Reality is always very realistic, and after a short period of sentimentality, the protagonist still has to continue to devote himself to his work. That's fine, at least he won't always worry about an illusory death.

With the sudden first cold wave, the connection between "Dongyang City" and the outside world was cut off, and now the protagonist can only command his subordinates in "Dongyang City", and as for other territories, he can only hope that they will do a good job of "autonomy".

According to the established plan, after the beginning of spring next year, the protagonist will expand his territory on both sides of the river, and the object of expansion is the paving ant country.

Now, on the north bank of the Great River, there is the Northern Expeditionary Army of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom to contain and weaken the enemy, and there are "Waterfront City" and "Bridgehead" as logistics bases and departure bases, and the protagonist already has the initial conditions for expansion.

However, the size and combat power of the Paving Ant Barbarian Army are also considerable, and from the experience of fighting them, the protagonist knows that he needs more and stronger troops to complete his expansion plan.

The expansion speed of the Divine Envoy King's legion is not unfast, and in more than a year, it has expanded from one legion to six legions, and its combat effectiveness is also extremely strong. This was achieved despite the fact that last year was an overall famine year. The territory has also been expanded from "Dongyang City" to "Waterfront City", "Southern City", "Bridgehead" and "New Yancheng".

However, the battle between the Northern Expeditionary Army and the Paving Ant Barbarian Army, which often has dozens or hundreds of legions and spans more than a dozen sub-nests, also makes the protagonist see his own disadvantages. Although the soldiers are expensive but not expensive, when the enemy's numerical advantage is too obvious, there will also be a situation where more ants bite the elephant to death.

Therefore, the protagonist hopes to continue to expand the size of the army and improve its combat effectiveness.

The expansion of the army could no longer be completed in the winter, when the farmland of Dongyang City could no longer be sown and harvested, and the farms had come to a halt. Although there are still a lot of seeds and insect eggs stored in the granary, these are the means of production after the beginning of spring next year, and they cannot be used lightly.

The large amount of grain stored in the granary is the game and plants collected in the previous year, and most of it is produced by farmland and breeding farms. For example, all mealworms and maggots on farms are killed before winter and made into jerky, bacon or cured meat.

Although this food supply is more than enough for the existing ant mouth of "Dongyang City" to survive the winter, it is not enough to support the rapid expansion of the Divine Envoy King's army in winter. What's more, the war after the beginning of spring still needs a large amount of grain reserves, and the protagonist doesn't want to tear down the east wall to make up the west wall.

In winter, the queens also enter the menstrual cycle of stopping laying eggs, although if conditions permit, they can also adjust their physical state, secrete hormones, and make their abdomen swell again. However, this is too much wear and tear on the body, so don't squeeze the queen ant like this unless you have to.

Taking into account various factors, the protagonist can only expand the size of the army after the beginning of spring next year, when there is a stable food supply. What he can do at present is to increase its combat effectiveness as much as possible on the basis of the existing six field corps.

The protagonist takes a three-pronged approach to achieve his goals.

The first measure is to equip the remaining five legions with Scythe Hunter Scouts.

In the previous military reform after pacifying the southern hilly region, the protagonist used the captured and hatched Scythe Ant Eggs to equip the First Legion with two additional squads of 100 Scythe Hunter Ant Warriors as a special scout team.

As the First Legion is getting better and better, they have not yet proven themselves on the battlefield. However, in several large-scale hunts organized in the fall, the Scythe Ant Scout performed well as the eyes and ears of the legion, proving the value of his existence.

With the continuous production of the scythe ant queens who subdued before winter, the second batch of 500 newly broken pupa scythe ant warriors have arrived in "Dongyang City" from "Southern City" before the cold wave, and the protagonist already has enough scythe hunter ant warriors on hand to strengthen all the legions.

As a result, the protagonist disperses the 100 Scythe Ant Scout veterans who originally belonged to the First Legion, except for the 20 veterans retained by the 1st Legion and added 80 recruits, the other five legions each added 16 Scythe Ant Scout veterans and 84 recruits.

Due to the constraints, each legion can only carry out the run-in training of the troops in the open nest of the underground nest, and further field training still needs to wait until after the beginning of spring. However, this way of bringing the old with the new, coupled with the ant's unique information packet's ability to pass on experience, can still allow the legion and the hunting sickle ant to quickly adapt to each other in a short period of time.

The second measure is the inclusion of the beetle troops.

Since this year's cold wave came earlier than usual, the first beetles that hatched according to the established plan broke their pupae shortly before the cold wave arrived. The original practice of conducting field training before the onset of winter had to be suspended.

After these beetles break the pupae, they are domesticated by worker ants who have specially learned the domestication technology of the big-headed ant relics, and the results are not bad, but they have been locked in the dark underground for a long time, which makes these beetles a little irritable. However, the cold air that invaded the ground made the beetles honest again, and they also felt that once they climbed on the ground, they would immediately freeze to death.

According to the laws of nature, these beetles were supposed to hatch after the beginning of spring, but the protagonist couldn't wait so long and used the greenhouse effect to hatch them in advance, so that they could use the winter months, and it would take so long to completely domesticate a beetle. By the time spring begins, the protagonist will have five fully domesticated beetles.

Soon after the beetle breaks, the beetles are sex-checked by domesticated ants, and there are three males and two females, all of whom are medium-sized beetles.

The protagonist plans to use two female beetles as seed beetles and try not to send them into battle. Male beetles are already fighting for mates during the mating season, so they are stronger and more aggressive, making them the best choice as army war bugs.

In order to prolong the lifespan of these war insects, and in order to better control these male beetles who are extremely irritable as soon as the breeding season arrives, the domesticated ants also castrated two male beetles, leaving only the largest and strongest male beetles as seed worms.

The ant's castration technique is also inherited from the Big-headed ant remnants, who use this method to create a large number of war insects that obey the command.

Shortly after the male beetle broke its pupa and the carapace of the body was still soft and weak, the domesticated ant found their gonads at the back of the body, quickly bit them off, and completed a castration.

Freshly broken scarabs have a strong ability to heal wounds, so this simple and crude technique does not cause a high mortality rate like castration in the human world.

After castration, the beetle has a more docile temperament, is more obedient to commands, has a harder carapace, and is said to have a longer lifespan.