Creating a paradise in an ant nest

Chapter 4 Resources A Billion Times

From Liu He's perspective, the food storage chambers in the ant nest resembled a giant warehouse, vast and deep, with a dome several meters high.

The food inside was piled up like mountains.

Plant seeds and grass seeds larger than ants, as well as the remains and broken legs of unknown insects.

Because Liu He frequently fed them, the ant colony had plenty of food, which allowed them to accumulate so much stored food.

Ants crawled back and forth beside him, carrying food in their mouths.

There are large worker ants responsible for carrying food back from outside, and small worker ants responsible for feeding the queen and larvae.

"Where is my spiritual rice?"

He carried an oil lamp and rummaged through the mountain of food.

"I remember putting in five grains of spirit rice, and they were all eaten?"

He wondered if the ants had forgotten his instructions and eaten the spirit rice.

Just then, a worker ant, carrying chewed insect meat, crawled up to him, waving its antennae to convey a simple message: eat.

This is the underlying code of ants: feeding the queen ant.

Liu He looked at the lump of worm meat, frowned, and waved his hand with a look of disgust: "I won't eat it, I won't eat it, I won't eat this thing."

The worker ants stood still, tilting their heads, trying to understand the pheromones released by Liu He.

After much difficulty, it figured it out, turned around and crawled towards the pile of food, using its keen sense of smell to find a white grain of rice.

The white rice grains emitted a faint fragrance.

Its instincts told it that this was the best food and should be given to the queen ant, who held the highest position in the nest.

It carried a grain of rice in its mouth and moved it to Liu He's front.

"Spirit rice?"

Liu He looked at the grain of rice in front of him with surprise, which was even bigger than him. He couldn't wait to wipe the dust off the surface and start eating it.

The mouth is filled with the delicate fragrance of Lingmi rice.

He devoured the food with gusto, like a glutton reincarnated, and soon he had gnawed a hole the size of a watermelon into a grain of rice.

"Hiccup~~"

He burped, holding his stomach.

"So even spirit rice can make you feel stuffed."

Previously, in the dining hall, he could finish a bowl of spirit rice the size of a teacup in just two bites, which was barely enough to sustain his daily needs.

He rested for a while, and after the spiritual rice in his stomach had been mostly digested, his figure disappeared into the ant nest and returned to his room.

"Begin your spiritual practice."

He sat cross-legged on the bed, closed his eyes and concentrated, practicing the Qi-gathering technique of the "Gathering Spirit and Qi Technique".

This is the final step in confirming his conjecture.

An hour and a half later, the cultivation technique had circulated for dozens of cycles.

"Open the Xuan Shu acupoint!"

The faint spiritual energy within his body circulated and rushed towards the Xuan Shu acupoint on the Du meridian.

"It's done! Haha!"

Liu He opened his eyes, his gaze sharp and piercing.

In the past, he would spend more than two hours each night cultivating, exhausting his energy to open just one acupoint.

It took me an hour and a half to open the acupoints tonight, and I still had energy left.

"The spirit rice we used to eat was not enough. Now, I can't even eat a single grain of spirit rice if I put it in an ant nest."

From now on, no matter what kind of miraculous elixirs or rare treasures I have, if I put them in an anthill and expand them ten thousand times, will I still lack cultivation resources?

So what if my spiritual root is inferior? I can still cultivate immortality and achieve longevity.

He marveled to himself that the ant nest was truly an incredibly effective treasure.

Suppressing his excitement, he continued his practice and internal energy cultivation.

Another hour passed, and he felt tired, but his emotions were too agitated to fall asleep.

"We need to study the capabilities of ant nests. We need to figure out what other functions or limitations they have."

With a thought, he slipped into the ant nest.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Inside the crisscrossing tunnels of an anthill.

Liu He carried an oil lamp, rode an ant, and wandered around looking at various places.

The royal family where the queen ant resides.

Several robust worker ants guarded the entrance to the nest chamber, protecting the queen's safety.

The queen ant is the largest, lying almost motionless in the nest chamber, munching on the food that the worker ants bring to her mouth, and laying an ant egg on her plump abdomen in an instant.

Several worker ants carried the queen's eggs into the egg chamber.

"Is that spirit rice?"

Liu He noticed that there was only a small piece of white rice left in front of the queen ant.

"No wonder the queen ant released stronger pheromones than before."

The stronger the pheromones released by the queen ant, the healthier she is and the stronger her egg-laying ability.

Since lingji (a type of rice) can improve people's physical condition and prolong life, it should have the same effect on ants.

"This is a world of cultivation, with spirit beasts and demon beasts, spirit birds and demon fish, and of course, insects also have distinctions between spirit and mortal."

If I can cultivate ordinary red forest ants into spirit ants, then the fighting power of my ant colony will be quite formidable.

He thought to himself, if he could train the ants to the Qi Refining stage, he would have tens of thousands of Qi Refining subordinates.

That being said, this is just his optimistic vision for the future.

The difficulty of nurturing a tiny ant to the Qi Refining stage is unimaginable.

"Let's go outside and take a look."

He rode an ant to the ground outside the anthill.

It was late at night, and the moonlight was bright.

The air was filled with the chirping of insects and the calls of birds.

"Further away."

Liu He continued to move away from the ant nest.

As he got further and further away from the anthill, his sense of insecurity grew stronger. After all, he was now even smaller than an ant; even a single insect could threaten him.

When the distance reached a certain limit, his vision blurred, and he was back in his room on Qixia Peak.

He traversed back to the anthill and tried again.

After several consecutive attempts.

"It seems that only the area around the anthill is my miniature world, and I can't go too far away. Once I go too far, I will automatically teleport back to reality."

"Let's see what I can bring into the anthill."

He discovered that his personal belongings could be shrunk to the same size and scale as him and enter the ant nest, such as his clothes and oil lamp.

These personal belongings, like him, shrink when they enter the ant nest and return to their normal size when they come out.

He tried with tables and chairs, and the result was the same: he could bring objects into the ant nest simply by touching them with his hands or by having a thought.

However, there are limitations!

The larger the object he carries, the more energy he consumes.

He carried the desk into the ant nest and immediately felt dizzy, lightheaded, and exhausted.

"My head is spinning."

He rubbed his swollen and sore temples and went back to his room to rest.

Whether it can carry living creatures through the passage is something that can only be studied in the future.

This is crucial.

If he could bring living creatures into the anthill, he would develop a powerful ability for the anthill to defend itself: to bring enemies into the anthill and use ant swarm tactics to deal with enemies that have been shrunk countless times.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Through research and exploration, Liu He discovered three main capabilities of ant nests.

Firstly, it allows for travel at any time.

This is a life-saving ability that can be described as miraculous; no matter where he is, he can travel into the ant nest with a single thought.

As for the safety of the ant nest?

Who would care about an inconspicuous ant nest in a vast forest?

Of course, Liu He will strengthen the defenses of the ant nest in the future, so that he can be safe and secure in the nest.

Secondly, resources are a billion times greater!

Any edible consumable resource like spirit rice, when placed in an anthill, is equivalent to multiplying its value by a billion times.

This is not an exaggeration, but the result of Liu He's accurate calculation.

His red forest ants, the small worker ants are about six millimeters long, and the large worker ants are seven millimeters long.

By comparison, he estimated that his height had shrunk by five hundred times.

This is a one-dimensional scale. When converted to three dimensions, or volume, it is reduced by a factor of 500 to the power of 3, which is over 100 million!

The limitation is that the expanded resources can only be enjoyed by Liu He himself in the anthill and cannot be taken out.

He tried to bring back the objects that were originally in the ant nest, but their size did not change.

Thirdly, storage.

Liu He can store valuable items in the ant nest and retrieve them when needed.

However, he was penniless, with no property and no treasures.

As for the more functions and applications of ant nests, he will need to explore them in more depth later.