In addition to leaving short-lasting pheromones as a reference for the return journey, the hunting team mainly relies on long-lasting pheromones along the way when advancing.

These long-lasting pheromones are left behind by ants who travel between "Dongyang City" and "South City", marking a "highway" belonging to ants.

Instead of climbing over obstacles in the terrain and vegetation, the hunting party can quickly navigate the winding but relatively flat road.

Although there are pastures in the southern destinations, and there are many prey in the pastures, the vegetation in the pastures is too dense to make it difficult for the ants to move in groups. They will be separated by layers of plants, and it is difficult to echo each other. Prey, even danger, may lurk less than a decimeter away, and ants whose vision is blocked by vegetation and whose hearing is affected by the sound of grass leaves blown by the wind may be unaware of the approaching danger.

Therefore, without being absolutely sure, the hunting team is not willing to venture deep into the pasture.

The destination of their trip was the bitter saline land.

Although the ants of Dongyang City do not rely on the bitter coarse salt of this saline land, but instead enjoy the purity and bitter coarse salt from Yancheng and New Yancheng, the protagonist ignores this nearby resource when considering how to master the salt mine.

But for the insects living nearby, this saline-alkali land is a treasure of feng shui.

Both the saline and the "Dongyang Castle" are located in the northern part of the southern hills, and this small basin in the northern hemisphere, like other hilly and mountainous areas, has more sunshine and precipitation in the southern foothills than in the north, and the vegetation is denser.

But less rain also has its advantages, many insects cannot tolerate more precipitation, and they prefer to live and lay eggs on the northern slopes of the hills. Even many insects from the southern foothills fly long distances to the north to lay their eggs, after all, too high humidity is unbearable for the eggs.

The formation of saline-alkali lands also benefits from relatively scarce precipitation, but it is inseparable from precipitation.

It is only after rainfall that the salts, trona and other minerals in the soil are dissolved in water, float to the ground, and then gradually dried by the sun and wind, turning them into crystals. If there is no precipitation, there will be no saline crystals, and if there is too much precipitation, the saline crystals will be dissolved and disappeared again, and they cannot be used by insects.

Nearby insects use this saline land as a feng shui treasure and come here to replenish their precious salt and minerals. Plants are sparse on the open saline-alkali land, and only a few salt-tolerant plants survive.

Ants love this environment, and they use it as a hunting ground – an excellent source of prey for the abundant insects that replenish the salt. The nearby terrain is open and flat, which is also suitable for ant swarming, and at the same time, it can detect danger early. Just like the human hunters in primitive societies, they are also accustomed to setting up ambushes where their prey drinks and licks salt, so as to facilitate access to prey.

The hunting team arrived at the saline-alkali land at noon, and the large army, led by the male ants, hid behind a cow tendon grass at the edge of the saline-alkali land, while several retired elderly soldier ants separately approached the saline-alkali land to find out if there was any danger.

Soon, the older soldiers returned, and they found no more threatening arthropods on the saline ground – scorpions, centipedes, praying mantises, etc.

So, the hunting team began to set off, and under the command of the male ants, thirty worker ants lined up in a sparse horizontal formation, and advanced in a search formation in front.

All the soldier ants are guarded around the male ants, and as a mobile force, they follow the horizontal line of the worker ants.

Soon, the worker ant team encountered some insects, which either had poor eyesight or other senses, and could not detect the advancing ant team in time; Either focus on eating and ignore the dangers; Either because of physical aging or injury and inability to escape.

As soon as the worker ants see or touch their prey, they immediately grab any part of the prey and release a scent message.

Nearby worker ants have come to help, and small and medium-sized insects can be subdued by the strength of the worker ants alone.

If they encounter a large one, and the worker ants are not strong enough to kill their prey quickly, all the worker ants will start releasing scent messages.

At this time, the soldiers at the rear of the team will make up for it and use their well-developed jaws to deal a fatal blow to the enemy.

The hunting team did not have a good harvest at first, and the open saline soil allowed many animals to discover the ants early, and they hurriedly flew away or crawled away.

Only a few prey were caught, but the harvest was not worth mentioning.

It wasn't until in the middle of the saline that the hunting party found a target.

It's an earthworm.

Earthworms, commonly known as earth dragons, also known as eels, are representative animals of the oligochaeta class of the phylum Annelids. Earthworms are saprophytic animals, generally living in humid environments, feeding on putrefactive organic matter, and rarely appear in relatively dry saline-alkali land.

However, there was a spring rain recently, the saline-alkali land is relatively humid, and the earthworm is notoriously indistinguishable, so that on the road in summer, it is often found that the earthworms that mistakenly climb onto the road at night are dried as earthworms. The earthworm somehow crawled to the land and became a target for the ants.

An earthworm is really a good prey for a hunting party, it has delicate flesh, a lot of meat, and it does not have any lethal resistance ability.

As a result, the worker ants and soldier ants attacked the earthworms one after another, and the male ants could only sweep around the periphery at this time.

But the earthworm is also not such an easy prey to subdue, compared to ants, its huge size resembles a long dragon, and its larger size gives it a strong resistance to blows.

Earthworms also have a feature, their body cavities are separated by septums into most body chambers according to body segments, and each chamber is connected by small holes. Each body chamber is formed by the development of the left and right body cavity sacs. The outer side of the body cavity sac forms the parietal body cavity, and the inner side forms the visceral body cavity except for the middle part, and the dorsal and ventral sides form the dorsal and ventral mesentery. The mesentery of the earthworm is degenerate, and only the part between the intestine and the abdominal vessels is present; The dorsal mesentery is gone. The part between the anterior and posterior body cavity sacs is tightly attached to form a septum, and some species do not have a septum in the esophageal area.

This feature makes earthworms famous, even if they are cut into several sections, as long as there is a complete chamber in this section, it can develop into a complete earthworm again.

This property also makes earthworms extremely difficult to kill by hunters like ants.

But the hunting party didn't care about this, they were determined to fight, and they swarmed up and pounced on their prey.

It wasn't until the earthworm was attacked that its poor senses realized that it was in danger, and the huge earthworm struggled violently!