Force Astral Plane: Starting with the Chimera Ants

Chapter 69: External Life Pouch?

Similar to the feeling of producing queen ant eggs, this second type of egg is also a kind of "peeling" from the chimera body, and is certainly not an ordinary ant egg.

Ye Zhi was puzzled. She quickly ruminated on food in her stomach to replenish her strength and continued to prepare her life sac. The familiar feeling of being emptied out came again, and another golden egg was laid.

Continuing to regurgitate liquid food, Ye Zhi originally wanted to get another special golden egg to make a total of three just in case, but found that her life sac was instinctively "spitting out" two types of eggs again: ordinary ant eggs and semi-force queen ant golden eggs.

The special semi-primal force golden egg seemed to have exhausted some special primal force energy within its body, and could no longer be "separated" from the chimera body. It would need to wait until the next molting evolution to be replenished.

It wasn't some mysterious spatial power, but rather something that seemed to be related to the true function of the life sac, which made Ye Zhi wonder if she could not only have an "external ovipositor" but also an "external life sac".

There was still some spatial power left, barely enough to lay a half-force queen ant egg. Without hesitation, Ye Zhi immediately completed the incubation, and a brand-new golden egg was "spit out" and placed on the ant silk cushion in the nest chamber.

Ants are accustomed to living in small spaces. A tree nest is one meter long and half a meter wide. A mid-stage first-instar semi-force queen ant is half a meter long, which is barely enough for one semi-force queen ant to live in. However, Ye Zhi does not intend to continue to raise it here.

Ye Zhi admitted that his previous plan to use the tree nest until the intermediate stage had underestimated his size increase. Now, he had to find a new location for the ant nest.

Common weaver ants are neither particularly picky nor overly picky about their environment. They have high requirements for the general environment in which they live, often requiring tropical rainforest areas with suitable temperature and humidity, but they are not particularly picky about the specific location of their nests.

If we had to pinpoint a requirement, perhaps only proper ventilation is necessary; there are even records of weaver ants establishing swarms in discarded tires in the past.

In this world, beings that have ascended to the Force realm and inherited memories have been recorded about the key points of nest building after scaling up. They can be rebuilt inside the mountain by excavating ventilation ducts.

However, Ye Zhi now feels that he has a better option - the interdimensional passage, which is the spaceship of the extraterrestrial technological civilization that is suspected to have crashed into the star realm. It is a good choice for a nest.

During a previous trip through the interdimensional passage, Ye Zhi had noticed the size of the doors, rooms, and passageways, and concluded that the main species of this technological civilization should also be a humanoid being, with a body size and structure not much different from humans in her previous life.

Based on inherited memories and previous descriptions of the Cinnamomum ant king, it is speculated that a normal leaf ant king at the king level is only three or four meters long. My own semi-force queen ant can refer to this size, which is enough to pass through some double-door rooms.

However, for now, Ye Zhi plans to personally "spit out" the eggs and cultivate a mid-stage ant colony at the tree nest location before considering relocation.

......

Time flies, and another half month has passed in the blink of an eye. Ye Zhi's life sac can produce ant eggs at a maximum efficiency of about five per day. Before the only normal golden egg develops into a semi-primal force ant queen, he produces two ordinary ant eggs every day to expand the size of the intermediate stage ant colony.

However, now, half a month later, the ordinary ant eggs produced in the first few days have begun to hatch one after another, and the tiny larvae, which are about one centimeter long and shaped like commas, have begun to wriggle.

Just a few days later, Ye Zhi discovered that the two special golden eggs she had laid were also showing signs of hatching.

On the twentieth day after the intermediate stage of evolution began laying eggs, at dawn, through the worker ants' senses, Ye Zhi learned that the larvae in the special golden eggs had hatched. She immediately vibrated her membranous wings and entered the tree nest to check.

The larvae of the second type of golden egg are just as lively as the semi-force queen ant larvae hatched from normal golden eggs. Beneath their segmented, white, tender exterior, faint force patterns ripple, revealing their extraordinary nature.

"Um?"

Ye Zhi, who was examining the larva, suddenly paused – through the pale white skin of this golden egg larva, the internal organs that were faintly visible underneath revealed an organ with a special structure that actually looked somewhat like a life sac.

Scanning the area with her mental energy and comparing it to her own life sac, Ye Zhi felt the resemblance growing stronger. After some thought, she immediately crawled into the nearby nest chamber and untied the ant silk wrapped around the mouth of a spider silk sac.

This contains some citrus seeds cultivated by the Tree Ant Kingdom. These were prepared by Huo Yun when she chose her life seed. After Huo Yun left the Tree Ant Kingdom, she continued to place them in Ye Zhi's tree nest for future use.

An ordinary grapefruit seed was unearthed. Ye Zhi pulled out a thread from an ant, tied the bag shut, and returned to the nest where she was raising special golden eggs. She placed the seed in front of one of the larvae.

The golden eggs in the intermediate stage are fuller, and the larvae that hatch are born with a body length of two centimeters, round in shape, and their "comma" tail, or "neck", is almost invisible.

Before Ye Zhi could emit any pheromones, it seemed to instinctively open its mouth wide and swallow the seed in front of it whole. Its esophagus writhed, carrying the seed all the way to the special structure that connected to its esophagus.

"It actually works?"

With a mental scan, the larva's body revealed a special structure resembling a life sac that immediately enveloped and contracted after swallowing the seed, just as when the leaf-woven plant first nurtured the divinely bestowed seed of the pitcher plant, and eventually closed completely.

Then, in Ye Zhi's perception, the natural primal force around him was directly surging towards the larva's body, flowing along the primal force patterns on the larva's body surface, and finally converging into the organ that looked like a life sac!

Upon further observation, all the absorbed natural primal force flowed into that life-sac-like organ, leaving not a single trace inside the larva.

This is completely different from the evolutionary process of insect warriors, where most of the Force is used to power themselves, and a small portion is used to nurture life seeds and establish soul bonds.

After all, there are too many strange things about this chimera becoming a Force life form. The final changes will probably only be known after the larvae emerge from their cocoons.

However, Ye Zhi seemed to understand why she could only produce two of these "Type II Golden Eggs" in one gestation period.

Each insect warrior can only produce one life seed per instar. In theory, each instar should only allow one "external life sac" to be "peeled" from the chimera body. The fact that it can produce two now is probably to make up for the previous shortage of junior warriors.

Having made a rough guess, Ye Zhi continued to ponder, intending to have another "external life sac" larva swallow a seed as a control.

However, just as she was about to leave the nest, Ye Zhi realized that she should probably take this second larva to the Black Ant King for a look, to see if this knowledgeable "elder" could spot any details that she had missed.