Myriad Realms Exchange Machine

Chapter 181 Ant Transformation

The situation on the continents is much more complicated than in the depths of the ocean.

After the adaptor ant colony left the mainland, the two predator ant colonies that remained on the mainland gradually diverged and formed dozens of ant tribes.

In order to compete for the limited resources on the mainland, these tribes showed their special abilities and attacked each other endlessly.

For example, some tribes of soldier ants have evolved cheek pouches to store chemical substances, and can spray chemicals to burn their opponents during war.

This method is somewhat similar to another insect that Li Yu knows, an insect called a carapace.

Li Yu opened the book and looked it up.The adults of the carapace are not good at flying. They like to burrow into the ground, move more on the surface, move quickly, or dig tunnels in the soil, and like moist soil or places near water sources.

During the day, caravans generally hide under trees, leaf litter, bark, moss, or in caves.

This insect has phototaxis and suspended animation.In tropical and subtropical regions, there are more species active on plants.Adults and larvae mostly feed on small insects such as earthworms, snails, spiders, and molluscs, and some species only feed on animal excrement and humus.

For humans, the carapace is a kind of beneficial insect, because the Venus carapace preys on a large number of Lepidoptera larvae and is an important natural enemy of pests such as armyworms.

But on the other hand, carapaces can also become dangerous pests, for example, in areas where tussah silkworms are raised, they prey on tussah silkworm larvae and pupae in large quantities.

Li Yu felt that these biochemical ants were also changing in shape like a caravan.

Roughly speaking, the heads and pronotum of these ants are brownish yellow.

There is a heart-shaped black spot on the top of the head, the small scutellum and elytra are black, there is a yellow spot on the shoulder and middle part of each elytra, the mouthparts are brownish red, the end of the upper jaw is black, each elytra has 1 longitudinal ridges, the ventral surface of the body and the leg segments The tip is black, and the rest of the foot is brownish yellow.

A noxious mist is released from the glands when frightened and preyed upon.

Li Yu swept over a biochemical ant with his mental power, as if dissecting the ant, and immediately understood the ant's physiological structure.

Just like the carabid beetle, the ant's body has three chambers, which store dihydric phenol solution, hydrogen peroxide and biological enzymes respectively.

Dihydric phenol and hydrogen peroxide flow into the third small chamber to mix with biological enzymes for a chemical reaction, and instantly become venom at 100°C, and are sprayed out quickly.

Li Yu had never seen this evolutionary method anywhere else, so he couldn't help being very curious.

He looked at the other ants and found that there were still some tribes of ants that could spray gas-like gas from their bodies and rush into the enemy pile as self-destruct engineers.

However, this kind of ants is relatively common, because in Li Yu's original world, there are also ants that can explode themselves.

That kind of ant is called "exploding ant", and the exploding ant is a kind of ant in the Ant subfamily, and its scientific name is Sang's flat-headed ant.Distributed in the tropical rain forests of Southeast Asian countries.

The abdominal muscles of this ant can contract violently, cracking the body wall, and spraying corrosive and chemically irritating gelatinous secretions around, causing damage to enemies, so it is also called explosive ants.

The scientific name of the exploding ants is also called flat-headed ants. Their main enemy is the yellow ant that also lives in the trees.

The yellow ants not only compete with them for living space, but also plunder the colony of the flat-headed ants.

In the face of a large number of enemies, when the struggle is at a disadvantage, and victory seems hopeless, this kind of ant will choose to sacrifice itself.

The abdominal muscles of worker ants can contract violently, cracking the body wall, and spraying corrosive and chemically irritating jelly secretions to the surroundings, causing damage to the enemy.

This kind of ability is nothing unusual, Li Yu lost interest in an instant.

After his eyes wandered around the mainland, his focus fell on a type of ant he named "chimeric ants".

The strength of this kind of ant is not strong in the whole continent, it can only be regarded as barely able to protect itself.

But they have evolved a special ability.

If the chimera ants eat gravel, it will form a layer of quartz armor on the shell.

If chimera ants eat metal, they will coat their weapons with a metallic sheen.

More importantly, these chimeric ants can freely control their own physical state, and can eliminate all kinds of inorganic substances fused with themselves at any time, and accept new fused substances.

"Is it a perfect fusion between organic organisms and inorganic matter?" Li Yu touched his forehead and pondered.

Although he no longer suffers from headaches, it does not mean that the three panes of glass in his brain have disappeared.

As long as those glasses still exist in his brain, there will always be a sword of Dachmoth hanging above Li Yu's head, and he doesn't know when it will fall.

However, from these ants that can freely combine inorganic substances, Li Yu saw a hope.

"If I can obtain the mental power network of that octopus, can I also obtain the chimera ant's ability to fuse inorganic matter? Then release three pieces of glass?"

Li Yu glanced at the queen of the chimeric ants.

The queen is a reproductive female, or mother ant, which is usually the largest in the colony, three or four times that of the worker ants, especially with a large abdomen, well-developed reproductive organs, short antennae, small thoracic feet, winged, wingless or no wings.

However, for some species of ants, the heads of large worker ants or soldier ants may be larger than the queen's head.

The main responsibilities are to lay eggs, reproduce offspring and manage the group family.

As the founder of the ant colony, the queen ant descends from the air to the ground after honorably completing the mission of marriage flight. Its four wings are broken off at the root, and then it digs a shaft with a diameter of more than ten millimeters, which leads directly to the ground.

At a depth of about 30 cm, it carves itself a small house about 6 cm wide.Then, breed their own offspring in it.

Hiding in an isolated hole, the queen ant not only has to be wary of the invasion of other animals, but also worries about whether she can breed enough ants before her body weakens.

According to research, among the many ant queens who completed their marriage flight and wanted to establish a kingdom, most of them died before they could establish their own kingdom.

In order to create her own kingdom, the queen must endure extreme loneliness and danger.

It is busy racing against time. During this time, the energy of the queen ant comes entirely from the decomposition and metabolism of the muscles of its broken four wings and the body.

Its weight is getting lighter day by day.At the crossroads of starvation and rebirth, it still must carefully lay its eggs and tend its larvae.

Only after waiting for the first batch of adult worker ants to grow, will there be a new source of food for the queen.

Because the growth of the first batch of worker ants depends entirely on the energy carried by the queen, there is no energy supplement in the closed nest.

Therefore, the queen ant must control the size of the initial batch of worker ants.

If it breeds a soldier ant, or even a larger "forage ant", the limited resources will be completely exhausted.

At this time, the queen of ants is completely like a person who has just started a business. She must make full and effective use of every limited resource without allowing any mistakes.Otherwise, not only will it be impossible to create a huge ant kingdom, but even your own life will be destroyed...

Therefore, every successful queen ant is unique and carefully selected.

The ant queen in front of her is a member of the elite. She has been breeding offspring for the ant colony for four years. She is already very old and may be replaced by a new ant queen at any time.

It should be known that the worker ants in the ant colony are not absolutely sterile, but are suppressed by the queen's pheromone and lose their ability to lay eggs. When the queen's pheromone in the ant colony disappears, sometimes a small number of worker ants will start to lay eggs, and Can hatch male ants.

However, since most ant queens and male ants fly in marriage, worker ants that generally have the ability to lay eggs still cannot continue the population.

At this time, among the worker ants, there is a favored person from heaven, and a new queen is born.

As for the ant queen who was kicked out of the throne, there is only one fate to meet it.

That is to be abandoned by the ants and die alone.

Before studying the secret of chimeric ants' fusion of inorganic substances, Li Yu decided to complete his own experiment first.
"Do you want to live?"

Li Yu connected the chimeric ant queen to his mental power network, and then threw this question into the queen's mind.

"Live?" was the first word the chimeric queen responded.

With the current intelligence of the queen ant, there is no way to decipher overly complicated sentences, but for some reason, she just bit down on this word.

But at this moment, strong emotions emerged in the life of the queen ant, showing infinite nostalgia for this character.Even if she didn't understand what the word really meant, he still wanted to live.

The queen's lifespan is longer than that of ordinary ants, a full 20 years.

This also allows the queen ant to learn more and understand more the value of life.

And from Li Yu's body, she felt this kind of power that could extend her life.

"If you want to live, I can help you live." Li Yu continued.

The queen ant crawled on her throne, seeming to be thinking desperately. After a long time, she finally figured out the meaning of this complete sentence.

"Yesia, I want to live," said the queen ant.

"Oh? You even gave yourself a name?" Li Yu smiled.

Having a name means that it already has self-awareness, knows how to distinguish each other, and understands its own non-reproducibility and non-replicability.

"Very good, then you can live." Li Yu stretched out an imaginary finger, and tapped the queen ant's forehead lightly.

He could feel the life essence existing in the Queen Ant's body. .

Because the chimeric ant queen does not have the method of purifying the source quality like the sea shrimp queen, Li Yu can clearly detect that there is a lot of pollution in the life source quality in the queen ant's body.

"Filth builds up over time."

"When the life essence of a living creature is completely contaminated, the life of the living creature will come to an end and become a dead thing."

This is Li Yu's conclusion after observing the creatures in the world in the book.

"Then if you want to extend your life, you just need to strip off the filth in the source of life."

Through his fingers, Li Yu grasped the life source of the chimeric ant queen in his palm, and the silver life source was extracted under the guidance of his consciousness, and then flowed back into the body of the chimeric ant queen.

The black filth was peeled off, turned into gravel and fell back to the ground.

The Chimeric Ant Queen, who was already very old, trembled, and the power of youth had already returned to her body.

"Thank you Yehia! Great...Lord of Life!" said the Chimera Ant Queen.

"I don't need thanks." Li Yu replied.

"Then what do you need?"

"I need you to remember what I look like."

Through the spiritual power network, Li Yu conveyed his vague image to the chimeric ant queen, and then said nothing more, and broke the connection with the chimeric ant queen.

He wanted to see if the chimeric ant queen would, like the shrimp queen, build a statue of herself to worship.

Sure enough, during the accelerated time, the chimeric ant queen immediately directed a large number of worker ants to start building the statue, a statue as high as the anthill.

It has to be said that the work efficiency of ants is much higher than that of sea shrimps.

With the rotation of the sun and the moon, in less than half a month, the statue requested by the queen ant has been completed.

Although this statue does not look like Li Yu, but more like a standing humanoid ant, it does not affect its final effect.

The moment the statue was erected, Li Yu clearly felt some subtle changes in the world.

Specifically, he could clearly feel that there was something more in this world.It is a node, which is established in this book world.

The chimeric ant queen fell under the statue, but the compound eyes of insects revealed a pious light.

"Great Lord of Life, please accept the sacrifice offered by Yexia."

The chimera queen's tentacles trembled, commanding a group of soldier ants, dragging the other struggling chimera worker ants under the statue.

With a "click", the soldier ant's mandibles mercilessly cut off the necks of several worker ants.

The source of life flowed out from the body of the dead worker ants, gathered in Li Yu's statue, was purified, and then returned to the world in the book.

Li Yu watched the actions of the chimeric ant queen, and did not expect that the queen learned to please the gods like sacrifice without a teacher.

But before he had time to feel emotional, he suddenly found that another piece of information was fed back to the ball of light deep in his brain.

"what is this?"

Li Yu quickly activated the authority of the light sphere and read the message.

Soon, a surprised smile appeared on his face.

"I can't think of it, I can't think of it."

Li Yu stroked her chin and looked at the chimeric ant queen who was still praying to the god statue in the book world.

This piece of information is nothing but the code of the chimeric ant gene, the secret of how the chimeric ant can fuse with inorganic matter.

This is exactly what Li Yu needs.

And when the queen ants sacrificed the worker ants to the statue, this secret was presented to Li Yu like a roasted lamb.

"It's really, really good."

Li Yu said.

(End of this chapter)