Chapter 285: Ant Honey

Could these be ’warehouses’ for storing food?

Joo Joowon slowly moved closer and carefully observed them. He could not help feeling surprised.

Inside the spacious chambers, there were more than a hundred ants. Their bodies were usually enormous, even larger than Gaemi had been when Joo Joowon first picked her up.

They were not merely large in size. Some mutated characteristics had also appeared on their bodies. For example, the antennae that had originally grown properly from their heads had turned into tentacles. For another example, corrosive saliva had begun dripping from their mandibles. Some ants had even had the color of their entire bodies changed. Others had completely lost the original ’skin’ on their bodies, making them look more like some kind of fleshy worm...

They stayed relatively quietly in their own separate spaces, and there was usually a ’honey jar’ placed in front of each of them.

These ’honey jars’ were actually worker ants. They did not need to work. They only needed to be fed continuously by their companions. As a result, their abdomens would gradually become a pale yellow, almost transparent substance. Their abdomens would swell to several times their original size, after which they would quietly hang upside down deep inside the anthill. They relied on the honey inside their bodies to maintain the nutrients needed for survival. Their purpose was to serve as strategic food supplies.

Although their heavy bodies made them unable to move, causing them to be quietly placed in the ’granary’ like dead reserve food, they had never actually died. After all, every food item had a shelf life, and they existed precisely to avoid that shelf life.

Now, they had become food for these mutated ants.

It was clear that these ants had probably undergone mutations because they had been affected by the Whispers. However, unlike other creatures, they seemed to still be able to obey the Ant Queen’s orders. Otherwise, they would not have been quietly eating here. They should have already thrown the entire anthill into chaos.

Generally speaking, apart from the Ant Queen, the other ants in an anthill were very difficult for the Whispers to affect.

There was no other reason for this. A group of creatures that acted entirely according to the Ant Queen’s pheromones, possessing almost nothing but instincts and barely any brains, how could they possibly understand the Whispers?

Even if they truly heard the Whispers, the probability of dying was clearly much higher than the probability of becoming mutated.

However, such extremely unlikely events were not impossible. Among tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of ants, there might be one that was born with extraordinary talent. Otherwise, there would not have been more than a hundred of them inside the chambers.

When the number became large enough, a small probability could no longer be considered small.

Meanwhile, the other spacious chamber housed normal giant ants. Their bodies were not especially large, roughly the size of bowling balls, and their entire bodies glimmered with a metallic sheen. They seemed to be a special type of soldier ant.

Generally speaking, the Ant Queen would choose whether to lay worker-ant eggs or soldier-ant eggs according to changes in the environment. Seeing this, Joo Joowon fell into thought. He did not continue paying attention to what lived inside the remaining spacious chambers. His Mental Power naturally passed over them and reached the deepest, most central location.

The Ant Queen would only live in the safest place inside the anthill.

However, the moment his Mental Power entered, Joo Joowon could not help pausing.

In the very center of the anthill, there was a strange... flower?

The flower was about the size of a washbasin. Its ’leaves’ were thick, fleshy, and juicy like those of a succulent plant. They spread outward in dense, orderly layers, with each layer arranged unevenly. There were dozens of layers in total, and they had become highly fleshy in texture. Their color was a translucent pale yellow.

Within these dozens of succulent-like leaves was also a cluster of ’stamens’.

The stamens were apricot yellow, but their color was somewhat dark, as if they had been stained with ink. They looked a little dirty, far less crystal clear than the fleshy leaves.

It also had no roots. It simply floated quietly on the surface of the water.

Only after moving closer did Joo Joowon discover that it was not actually a water source. Instead, a small gap had been opened in the lowest layer of leaves of this ’succulent’. Liquid continuously gushed out from the gap and flowed along the leaves into the pool of water below, carrying a strange fragrance that seemed to have been produced through fermentation.

From time to time, worker ants would arrive here from the various passageways, carrying ’living honey jars’. Another type of worker ant would then come over to take them. Through some unknown process, they would condense all the nutrients inside the honey jars into a tiny drop of dew, then inject it into the ’stamens’ of the succulent.

Joo Joowon’s gaze sharpened, and only then did he realize that this was not a ’succulent’ at all. It was clearly a living ’centipede’ made up of countless ’honey jars’.

They were connected to one another, and their heartbeats were synchronized. Even more astonishingly, the liquid they secreted seemed to be connected as well. It decomposed layer by layer from the topmost level, and by the time it fell into the water, it had become the purest and most nutritious substance... ant honey?

Joo Joowon did not know how to describe this unique liquid. It was not as thick and sticky as honey. It was simply a liquid like water, resembling wine that had been specially brewed.

He could not sense any trace of life from these honey-jar ants, but they had not died either. They were still ’breathing’, except that their breathing was more like that of plants.

Was this food that the Ant Queen had prepared for herself?