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 meters, roughly the same 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 some time completing the tunnel, the Brood Nest resumed siphoning food from Ant Nest No. 1. With two nests supplying resources, the Brood Nest’s food reserves began increasing visibly. The hatchery became 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 meet the transport team’s capacity for the day. After that, he expanded his scouting range.
Time 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 frames 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 some effort, he successfully killed it, acquiring its genetic fragments.
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.
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 meters north of the Brood Nest. He immediately forged identification pheromones and infiltrated it.
The previously spacious main tunnels now seemed cramped due to Luo Wen’s enlarged frame. If he continued growing, his espionage missions would likely become 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 same 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 some nectar inside the nest and fed a few mouthfuls to some Yellow Bugs freeloading there before returning home 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 meters long to connect directly to Ant Nest No. 3.
Given Luo Wen’s size, digging a tunnel to his dimensions 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-meter tunnel was Luo Wen’s largest project to date, its completion might surpass the fifty-meter 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 outperformed 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, something 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 formed a mound over half a meter high above the Brood Nest, a testament to their efforts.
Climbing to the surface, Luo Wen planned to drink some tree sap and bring some 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 emerging, 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 immediately went on high alert. With the Brood Nest’s growth, the surrounding area had become devoid of other life forms, let alone rare yellowish-brown ones.
Luo Wen moved toward the figures, cautiously closing the distance until they came into clear view.
To his surprise, they were the same Desert Ants that had nearly ended his life before. Indeed, it seemed enemies often crossed paths again.