Astral Cockroach

It was a drizzly spring.

Seven bamboo rat warriors, led by the Rat King, excavated the secret reservoir at the summit of Red Bubble Peak.

Big Bear, White Bamboo, and Little White Bamboo also cleared the first fertile farmland.

Banbu personally went to Red Bubble Peak for an inspection. On the way back, he conveniently hunted a Gouju Mountain python for dinner.

For some years, with deliberate searching and hunting, the number of Gouju Mountain pythons in the Jinping Mountains had been suppressed, and the number of wild pheasants and rabbits had exploded. However, wild rabbits and pheasants were food for the Gouju Mountain pythons. With the slightest relaxation, these detestable pythons bred like crazy again, even more so than before.

“Should we organize the county warriors this winter to conduct a python hunting operation?”

Banbu pondered. He couldn't eat an adult Gouju Mountain python by himself, so he cut it up with effort and threw it to the ordinary small cockroaches in the territory.

It was early spring, the peak season for their development and reproduction, and meat was a great tonic.

In recent decades, busy with various matters, he hadn't had the mind to maintain the balance of males and females in the cockroach colony, and most of the time he didn't even have the energy to feed them. The ordinary small cockroaches in the territory were not doing well, and no small warriors had been born.

“Windbell’s life is entering its final countdown.”

“After Windbell, a small warrior needs to be selected to settle on Lizhu Peak. There is only one spot, and it must be born on Lizhu Peak.”

“Should I take good care of the ordinary small cockroaches in the territory?”

Banbu also had his own selfish motives.

Currently, the red ant warriors settled on Lizhu Peak, Red Rice and Belly Bamboo, came from the Myriad Kingdoms Continent. Fire Thorn was picked up by Oil Tea, and Dragon Bamboo was a direct descendant of Windbell. Only the silly Red Rice was his direct descendant.

At the level of a cockroach king with a lifespan of a thousand years, Red Rice and Crown Pear were only a few years younger than Banbu.

There was also the possibility that in the future, the heir to Lizhu County would need to be selected from other warriors. Banbu certainly hoped that it could be his direct descendant.

With that in mind, he paid more attention, scanning the ordinary small cockroaches scrambling for food. He vaguely felt that one little fellow was particularly fierce.

Looking closely, it really was.

Its strength was obviously greater than other small cockroaches. It swayed left and right, easily pushing away other small cockroaches competing for food, and occupied a large piece of meat on the python skeleton all by itself.

Banbu observed for a while and found that this little fellow was particularly good at eating.

Being able to eat and having great strength meant that it had a good innate physique, and the probability of awakening Origin Power was high.

After eating its fill, the little fellow laboriously tore off a strip of meat, dragged it out of the cockroach army fighting for food.

It ran all the way, burrowing into the bamboo forest formed by Banbu's Manchurian bamboo life seed not far away.

Inside the bamboo forest, there was a residential nest that had been dug out. It was very spacious, lined with a lot of shredded bamboo leaves. It dragged a few pieces over, covered the meat strip, and then lay on the shredded leaves to rest.

“Interesting!”

Banbu remembered the residential nest of this small cockroach.

It ate its fill and rested for a night.

Early the next morning, it routinely patrolled the territory.

Entering the jungle, it deliberately hunted a Gouju Mountain python and dragged it back.

Its mental power scanned, searching for the small cockroach it had noticed last night, but found it wasn't in the nest.

The bloody scent of the Gouju Mountain python attracted hundreds of thousands of ordinary small cockroaches living in the territory to surround Banbu's residential cave, looking forward to it.

The vast number of little fellows all looked about the same, and their scents were mixed together. Banbu couldn't tell which one was the one from yesterday.

After thinking about it, it felt like it wasn't hungry, so it simply cut up the entire corpse and fed it to them.

During the feeding process, it paid attention to observation and soon discovered that one of them was particularly strong, occupying a large piece of fat python meat all by itself in the dense army of food scavengers.

Sensing its aura, it was right, it was the one from yesterday.

Different from the others, an exceptionally sturdy little fellow. It seemed that it really had a chance to awaken Origin Power. After eating its fill, it also dragged a strip of meat to hide in its nest as a late-night snack.

Banbu had something to do away from the mountain for a while recently, so he told Big Head to pay attention to this little fellow on weekdays.

He took Red Rice and set off for Tortoise Shell Peak.

As early as 3 years ago, the Tortoise Shell Vine Garden on Tortoise Shell Peak had given birth to its third God-given Seed.

The garden area wasn't large. Facts had proven that this plant had a higher probability of naturally giving birth to God-given Seeds than any other plant. This was an especially important discovery.

However, so far, the only small warriors who liked Tortoise Shell Vines were Tortoise Shell Tendon Vine and Tortoise Shell Dragon Vine.

The solution was to send some small warriors who liked herbs or vines to settle there and help with work on weekdays.

Banbu personally went to check the terrain, plan the expansion of the Tortoise Shell Vine planting scale, and also determine the allocation of small warriors.

With the support of sufficient financial resources, a large number of warriors were promoted to mountain lords, their lifespans increased to 150 years, and the warrior population developed like a snowball, growing larger and larger. Unknowingly, the number of warriors in Lizhu County exceeded 500.

The number of small warriors born in Lizhu County each year was stable at 5 or more. In addition to the small warriors born on the Myriad Kingdoms Continent sent by the caravan, the annual increase in the number of warriors was maintained at 10 or more.

Only a few of them liked the mainstream plants of Lizhu County, such as bamboo, rice, walnuts, pear trees, peach trees, and chestnut trees.

The vast majority liked all kinds of other plants.

Tortoise Shell Vines were tenacious and relatively simple and monotonous to plant and cultivate. It didn't matter if the small warriors' plant preferences didn't match. As long as they managed the biogas digester well, and could do basic farm work such as watering, fertilizing, loosening soil, and weeding.

Banbu inspected a large area and planned to expand the Tortoise Shell Vine planting scale to 16 square kilometers within 10 years, and send 3 small warriors who liked herbs or vine plants every year for 10 consecutive years.

After that, it would depend on the situation.

With the general direction of development finalized, Red Rice stayed behind to plan the details with Tortoise Shell Tendon Vine and Tortoise Shell Dragon Vine.

Banbu also went to other peaks in the mountains along the way, inspected them one by one, and confirmed that all the work was being carried out in an orderly manner before returning to Lizhu Peak.

Back on the mountain, the first thing he did was approach the Manchurian bamboo forest to check the growth of the small cockroach from before.

Next to the bamboo forest, a combat ant from the Big Head ant colony led dozens of small soldier ants to guard it.

This formation was not right.

Banbu scanned with his mental power.

The entrance to the nest where the small cockroach had been living was covered with bamboo leaves and hidden.

There were subtle Origin Power fluctuations.

Origin Power Awakening! Inside the nest, the small cockroach was sleeping and evolving.

“Banbu, a small warrior is about to be born in your territory.” Red Rice was lying at the entrance of Banbu's residential cave, looking listless and dispirited.

It was afternoon, and there were many tasks on the mountain that required Big Head to personally direct the ant colony to be busy, so he invited Red Rice to help watch over it.

“Yes.” Banbu replied, in a good mood, and asked, “Red Rice, how is the rice cultivation this year?”

“It is destined that there will be no progress.” Red Rice sighed, “The rice seeds sent by the caravan are all from the Myriad Kingdoms Continent, and have long been thoroughly studied by those ants. There can be no results.”

“We have searched the swamps along the Jinjiang River in Lizhu County and the Cliff Cypress Mountains countless times, and we can no longer find new barnyard grass seeds.”

“Then go to Dragon Bamboo Continent and Crown Pear Continent to look for them?” Banbu said, “You and Red Rice select two clever small warriors, and when the next batch of Giant Dragon Bamboo fruit matures, send them to look for them.”

“Okay!” The previously listless Red Rice immediately jumped up with joy upon hearing this. It had been waiting for Banbu to say this.

As the number of warriors increased and the scale of cultivated plants expanded, the greatest value of the Giant Dragon Bamboo fruit gradually evolved into finding rare plants, and every mountain was keen on this.

Bamboo fruit only produced a batch every 10 years, and Lizhu County only retained 9 copies of each batch. The number was too limited, and the competition for places was fierce. Red Rice presided over the distribution, and in order to avoid suspicion, he had never selected from the small warriors who liked rice.

Obviously, Red Rice was very dissatisfied with this practice.

Seeing this, Banbu immediately understood that Red Rice had deliberately pretended to be like that before, to trick a quota from him. He shook his antennae helplessly and scolded:

“I'm back, you can get lost.”

Without Banbu driving it away, Red Rice hurriedly flapped its vein wings and left, to tell the good news to the other small warriors living in the rice fields.