The night was uneventful, and the protagonist slept very soundly.

The next day, Xiao Mi, who was the first to be called by the biological clock, waited for a while, and saw that the other ants also got up on time according to the biological clock. In fact, the ants have already woken up, although it is a rare opportunity to sleep, but they have reached the limit of three or four hours of deep sleep, but before dawn, according to the protagonist's order, it is forbidden to move around and make noise at will, so they have to lie on their stomachs honestly.

Now that the sun has fully risen, the ants, who have finished their night mode, have become impatient and have begun to have the urge to disobey orders. In the end, the little secretary saw that the protagonist didn't get up yet, so he had to go over and push him.

The protagonist finally got up, followed the established procedure, and climbed to the ground with the members of the party pushing away the stones at the door, stretching his forelegs in the direction of the sun, and checking that the luggage and food in the other cave were safe and sound. The protagonist then eats half a sunflower seed and drinks a full meal of dew that has not yet completely evaporated.

After that, the little team hit the road.

According to the secretary, the main nest can be reached before noon. "I can still catch lunch." The protagonist thinks to himself, at this time, he selectively forgets that ants don't have the habit of having lunch on time, after all, he is tired of eating sunflower seeds, and there is no other suitable food in his secondary nest, but maybe the main nest will have it, and I think the main nest will not be stingy with a little food to entertain himself, the king from afar.

Not long after walking, the protagonist has already seen the ants in the main nest of the main one. These worker ants actually moved in swarms of dozens of them, and there were ten soldier ants inside.

They also found the protagonist and his party, and after verifying each other's identities, the mixed team of worker ants and soldier ants continued to move in the direction where the protagonist and the others came.

"What are they doing with so many ants?" The protagonist asks.

"Hunting." The secretary replied simply.

"Why don't we hunt like this in our nest, I only gave ten soldiers to ......hunt last time," the protagonist complains, and if there were a group of ants themselves, maybe they wouldn't have encountered a praying mantis last time, so embarrassed.

"We don't lack food, we don't have to hunt often." The little secretary gave a speechless answer.

The protagonist hesitates and asks, "So the main nest is short of food?" Why is there still a shortage of food? Then my plan to change the taste of lunch is not a joke. ”

"The main nest is short of food." The little secretary replied, "All ants know that the main nest is short of food. ”

The protagonist remembers that the ants can only answer one question at a time, so he has to ask again: "Why is there no food in the main nest?" ”

"A lot of queens, a lot of kings, a lot of soldier ants and worker ants. Eat more. The secretary explained.

The protagonist fills up his imagination and roughly piecing together the truth about the lack of food in the main nest: the biggest difference between the main nest and the secondary nest is that the queen ant and the male ant have a large number, which Lao Wang and Xiao Mi have mentioned, and the queen ant and the male ant are not engaged in production, the more these two types of ants, the more food resources will be consumed, and additional worker ants are needed to feed. And although the soldier ants and worker ants of the main nest can search for food, the more the better, on the contrary, too many will increase the burden, after all, the ants will generally rush back to the nest before dark, and an ant can run the farthest distance back and forth in a day, with this distance as the radius, draw a circle with the nest position as the center of the circle, and the area of this circle is the maximum range of the ants in the nest can search for food. The area of this circle is fixed, the various food resources that can be produced are also fixed, and the number of ants that can be fed is also limited.

The protagonist is also unable to estimate what this limit is, but he has a general impression of the lack of food in the main nest.

These larger hunting teams are obviously going to hunt larger prey, and the risk of hunting is certainly higher than searching for plant food or grazing aphids, and the main nest would rather fight for the loss of ants than hunt for meat, obviously the food storage is not optimistic.

Then, along the way, the protagonists see a lot of hunting teams. And on the trees, shrubs, and blades of grass along the way, there are ants climbing up and down everywhere, even if the former ant has searched for a leaf that has found nothing, the latter ant will be unwilling to explore again. The whole ground was as if it had been swept in the north, and there was not a single mushroom, grass seed, or fruit to be seen.

There are a few unknown plants with delicate stems, which are densely packed with aphids, and these unknown plants are a little overwhelmed, and the grass leaves are dry and languishing. The grazing worker ants are anxious and constantly patting the abdomen of each aphid back and forth with their antennae, and as long as a drop of honeydew is produced, some worker ants will hurriedly drink it. Worker ants with swollen bellies will run briskly in the direction of their nests, where there may be countless companions waiting to be fed. The protagonist is far away from the aphids, and at this time he has not yet discovered the connection between the aphid honeydew and the sugar water he often drinks.

The scene along the way disappointed the protagonist, who originally thought that a main nest community that could use fire would be a highly productive society, and maybe in addition to fire, he also pointed out the technology tree of other primitive societies. What I didn't expect to see was a scene where everyone was desperate for a stutter.

However, the protagonist does not know that in the history of human development, human beings who have just entered the stage of settlement have a higher input-output ratio in primitive animal husbandry and planting than in the era of gathering. A laborer in the gathering era may have to work only three hours a day to fill his stomach, while a farmer must work for most of the year to ensure food. However, with the emergence of the division of labor and the expansion of the scale of settled agriculture, an agrarian society only needs a small field to feed a population, and a gathering society may need a forest to feed, and the population that can be carried by an agricultural society is far greater than that of a gathering society.

The current main nest is like a tribe that has just stepped into an agricultural society, although it still has to rely heavily on hunting to supplement food, but the production mode of grazing aphids in large quantities is something that the secondary nest where the protagonist is located does not have. The few ants in the secondary nest can survive well even by collecting plant seeds.

As the protagonist walks forward, he sees a large number of ants carrying dry wood, which the protagonist guesses is to fuel the fire.

Walk through a tall overgrow and into a flat gravel floor. The protagonist is blown away by what he sees.

Not far away, there is a mound about half a meter high, the mound is conical in shape, about one meter in diameter, and the area is about 3.14 square meters. A mound of this size is a huge castle relative to the size of an ant. Countless ant streams converge at the castle, and the busy scene can only be described as a busy scene.

But that's not the most shocking.

At the top of the mound castle, through a huge opening, billowing black smoke continued to pour out, billowing up until it reached a certain height before being blown away by the wind.

It was smoke from fire.

"I see smoke!"