The Brood Nest lay deep underground, a depth difficult for ordinary ants to reach without specialized digging limbs. To address this, Luo Wen constructed a temporary nest above the Brood Nest. This structure served not only as a logistics hub but also as a decoy—the first line of defense for the true nest.
The distance between Ant Nest No. 1 and the Brood Nest was about fifty ters, roughly the sa length as the smuggling tunnel leading to Ant Nest No. 2. With his prior experience, this project posed no challenge for Luo Wen.
After spending so ti completing the tunnel, the Brood Nest resud siphoning food from Ant Nest No. 1. With two nests supplying resources, the Brood Nest’s food reserves began increasing visibly. The hatchery beca fully stocked, and even the storage chambers Luo Wen had excavated earlier started filling with food.
From then on, Luo Wen’s daily routine consisted of hauling enough food from both nests to et the transport team’s capacity for the day. After that, he expanded his scouting range.
Ti passed, and Luo Wen’s body grew significantly larger, now comparable in size to the “War God” Black Beetle he encountered before. Although he lacked the massive mandibles, his combat strength was enough to handle a Soldier Ant in one-on-one combat.
His bulk now exceeded that of Soldier Ants, and his rounded physique made their slender fras appear feeble in comparison. Apart from their sharper mandibles, Soldier Ants resembled oversized Worker Ants. Without the advantage of size, they were no match for Luo-style insect combat techniques.
Near Ant Nest No. 1, Luo Wen set a trap and, with a large team of minions, ambushed a Soldier Ant. After so effort, he successfully killed it, acquiring its genetic fragnts.
At this point, the Brood Nest housed over 200 adult Black Ants, with more than a thousand eggs, larvae, and pupae combined. Notably, the second batch of modified Black Ants with Burrower limbs had all pupated, while the first batch of Black Beetle larvae remained in the larval stage. However, these larvae had grown much larger than most adult Black Ants.
Considering the source of their genetic template and their eventual adult size, this was understandable.
Although Luo Wen obtained the Soldier Ant template, he decided against hatching any. Their role overlapped with that of the Black Beetles, yet their combat effectiveness was significantly lower. Furthermore, Soldier Ants neither worked nor reproduced and consud vast amounts of food. Hatching a few would be pointless.
When the Black Beetles matured, the Brood Nest would be ready to expand to the surface and claim territory.
Before that, Luo Wen needed to locate new ant nests. As the population in the Brood Nest grew rapidly, the resources from two nests were becoming insufficient.
A few days later, Luo Wen discovered a new ant nest 200 ters north of the Brood Nest. He imdiately forged identification pheromones and infiltrated it.
The previously spacious main tunnels now seed cramped due to Luo Wen’s enlarged fra. If he continued growing, his espionage missions would likely beco impossible unless he widened the passages as he went. Whether his forged identity would remain effective by then was another matter.
During his earlier visit to Ant Nest No. 2’s hatchery, Luo Wen had witnessed a Soldier Ant kill a Worker Ant. That Worker Ant wasn’t a spy like Luo Wen but a legitimate native of the nest. Luo Wen still didn’t understand why the attack occurred.
This incident taught him that even ants from the sa nest could attack each other. Over-reliance on forged identity pheromones could lead to complacency and grave mistakes.
Since then, Luo Wen had been more cautious during his infiltrations. However, as his size increased, the relative threat posed by the nest’s inhabitants decreased, and his confidence began to swell once more.
The newly discovered Ant Nest No. 3 was also a Black Ant nest, similar in scale to Ant Nest No. 2, and showed no signs of unusual ant types. Luo Wen indulged in so nectar inside the nest and fed a few mouthfuls to so Yellow Bugs freeloading there before returning ho to rally his forces.
Leading his excavation team, he began digging a tunnel toward the new nest.
The route to Ant Nest No. 3 passed between Ant Nests No. 1 and No. 2. Using the surface posed risks of encountering scouts from either nest, complicating transportation.
Thus, Luo Wen decided to dig from the transfer hub above the Brood Nest and excavate an underground tunnel over 200 ters long to connect directly to Ant Nest No. 3.
Given Luo Wen’s size, digging a tunnel to his dinsions created a spacious and comfortable passage for the ants. While he excavated at the front, hundreds of ants transported the displaced soil behind him.
Although this 200-ter tunnel was Luo Wen’s largest project to date, its completion might surpass the fifty-ter tunnel to Ant Nest No. 2 in speed.
A few days into the project, the newly hatched Burrower Ants joined the team. Their specialized digging limbs vastly outperford ordinary appendages, akin to the difference between sweeping beans with a broom and picking them up by hand. The increase in efficiency was obvious.
Everything progressed smoothly, and the new tunnel was on track for early completion. Then, sothing unexpected happened.
After a day’s work, Luo Wen returned ahead of the excavation team, leaving them to clean up the tunnel and continue their tasks. The soil removed from the tunnel had ford a mound over half a ter high above the Brood Nest, a testant to their efforts.
Climbing to the surface, Luo Wen planned to drink so tree sap and bring so back for Big Black. Recently, the Black Beetle larvae modeled after Big Black had begun to pupate. Luo Wen wasn’t sure if they’d remain herbivorous upon erging, but he had started preserving the vegetation around the Brood Nest, consciously avoiding damage to the surrounding plant roots.
While climbing a plant to find a tender branch to nibble, Luo Wen caught a glimpse of several moving patches of yellowish-brown in his peripheral vision.
His senses imdiately went on high alert. With the Brood Nest’s growth, the surrounding area had beco devoid of other life forms, let alone rare yellowish-brown ones.
Luo Wen moved toward the figures, cautiously closing the distance until they ca into clear view.
To his surprise, they were the sa Desert Ants that had nearly ended his life before. Indeed, it seed enemies often crossed paths again.
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