In the passageway.
Xiao Cheng continued walking forward expressionlessly, with countless ant corpses lying behind him, most of them with distorted expressions.
The termites, large and small, retreated fearfully to both sides, cowering and trying to stay as far away from her as possible.
At the intersection ahead, two larger black-armored ants were guarding the road, each carrying the remaining half of the corpses of ants number one and four on their backs.
They looked quite different from the previous black-armored ants; one of them had an exaggeratedly bulging abdomen, and its carapace was stretched so thin that it was almost transparent.
You can see milky white eggs, about the size of a finger joint, squeezed into its abdominal cavity.
"Male and female ants?" Xiao Cheng raised an eyebrow slightly, stopped in his tracks, and confronted them. "Aren't you going to delay a little longer? You actually came out on your own so quickly."
The male ant swung its two antennae dramatically, and its entire abdomen suddenly trembled strangely. Then, it uttered a broken sound from its mouth: "Queen...ant..."
Its tone sounded rather strange, but it quickly adapted to the way it spoke, and the communication became increasingly fluent: "The queen ant said she wanted to see you. We are all curious about how you destroyed the order of your colony."
"There's no other way, it's just the situation. I didn't originally intend to do something so unconventional. But since it's already happened, there's nothing I can do about it." Xiao Cheng sighed, feigning helplessness. "Then please lead the way, I'm quite curious about the Queen Ant."
The queen ant's nest is located behind the two chambers that represent the female and male ants.
The way it was activated was quite peculiar: two black-armored ants kissed each other right in front of Xiao Cheng.
Xiao Cheng: "..." Who would have thought of this?
The queen ant's chamber is quite simply furnished; frankly, it might not even be as simple as the female ant's chamber. In comparison, it resembles a giant birthing room, with nothing but a soft bed placed in the center.
The queen ant was lying in the center of the bed, her whole body glowing with a strange pink halo. Her head was extremely small, but her abdominal cavity was almost two meters long, so swollen that it looked like it might burst at any moment.
One by one, sticky eggs were expelled from the egg and gathered around it. A considerable number of the eggshells had already broken, and tiny black-armored ants crawled out from inside and began to devour each other.
The queen ant seemed to have a dull sense of perception and was unaware of their arrival, her two antennae hanging there motionless.
It continues until the male and female ants carry the corpse from their backs to its mouth.
"Heh...heh..."
The queen ant moved her body with some difficulty, her heavy abdomen crushing a large number of ant eggs into powder. A sticky, foul-smelling liquid gushed out, splashing everywhere.
It moved its head slightly, its long antennae swept across, and then its sharp fangs, which had extended from its mouth, plunged into the corpse at the root.
It chews very quickly, easily crushing and swallowing even bones. Sweet, metallic blood dribbles from its mouth, and the crunching sound of its chewing makes one's teeth ache.
Xiao Cheng watched silently as it finished eating all the corpses.
"Heh...heh..." The queen ant let out a satisfied groan, then slowly turned her head toward Xiao Cheng, and moved her mandibles, which were still covered in blood and bits of flesh.
“You…hello…” it swayed its antennae, “It’s a pleasure to meet you…an immature queen ant from another colony…”
"Seeing you like this, I know that my decision back then was absolutely right." Xiao Cheng sighed softly, looking at it with pity. "Queen ant? It's more accurate to call you a breeding machine."
"Ha...ha...so you abandoned your colony..." The queen ant's tone sounded quite sorrowful, "You are not worthy of being a queen ant, not even worthy of being a female ant..."
"Are you going to die?" Xiao Cheng ignored its words and continued, "You've reached your limit. You can't reproduce anymore, so your female ants will have to take your place."
As if in response to her words, the female ant next to her shook her enormous abdomen, raising her hindquarters slightly to show the queen the eggs emerging from her abdominal cavity.
"I know...I know..."
The queen ant's panting grew more and more intense, her entire abdomen began to convulse, and finally she released a large pool of squeezed and deformed, or even unformed, eggs, which then quickly shriveled up.
The male and female ants watched all this unfold and let out joyful hissing sounds.
The stench was too strong, and Xiao Cheng took two steps back in disgust: "So there is no such thing as two groups, day and night. You are just the original inhabitants of this nest, barely surviving."
"Whether it's an external invasion or an internal change, Queen Ant, you are destined to die here. How pathetic that you can't even control your own fate."
"You can...you can..." The queen ant became increasingly agitated, straightening her upper body with all her might, and reaching her long mandibles toward Xiao Cheng.
Suddenly, a male ant nearby sprang up, biting its head hard and slamming it to the ground.
A muffled thud.
The ant eggs on the bed were crushed into a large chunk again, sticking to the sheets in a sticky mess. The queen ant was overjoyed and couldn't wait to climb up, taking the queen's place. With her lower body raised, she dropped the first brand-new egg.
Then its abdominal cavity began to swell rapidly until it became close to the size of the original queen ant, and even showed a tendency to surpass it.
The male ant continued to tear at the queen ant on the ground, its movements becoming increasingly frenzied and ferocious.
Without any mercy, it bit open its abdomen, picked out the undigested remains of players number one and four from the empty shell, and patiently piled them up at the female ant's mouth like a treasure.
Xiao Cheng stood to the side, watching the power shift unfold without a ripple of emotion. He glanced at the dying queen ant on the ground, then stepped on the male ant that was about to be exterminated.
"I suggest you stop now," she said calmly, her foot pressing harder and harder until she almost pinned the male ant to the ground.
Cracks gradually appeared on the hard black armor, making a cracking sound as it struggled to bear the weight.
The male ant let out a painful and angry roar: "You...you are disobeying me..."
"Disobey my ass!" Xiao Cheng stomped down hard, nearly killing it. "An ant really thinks it's something?"
The female ants on the bed were laying eggs at a rapid pace, and the eggs were hatching extremely quickly. The densely packed black-armored ants devoured each other and grew rapidly, soon looking almost the same size as the male ants, and they approached Xiao Cheng menacingly.
"Internal strife is one thing, but dragging outsiders into it makes it pointless." Xiao Cheng casually kicked the male ant far away, looked down at the nearly dead queen ant, and gently kicked its head.
"You're still breathing, can you hear what I'm saying?"
“Let’s make a deal. I’ll give you a chance to live, and you will become the queen ant of our colony.”
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