On the wide and vast plain, the mighty army of black ants lined up in long columns, passing through it, and beside the legion, there were two more magnificent green torrents.

This black ant army is the Black Xuan Army under the command of Xuan Jun who is returning to the nest, Xu Yue is also in the middle of the queue at this time, chatting with Xing Xiao from time to time, while observing the surrounding environment.

It was now quite a long way from getting out of the woods, and according to the torturers, the center of the plain beneath their feet was where the ant nest was located, and now it was a stone's throw away from returning to the nest.

Pressing the urge to spread his wings and take off directly, Xu Yue looked to the side, and around him were black ants full of pot-bellied poop and holding up all kinds of supplies.

It has to be said that the scavenging skills of this group of ants can be described as meticulous, and they do not let go of anything that can be used, while filling the lake with their bellies, they do not forget to pack and take away all the things on the battlefield such as corpses and weapons, even if it is just an ordinary wooden spear.

They bury the dead ants around the nest, believing that the souls of the dead warriors will still faithfully guard their homes, and the flesh and blood of wasps and water creatures are the best ingredients, and in the eyes of the ants, the island is full of food as far as the eye can see.

Of course, when he said this, Xing Xiao also deliberately emphasized that the allies of the ant clan were not included in the scope of food, and Xu Yue said that he didn't care about this.

As you look at the surrounding ant colony and continue outward, you will see a queue of yellow-brown ants, each with a strong upper jaw with a huge blade, thus forming a wide and constantly flowing green river on both sides of the team, and embarking on the journey home with the Black Xuan Legion.

"Leafcutter ant ......"

His gaze continued to flow on the green river on the periphery, and Xu Yue whispered the name of this ant race.

In addition to humans, it is claimed that another race that can feed millions of subjects by planting - leafcutter ants.

Leafcutter ants, the planting experts of the ant family, do not hunt for a living, but rely on collecting leaves, cultivating underground sterile ecological gardens, growing fungi, and eventually using these fungal mushrooms to create a large and orderly ecological civilization empire.

Through scientific and meticulous large-scale cultivation, leafcutter nests can even expand the population to 8 billion, which is an exaggerated figure even for ants.

On the other side, just as Xu Yue was looking at the leaf-cutting ant colony in a daze, the torturer beside him also noticed the gaze of this human ally, and it explained to him with a little pride:

"The plague of the sea god is coming, so our people have also accelerated the collection of all kinds of materials, among which in addition to the flesh and blood of the creatures hunted by the legion, plant leaves are also the most important, these leaves can ensure that when the surface of the island is still barren after the sea disaster, our plantations are still thriving."

"Your Excellency, when you return to the ant nest, I may be able to take you to visit our ecological plantation, which is one of the crystallization of the ant clan's civilization, with the support of the plantation, our clan can survive the 3 consecutive sea god disasters, and civilization has never been broken."

Listening to the horrific explanation, Xu Yue retracted his gaze, but the curiosity in his eyes did not diminish at all, seeing completely different civilizations in various worlds, miracle creations with different styles, which in itself is one of the great charms of Paradise.

"Then I'll wait and see, it will be very grand."

……………

Since the last conversation about the leafcutter ants ended, the team had regained its calm, but the good news was that the torturers were not lying by what they said.

After more than ten minutes of rapid marching, a magnificent red mountain range came into Xu Yue's eyes.

"Your Excellency, welcome to the Ant Clan!"

Some high-pitched words sounded in his mind, Xu Yue looked up and looked into the distance, in front of him was a wide mountain range hundreds of meters high rising from the ground, the mountain range was dark red throughout, covering an extremely wide area, the whole seemed to be made of large red rocks, but it was extremely stable, there was no vegetation and grass blades on it, it looked strange rocks, mountains and mountains.

In various parts of the mountain wall, there are large and small irregular pits and deep holes, the interior is dark and unreal, and when the wind blows through the whole mountain, thick and strange whimpering sounds come out of these dense caves one after another, which is not only spectacular, but also adds a bit of horror to the whole mountain range.

In fact, strictly speaking, this mountain range is not where the real ant nest is located, it is only an external part of the ant nest, and the real ant nest is located deep underground.

In unobservable locations, the nest is far more vast than it seems, and the most important role of the exposed mountains is only to supply oxygen and regulate the temperature.

It can be understood as a huge air conditioner outdoor unit.

This is generally a common construction method for termites, through the dense holes in the mountains, whenever there is an air flow through the holes, fresh oxygen will be poured into the underground ant nest through the holes, and the internal silted exhaust gas is discharged from other channels, so as to ensure that the huge ant nest located underground can always have a sufficient oxygen supply.

And in the process of air flow, the winding passage will also reduce the temperature inside, when the cold air flow is poured into the nest, the heat accumulated in the underground will be discharged, so as to ensure that the nest can continue to have a dry and cool suitable temperature, so as to prevent it from becoming a hot underground oven.

This is the role of the mountains, although the appearance of the whole mountain range looks rough and wild, but the interior design is extremely exquisite, this is undoubtedly a beautiful work of art from the ant civilization, and it is also one of the crystallization of its civilization.

Even if you haven't entered it yet, just by looking at the sprawling mountain range outside, you can imagine how amazing the size of the nest inside is.

In the real world, in the northeast of Brazil, there is a giant termite nest with a history of more than 3,800 years, which is covered with a large number of mounds nine meters wide and three meters high, and the total area has reached a staggering 220,000 square meters, which is equivalent to the land area of the entire United Kingdom.

From the above data, it can be seen that the termite colony has a strong building ability, and now this ant kingdom that takes into account the characteristics of termite construction, leaf-cutting ant planting, marching ant hunting, etc., its comprehensive strength can be seen.

"Quite an amazing building."

Standing in front of the Red Mountain Range, Xu Yue carefully looked at the 'air conditioning unit' of this ant nest and expressed his sincere admiration.

Behind him, there were male ants waiting quietly on the side, and the other worker ants carrying various supplies had already entered the nest in batches through various holes in the mountains.

"Your Excellency, Commander Xuanjun has already gone to the queen's dormitory to report the battle situation, if you meet the queen ant, it will probably take some time."

"Do you want to rest for a while during this time, or will I take you on a tour of my clan's Anthive Kingdom?"

After hearing this, Xu Yue did not hesitate too much, and decisively chose the latter, he was more interested in this alien kingdom located underground than resting.

"I'm not in a hurry to rest, I'm looking forward to the nobles' underground kingdom even more."

"Okay, Your Excellency, please!"

The torture responded, and then walked to the front to lead the way, Xu Yue followed, and one ant and one person stepped into a cave at the foot of the mountain.

The inside of the tunnel is very wide, the overall slope extends downward, and as the distance deepens, the sunlight that floods into the entrance of the cave is gradually expelled by the darkness inside, giving people the illusion that they are moving away from the surface light and heading towards the dark abyss.

After walking for dozens of meters, the darkness around him finally changed, and a little blue-green light lit up around the corridor, and when I looked closely, it was a small fluorescent mushroom.

According to Torture, this mushroom is a species cultivated by the ant tribe in the fungal plantation, and they provide essential light for the entire underground kingdom, and the nest of the ant civilization is not a dark place.

Sure enough, after continuing to advance for more than ten meters, the farther and farther more light appeared in the corridor, and the color was not single, the soft light produced by the gathering of these fluorescent mushrooms of different colors illuminated the entire corridor, and also rendered the original deep and gloomy atmosphere extraordinarily magnificent.

More than ten minutes later, Yongdao finally came to an end, and an incomparably vast underground space broke into Xu Yue's eyes.

This is a three-dimensional circular space, and the inner walls of the space are covered with various colors of fluorescent mushrooms, making it not dim at the same time, but also colorful and magnificent.

In addition to the fluorescent mushrooms used for lighting, there are a large number of circular channels connected to the inner wall no matter which direction is on all sides, and the overall appearance is very similar to the structure of the beehive.

As far as the eye can see, the mysterious and unique exotic atmosphere suddenly comes to the face, making people dizzy.

"Your Excellency, this is a large chamber in the ant nest, generally used for public activities, in the entire ant nest, there are about 3,000 such chambers, covering parenting and hatching, food storage, material placement, rest activities, martial arts training, item processing and other functions, each with its own usefulness, and the small chambers are countless."

"There are many tunnels between the chambers to connect, and there is no communication, for our ant clan, there are pheromones and psychic communication as a guarantee, even if the route is cumbersome, there will be no getting lost, but for humans, it may be a large labyrinth, so during this period, Your Excellency Flame must not be too far away from me."

"Good!"

Seeing Xu Yue nodding in agreement, Xing Xiao stepped into this large chamber full of intricate tunnels, and continued to explain to Xu Yue in detail as he went, and it could be seen that it was very serious about the guide task assigned by Commander Xuanjun.

"In the ant nest, such movable chambers are very common, and the most ornamental and closely connected large chambers are the ecological plantations located at the bottom of the ant nests, which cultivate a variety of exotic fungi with various effects, and these ubiquitous fluorescent bacteria are only one of the insignificant ones."

"In the period when the ant tribe was not yet enlightened, the fungal cultivation at that time could only breed tiny mushroom species for the larvae to eat, and now the ant civilization after enlightenment, after hundreds of years of development, fungal cultivation has progressed to a completely different situation, in addition to simply eating and satiety, we have also endowed the fungus with more peculiar abilities."

"Presumably, Your Excellency has also experienced the magic of the Bee Clan's Golden Honey and Royal Jelly today, the honey of the Bee Clan has its own unique effect, and the fungal mushrooms of my Ant Clan are naturally not inferior, compared to ........."

While speaking, Xu Yue continued to walk through this huge ant nest under the leadership of Xing Xiao, compared to the general body size of 2~3 meters of the ant clan, his height of less than 2 meters is an out-and-out small man in the entire nest, along the way, in addition to all kinds of magnificent things unique to the underground world, what he saw the most was a wider space and tunnel.

Along the way, they also encountered a lot of male ants who had mastered the skills of 'spiritual communication', and they would often greet the torturers who were leading the way in front of them warmly, and then say 'Your Excellency' to Xu Yue quite politely.

Obviously, it has been less than an hour since he entered the ant nest, but it seems that the entire ant clan has already known his identity and strength, and not even a provocative male ant has been encountered.

In this regard, Xu Yue could only move his gaze to the pair of tentacles that were constantly trembling after entering the ant nest, and sighed secretly again:

'Mind-to-heart communication is a really useful skill. ’

Time flies by during such visits, and Torture leads its allies through the exposed parts of the upper nest before heading straight to the bottom of the nest, which, as it has said before, is the ecological plantation that is the best place to visit.

Half an hour later, even if he walked quickly, with Xu Yue's agility attribute of nearly forty points, it took a lot of time to reach the bottom of the ant nest, and it was hard to imagine how deep this group of ants had dug down.

When he arrived at the bottom, Xing Xiao did not lead Xu Yue to the ecological park for the first time, but first took him to a huge cave that was somewhat dry and dim, different from the lively scene of ants coming and going on the upper floor of the ant nest, all the entrances to the chamber on the upper floor were guarded by soldier ants, and the number of ant tribes coming and going was relatively rare.

Passing the guards, Xu Yue followed the footsteps of the torture and stepped into the cave, the number of fluorescent mushrooms in the cave was not much, but there was a colorful sea of stars at the dome, and when he looked at it, he could see that this sea of stars was composed of transparent balls filled with various liquids.

The size of the balls is not uniform, but the diameter is generally 2 meters or more, and when the gaze continues to move upward, you can see that each ball is connected to a black shadow, to be precise, it is the upper body of an ant.

The so-called colored balls are actually their lower abdomen filled with liquid and swelled to the limit, and these ants are not dead, they just hang themselves motionless on the top of the rock dome, like a corpse, or an artifact, in short, it does not look like life.

After seeing the truth of Xinghai clearly, an inexplicable sense of horror suddenly filled the inside of the cave, making people feel a chill in their hearts at a glance.

Of course, Xu Yue didn't feel anything about this, but instead looked at the sea of colored stars above his head with interest.

"It's... Honeypot ants? ”

Honeypot ants, in fact, do not refer to a single species of ants, but a special division of labor among worker ants, and they appear in many ant species.

It is a worker ant that turns itself into a storage vessel, thereby selflessly dedicating itself to the colony and storing liquid food.

The fluid in their abdomen is diverse, mainly from nectar, plant juice, biological blood and other sweet substances, which are stored and fermented by honeypot ants to form a liquid food similar to nectar.

However, compared to honey-collecting bees, their fate is much more tragic, and the moment they become honeypot ants, they are destined to hang upside down on the rock wall forever, waiting for their kind to come to feed when they enter a state of starvation, they are the living barrels of the colony.

Whether it is selfless dedication or cruelty and indifference, after all, this is only the unique needs of the ant race that have evolved in order to survive, and the morality of human beings cannot be applied to other species.

Xu Yue originally thought that after the ant race evolved into a civilized race, there would be no honeypot ant, after all, there were too many tools to replace the role of the honeypot ant, but now it seems that the honeypot ant has not only not been abolished, but the scale has become larger, at least at a glance, the number of individuals in this sea of stars is definitely not less than the previous Black Xuan Legion.

"That's right, these are honeypot ants, the most selfless warriors of my ant clan."

(End of chapter)