He stepped into a soft pile of fallen leaves and fell forward, but luckily he caught himself with his hands and didn't bury his face in the mud.

"This ground is like a sponge," he muttered as he got up, patting the wet dirt off his trousers. "I sink in every two steps. Am I here to pick out wood or to soak my feet?"

Nana followed from behind, her steps as steady as if she had a navigation wheel. "There's a patch of fallen trees thirty meters ahead. The wood is quite exposed, making it suitable for initial screening."

"You can actually see that?" He rolled his eyes. "All I can see are rotten leaves all over the ground and no path in sight."

He continued moving forward, using the chisel as a crutch, poking at the ground to take a step. The forest was much denser than before, the tree trunks so close together that he could only pass sideways. He tried a crooked tree, tapping the trunk; the sound was hollow, as if a woodpecker who didn't work lived inside.

“It’s ruined again.” He shook his wrist. “These days, even trees are cut corners. They look thick, but when you touch them, they’re all hollow inside.”

Several trees in succession were in similar condition, either too damp or loosely structured. He squatted down next to a half-buried piece of rotten wood, reached out and scratched at the edge, and as soon as he applied pressure with his fingertips, the entire piece of wood crumbled into dust.

"So it announced its retirement first?" he sighed. "I'm not even old yet, all the materials have gone before me."

As they were talking, a glint of light caught their eye out of the corner of their eye—from the crack in the fallen log, a tiny insect, about the size of a fingernail, slowly crawled out. Its shell had a bluish-green sheen, as if someone had accidentally rubbed it with ink from a fountain pen.

He paused for a moment, then leaned closer to take a look.

"Hey, this little guy is pretty energetic."

The insect ignored him and crawled straight towards a tree hole nearby. A layer of transparent, gelatinous substance clung to the edge of the hole, glistening slightly in the dappled light.

He stared at it for a few more seconds, then suddenly turned and shouted, "Nana! Come and look at this, am I seeing things?"

Nana approached, pointed the optical element at the tree hole, and the blue light flashed three times.

"Testing in progress..."

After a brief silence, she spoke: "The secretion is a product of arthropod glands, mainly composed of natural resin and protein complexes. After drying, it has adhesive properties and a shear strength of about 3.2 MPa."

“Speak like a human.” He frowned.

“It can stick to stones and wood.” She paused, “It’s more than ten times stronger than the straw rope you used yesterday.”

His eyes widened suddenly: "Wait, you mean... this thing is wild 502 glue?"

The analogy holds true.

He stared at the gelatinous substance, as if he could see the dawn of a future life.

"So that shiny little beetle from earlier was actually the construction site foreman? In charge of applying sealant and sealing the edges?"

“It doesn’t have management functions,” Nana said calmly, “but its metabolites have engineering application potential.”

He grinned: "I don't care if it has KpI or not. As long as it's willing to produce rubber, we're strategic partners."

After saying that, he took out the small ceramic shard he always carried with him from the rope bag, carefully scraped off some secretions, and put it into a sealed jar. His movements were as light as if he were stealing alien technological secrets.

"Get some more samples," he muttered. "If it ever breaks down, we can rely on our inventory for a while."

While he was busy, he discovered several pieces of hard shell debris stuck in the crevices deep inside the tree hole. They were dark in color and looked quite thick.

"Can these dead brothers still be used?" He gently picked one out with a chisel.

"Scan complete." Nana took the examination. "The exoskeleton contains a high proportion of chitin, with a Mohs hardness of 4.8. It can be shaped by appropriate heating and is suitable for making sheaths, connecting plates, or small fasteners."

As he listened, his expression gradually became strange.

"You mean... I can use insect shells to make screws?"

"Non-standard fasteners, but with similar functions."

He paused for two seconds, then suddenly burst out laughing: "Well, my original plan was to find a good piece of wood and a hard stone, but now I'm going to make a 'stone + insect' hybrid axe?"

“Optimizing resource combinations is a reasonable survival strategy,” Nana said.

He looked down at the insect shell in his hand, then at the gelatinous substance in the jar, and the images in his mind began to reassemble.

“I used to think that making tools was all about brute force, like smashing rocks and binding wooden sticks. But now, we have to raise insects, collect glue, and build a biomaterials supply chain.”

He looked up at the sky, and sunlight streamed through the leaves, falling on his face.

"If primitive people knew that we made axes from insects, would they think we were more primitive?"

Nana did not answer.

He knew she wouldn't answer that kind of question.

But he laughed for quite a while.

A moment later, he carefully put away all the collected samples, retied the rope bag, and hung it on his waist. Then he stood up and patted his trousers.

“Now that this path is open, let’s not put all our eggs in one basket,” he said. “Just because we can’t find timber doesn’t mean we can’t start construction. Let’s change our approach—not just look for wood, but for ‘usable things’.”

"Including plant fibers, mineral crusts, and insect nest structures," Nana added.

“Right!” He slapped his thigh. “Before, I only thought about ‘which tree can be cut down,’ but now I have to ask ‘which corner can be picked up’.”

He strode forward, his steps much lighter than before.

He suddenly stopped as he walked through a patch of low bushes.

There was something unusual about the ground ahead—it wasn't a pile of fallen leaves, but a small patch of bare, light-colored soil with a few tiny holes scattered around it, and some tiny black particles lying around it.

He squatted down, picked up a few grains with his fingers, and looked at them closely.

"Isn't this feces?" he frowned.

"More accurately, it's a mixture of excrement and food residue from burrowing arthropods." Nana scanned closer. "There are traces of underground activity nearby, suggesting it might be a habitat for gregarious burrowing insects."

He looked up and around: "So...this is an insect nest?"

"The probability is over 80%."

He grinned: "Then shouldn't we give them a proper visit?"

He took out pliers from his toolbox, checked that the sealed container was properly sealed, and then slowly approached the edge of one of the holes.

“You may be young, but if you are truly useful, I wouldn’t mind calling you my ‘father’.”

As he spoke, he gently pried at the clods of earth around the hole with a chisel.

The moment the soil loosened, several small, yellowish-brown insects darted out of the hole. They were slightly smaller than the previous beetles, but moved extremely fast, skimming along the ground.

He was startled and shrank back: "Running so fast, have you trained in 100-meter sprinting?"

Nana immediately initiated a tracking scan: "New species identification in progress... Hemiptera, a variant of the Mimicidae family, possessing short-distance jumping ability, with no history of aggression."

"As long as it doesn't bite, it's fine." He breathed a sigh of relief. "If I were killed by the bugs, my tombstone would have to say 'Defeated by six legs'."

He tried cleaning around the hole again, this time more slowly. As the soil was turned over, the internal structure gradually became visible—a slightly sloping channel extending downwards, with smooth walls and a coating that looked like a film.

"This wall has been painted?" he exclaimed in surprise.

"The same secretion composition," Nana confirmed. "It's used to reinforce the nest structure, preventing moisture and collapse."

He stared at the membrane for a few seconds, then suddenly laughed.

"Got it. They don't just produce rubber, they also build their own infrastructure."

He turned to Nana and said, "You know... if I take these insects back, build them a nest, and feed them regularly, will they produce building materials for me every day?"

“It’s theoretically feasible,” Nana said, “provided that a suitable temperature and humidity environment is provided and that predators are avoided.”

“Then I’ll treat it like a pet.” He chuckled. “Others keep cats and dogs, I’ll keep a construction crew.”

He took out another empty jar, carefully collected some samples of coated soil, and then put two slow-moving live animals inside.

"Let's take a few back first to study their breeding conditions," he said. "What if we can breed them in large quantities in the future? Wouldn't I become the first insect contractor in the interstellar space?"

Nana flashed a blue light: "The database has been updated with local arthropod ecology entries, adding three potential usable species."

"Great." He patted the bag. "Looks like I've exceeded my target for today. I was just looking for a piece of wood, but I ended up digging up a whole new material warehouse."

He stood up, stretched, and looked out at the still deep forest.

“Since insects can make it work, there might be some surprises on the plant side,” he said. “Maybe the bark of a tree can be used as rubber, or a leaf can be twisted into a rope.”

He lifted his foot and continued walking forward, his steps steady.

A gentle breeze blew through the woods, lifting the hem of his clothes.

He had one hand in his pocket and the other gripping a sealed jar containing live insects.