Chapter 80: Valley of Venomous Creatures (3)
Translator: bjgoofy
A dense red carpet spread across the large basin.
Under the twilight glow, the red chitin of the ants shimmered and emitted light.
It felt like an army wearing armor was stationed there, and seeing the red ball in the center slowly growing like a rolling snowball, it was clear that the sun was starting to set and the ants were creating a temporary encampment.
After all, some ants construct temporary bases by linking their bodies together.
A biological wall made of ant bodies and powerful mandibles forming a barrier.
And only after confirming the presence of that massive ant colony did everything that had occurred so far begin to make sense.
If creatures like those had swept across the land, then naturally no other insects or beasts would be seen on the ground.
In my previous life, I remembered reading in a book that when this species passes by, insects and small animals completely disappear from the area they've traversed, leaving it as if it had been disinfected.
That's why I recalled that the natives surprisingly welcomed these ants.
A wave of predation that consumes over a hundred thousand visible insects a day during movement.
That's what the movement of these creatures means.
[Soryong, do you know what kind of insects these are? I've never seen them in the Tang Sect records, and this is my first time seeing them too.]
While I was mesmerized by their magnificent appearance, Grandfather approached with a surprised expression and sent me a sound transmission.
I nodded to Grandfather's question and whispered.
Ants that move frantically during the day and form temporary encampments by gathering at night.
Much larger than the ants of his past life, but extremely aggressive, and collectively referred to as wandering ants that do not build homes.
Army Ants.
These were definitely a massive colony of army ants.
[Yes, I’ve never seen any this large, but this must be an army ants.]
[Yes, I've never seen this size before, but these are definitely army ants.]
[Army ants?]
[They're insects that wander like a marching army without building homes.]
They don’t always wander; normally, they live settled in one place. But during seasons of food scarcity, they begin migrating like this.
They must have lived in the Valley of Venomous Creatures, but for some reason, their numbers increased drastically, leading to a shortage of food and triggering their migration.
[Then the reason no animals were seen must be because of them?]
[Probably because of those creatures. If caught in their march, not even bones would remain. These things are extremely aggressive....]
Army ants are fundamentally very aggressive.
They typically sweep away everything that appears in front of their column, so I was suggesting we retreat and taking steps backward when it happened.
-Snap!
The sound of a breaking twig rang out.
When I turned my head, one of the warriors behind me was looking at a broken branch under his foot with a dismayed expression.
-Snap. Snap. Snap....
The sound that began at the warrior’s toes echoed through the basin like a spreading wildfire.
‘Damn it.’
Army ants detect and judge moving creatures through vibrations.
Sure enough, that bizarre sound that had led us here immediately poured forth.
-Ssshhh!
What had been thought to be the sound of bamboo or grass swaying in the wind was now clearly the sound of an ant colony in motion, not just branches swaying.
The ant colony, which had been busy doing its own tasks, was now turning in waves toward the sound of the breaking twig.
Soon, in the midst of the red tide came the chilling sight of creatures with massive mandibles.
The sound of their mandibles snapping together struck our ears.
-Snap! Snap! Crack!
The rustling and snapping sounds engulfed the surroundings, and every time the sound rang out, goosebumps rose all over my body.
Now that there was no need to silence ourselves, I shouted with an urgent voice.
“We need to retreat!”
“Everyone fall back!”
Turning my head, I shouted to the warriors behind me, who were overwhelmed by the sheer presence of the ant colony. With my urgent cry, a wave of ants began surging toward us from the basin below.
A wave like living red blood.
That massive wave came rushing at us like a tidal surge.
-Ssshhhh!
Without exception, the vanguard dashed in the direction we had come from.
It was obvious what would happen if we got swallowed by that densely packed red wave.
-Thud. Thud-thud.
As we frantically pushed through the jungle and dashed forward, branches relentlessly struck our faces, and my cheeks and arms were scratched here and there by the branches.
But there was no room to worry about such things.
'If they catch us, we're really dead!'
It would be no different from entering a meat grinder.
So, we all ran like madmen.
Army ants aren’t particularly fast, but they don’t feel that slow either.
“The river! Across the river!”
While running, I suddenly remembered that those things hadn’t crossed the river, and I changed direction. Only after all of us jumped into the river did the deadly pursuit finally come to an end.
-Click-click. Click!
They clacked their empty mandibles as they watched us from the riverside, and perhaps because the sun was about to set, they turned back toward the basin.
Upon reaching the opposite bank of the river and escaping the crushing atmosphere of the overwhelming ant swarm, everyone let out the long breaths they had been holding in.
"Phew..."
"Haaah..."
"I-I feel like I dipped one foot in the river of death and pulled it back out..."
As I lay down on the heated gravel by the riverbank, Cho poked her head out, squirming inside my clothes.
Cho, who was soaking wet, crawled out of my chest and licked the moisture from my face.
-Tsurur.
“Cho, are you alright? You don’t like water. Daddy will dry you off quickly, okay?”
I took off my upper robe, wrung out the moisture, and was drying Cho off when Grandfather and Squad Leader Gu Pae came over and sat down beside me.
“Those were incredible creatures.”
"Young Master Soryong, they are truly remarkable insects. That sound... it was such a bizarre sound, it made my knees weak.”
Both had expressions of being completely shaken.
Even Grandfather, the greatest master of the Tang Family and the Man of Ten Thousand Poisons, who had never once backed down in one-on-one combat, looked completely shaken.
"I, the Man of Ten Thousand Poisons, have never felt fear in a life-or-death battle against any opponent, but when those creatures surged toward us, I felt fear for the first time. To think that small insects could inspire fear in the Man of Ten Thousand Poisons..."
“Yes, those things have a tendency to devour anything that appears around them, so we must be very cautious.”
After thoroughly drying Cho and looking around, I saw warriors collapsed all over the riverside, their faces drained of energy.
Just then, the sun dipped below the ridge, and darkness began to settle in.
I spoke to Grandfather and the warriors.
"Well, the sun has set, so let's check those creatures too."
I meant we should check if we could raise those as well.
"Check?"
"What do you mean, check?"
At my suggestion to see whether they could be raised like the Golden-Furred King Bees, the others widened their eyes.
Squad Leader Gu Pae desperately tried to rationalize it, hoping it didn’t mean going right back after barely escaping death.
“You’re not seriously saying we’re going back there, right? I mean, we just barely escaped from their jaws, surely not.”
I pointed toward the opposite riverbank with a smiling face and said,
“Since the sun has set, let’s go grab just a few.”
Some army ants had venom, which made them venomous creatures.
And if they were venomous, then this Maewoon Fabre had to inspect them closely, so we needed to capture a few.
Then Squad Leader Gu Pae sent a pleading look to Grandfather, as if asking for rescue.
I sealed the deal with a look at Grandfather.
"Of course, Grandfather will come with us, right?"
***
“Huff! Huff! T-To think I’d be doing this crazy thing twice! I-I thought when Young Master Soryong said we’d go at night, those things all slept like the Golden-Furred King Bees!”
Squad Leader Gu Pae was panting heavily, likely from fear or panic.
His whole body was trembling as if he had wet himself.
We had been caught while trying to capture army ants, and he had run all the way here with a large worker ant hanging from his back.
Army ants never let go once they bite, even if you cut off their head. And unfortunately, one that had been up in a tree had bitten onto Squad Leader Gu Pae’s collar.
“Ahaha... they don’t sleep, you see...”
According to recent research, army ants rest in 12-hour intervals, but their sleep duration is just 8 minutes.
Moreover, they rest in shifts by group, so even if individual ants sleep, the colony as a whole never stops moving.
By our standards, ants are essentially creatures that don’t sleep.
“But still, didn’t we succeed quite well?”
I pointed out our achievement, but Squad Leader Gu Pae shuddered again with a look of trauma.
It seemed today’s events would leave him scarred, but I was in quite a good mood, having managed to secure four of the six army ant castes through this nighttime abduction.
Excluding the queen and male ants, we had obtained four of the army ant castes: giant worker ants, secondary giant worker ants, medium worker ants, and small worker ants.
We had managed to acquire all four types.
Army ant worker ants are born divided into four castes.
There are giant worker ants comparable to soldier ants with massive sickle-like mandibles.
Then, secondary giant worker ants with slicing and crushing mandibles.
Medium worker ants that handle all miscellaneous labor within the colony.
And small worker ants that care for the queen.
These four castes were all acquired through the nighttime snatch.
Laying out the ants beside the bonfire the remaining warriors had built, and checking them over, Squad Leader Gu Pae, having finally regained his senses, asked,
“So... will you be able to raise them?”
I shook my head in response to his question.
I had hoped it might be possible, but as expected, it seemed unlikely I’d be able to raise them.
The small worker ant we had brought alive, about the size of a fist, showed no response to my voice or any other form of communication.
-Tik. Tik tik.
It only clicked its mandibles in all directions.
Maybe if I could establish contact with the queen ant like I did with the Golden-Furred King Bees, something might change. But the real question was, could I even make it through that red tide across the river to find and persuade the queen?
Judging by the reaction of this little one, even if I somehow managed to convince the queen, would I really be able to control the entire ant colony?
Ants, like bees, have a social system and collective intelligence, but they differ significantly in that individual ants have very poor memory compared to bees.
An ant’s maximum memory span is only about three days.
Of course, these might be spiritual creatures with superior memory, but army ants are mostly blind and communicate through vibrations and pheromones alone.
Without the queen, it was impossible to communicate with them.
Even if raised, they didn’t seem likely to be controllable.
“Then... are you saying this was all for nothing?”
Squad Leader Gu Pae grumbled, upon hearing that I might not be able to raise them.
“All for nothing? What do you mean? Didn’t we obtain such beautiful creatures? If we dry them properly and display them at the family’s Myriad Poison Hall, they’ll look incredibly splendid. Wow, look at these mandibles. This one here was the one clinging to Squad Leader Gu Pae’s clothes, wasn’t it?”
I said it definitely wasn’t a waste, but under the bonfire’s light, Squad Leader Gu Pae’s face looked slightly sorrowful.
‘Well... he’s the one who chose the Venomous Creature Squad. He’ll just have to grit his teeth and bear it... Ahem....’
A joke from my past life came to mind, but I kept it to myself. Just then, Grandfather's question reached my ears.
“By the way, if raising those things is difficult, what will you do now? Do you want to move elsewhere to find other venomous creatures?
There’s the option of heading west to Ruili or deeper into the jungle southward to Xishuangbanna, after all.”
Grandfather was suggesting that since we had collected some samples, we could move on to other locations to search for more venomous creatures.
I smiled at his question and replied,
“No. We’ll follow those insects- no, we’ll get ahead of them.”
“Get ahead of them?”
“You’re saying we should go ahead of them?”
Everyone widened their eyes at my suggestion to get ahead of the ants.
So I explained why we needed to do that.
"Yes, if we move ahead of them, various insects and venomous creatures will pop out from the surroundings, startled by them. If we aim for that, we can catch insects and venomous creatures very easily. Though it might be a bit challenging."
Normally, army ant processions are followed by many insects and birds. That’s because they’re all trying to catch the creatures that flee in panic at the ants’ advance.
What I was suggesting was that we mimic that behavior.
“Doesn’t it sound fun?”
'Why are they making those expressions? I really think it would be fun!'
But for some reason, everyone’s expression turned strange at my question.
*****
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