneer City] like moths fighting fires.
After all, the [pioneer city], which has a developed agriculture and animal husbandry, has a large number of aphids and many ant populations, and it is as conspicuous as a torch in the night on the south bank, where there is a lack of food.
The defeated indigenous tribes will not tell the other tribes how dangerous it is, and the vacuum they have fled will be quickly filled by the other tribes that have arrived.
The indigenous ant tribes, which migrated like flies because of famine, swept through the surrounding area, destroying the remaining production of almost all the land, giving rise to more tribes that had to move and loot.
The [Pioneer City], which still has normal production activities and a large number of ants working in large numbers, has become a recognized target for nearby tribes, like a billboard with a "I have food here" billboard.
Frequent invasions began, and although the scale was not large, and the combat effectiveness of most of the tribes was worrying, [Pioneer City] was soon overwhelmed!