The opportunity came earlier than expected.
After the Wraith Sign blew up the structure of the group consciousness of the Vulcan Ants, it naturally activated the corresponding mechanisms to stop damage and repair.
As mentioned before, as long as the Vulcan Ant Aberration Nest was present, the material foundation and structure were present, it was not difficult to reconstruct the group consciousness. The Vulcan Ant society had used five or six successive successful examples to prove this point. According to the relevant information from research on the Vulcan Ants, when the Vulcan Ant society suffered a fatal attack, usually when the queen was killed or captured, or when the Aberration Nest was severely damaged, causing the group consciousness to collapse and the ants to be leaderless, this highly social Aberration Colony would activate its extreme survival mode.
They would use the relatively intact area as an axis on the wreckage of the nest to combine the ant chambers and ant tunnels that could be linked together. They would radiate the relevant pheromones to gather the greatest number of defeated soldiers. After gathering to a certain scale, they would use a special Aberration Path to stimulate and nurture a temporary queen ant. They would reconstruct the group consciousness in a short amount of time. With this as the foundation, they would rapidly replace each other and regroup.
If there was no area of this scale, a single ant chamber could complete this task. It was just that the group consciousness produced would be of an extremely low level. The various ant chambers would gradually integrate and slowly converge. However, this would be accompanied by conflict and slaughter. It would inevitably end with the death of the temporary queen ant of the losing side. The process would be extremely tragic.
It was this extreme survival mode and its matching ability to rapidly replace each other that helped the Vulcan Ant society to tenaciously survive in this volcanic region for several decades. But it was also because such a pattern had appeared too early in today's special circumstances!
The Wraith Sign's Poison Bomb struck from above, crushing the group consciousness of the Vulcan Ant society from the mental plane. This attack didn't cause much damage to the Vulcan Ant nest, but it sent the Hypertoxic Spores into every corner of the Vulcan Ant society.
Luo Nan still did not understand the Wraith Sign's keen and brutal instincts. He did not know how it was constructed. But every time this fellow hunted, it would accurately tear apart the vital parts of the target. This time was no exception.
The Hypertoxic Spores did not possess any direct destructive power, but when they spread out, the Fire God Ants that were moving through the various ant rooms and ant tunnels suddenly fell into chaos in their neat and orderly formation.
It was as if they had lost their sense of direction. The front and back of the formation were disjointed. Some of them accelerated forward while others turned back. Some of them even clashed together, interfering with each other as they circled in confusion.
"Interference pheromone."
Luo Nan roughly guessed an answer. Ants and the like were social insects. Their behavior patterns were largely guided by pheromones. Though the Vulcan Ant was a Mutant species, it still retained a few similar patterns.
Due to the Vulcan Ants receiving erratic information, the large circulation system with the heart of the nest as the center was already in disorder. However, upon closer inspection, there were some general patterns that could be followed.
Millions and tens of millions of Fire God Ants were clearly gathering towards the nearest ant room. Every ant chamber was a center, and there were no exceptions. Thus, in a short span of a dozen seconds, the aberrated nest had hundreds and thousands of centers. They had even begun to cut off the circulation channels and retract the flowing energy, entering a de facto state of separation.
"This is really … hehe."
For the Fire God Ants that had been torn apart, no, they had not done anything wrong.
The instincts engraved in their genes were displaying their effects. After the leading group consciousness collapsed, they quickly entered an extreme survival mode. The environment they felt and the stimuli they received indicated that the overall structure of the aberrated nest no longer existed. They had to use the remaining ant chambers as the center to gather the greatest amount of power and reconstruct the group consciousness. Then they would be constantly replaced and walk the path of expansion once more.
So they did this, and they did it quite well. The crisis pheromone formed after the ant assembly was violently volatile. It was injected into the ant chambers through a special method, erasing the suppressive pheromone from when the Vulcan Ant Queen was alive. This caused a portion of the worker ants inside to undergo aberrations. At the same time, they killed each other. The final victor became the temporary Queen Ant. They erected a rough new framework and began to construct a low-level group consciousness.
During this period of time, the Vulcan Ant Nest had the beauty of a single spark setting a prairie ablaze.
Within Luo Nan's mental sensing network, there were weak soul flames lighting up one after another. From a few, to a few dozen, to over a hundred. They quickly formed a scale.
The amount of resources that the Vulcan Ants could utilize in the environment of the volcanic area should not be doubted. Although these low-level group consciousnesses were far from being as powerful as the previous one, the imprint engraved in their genes still gave them the natural ability to absorb external heat and life energy.
According to normal survival mode, these low-level group consciousnesses would have a period of 'solitude' to further familiarize themselves with and apply this ability. When they began to expand once more, they should be experts in this field. They would capture thousands upon thousands of living creatures of other races during the expansion process. They would serve as food and slaves. Then they would rely on the advantage of expansion to defeat their own species that no longer belonged to the same aberrated evolutionary path. They would unify the volcanic area once more and let their genes follow an even stronger path of development and inheritance.
But there was a problem: At this stage, every ant chamber was very close to each other!
They were close to each other to the point where they would be face to face the moment they stepped out of the door.
According to the genetic instincts of the Vulcan Ants, they did not have any kinship or brotherly respect when faced with this kind of situation. The only choice was:
Fight!
The internal war of the Vulcan Ants erupted fifteen seconds after the formation of the first low-level group consciousnesses. They entered into an all-out war mode five minutes later.
For a time, the entire core area of the Vulcan Ant nest was filled with the flames of war. And the effects of the collapse of the original group consciousnesses were still continuing to spread. If there was a problem at the headquarters, then the branch divisions would not have an easy time. It was unknown when the unrest in the entire volcanic area would come to an end.
Speaking of which, the entire Vulcan Ant society had suddenly entered the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period mode. It wasn't that no one wanted to do their best to save it.
Originally, the only core of the aberrated nest was located in the "heart" beneath the lava. The highest ruler of the entire Vulcan Ant society — or perhaps a "queen" had to be added. Well, in short, the true Vulcan Ant Queen, was extremely angry and irritable at this moment.
The Vulcan Ant Queen was probably a mutant among mutants. It had an extremely deformed body. The front half of its body was only four or five centimeters long. It was around five times the size of a normal Vulcan Ant. But below its abdomen, it was rapidly expanding in an unimaginable manner. Its diameter alone was ten centimeters, about the width of an adult's clenched fist. As for its length, it was about the length of an entire arm behind it.
This structure was a little similar to the termite queen. Many researchers suspected that the original species before the mutation was a termite. But no termite queen would have this kind of mass and strength.
The completely unbalanced body proportions made it look more like a super large eggplant with a handle. At this moment, this' eggplant 'was squirming slightly. A dirty light like pus and blood filled the entire space of the' heart '. It reflected the countless fertilized eggs and non-fertilized eggs piled neatly on the four walls, as well as the rather neat ranks of worker ants and soldier ants.
Even further out, there were layers of blood-red 'fluff' spread out, like layers upon layers of terraced crops, neatly arranged. It became an inseparable part of the internal structure of the 'heart'.
At this moment, the Vulcan Ant Queen had just recovered from the shock of losing control of her kingdom.
In the entire Vulcan Ant society, the Vulcan Ant Queen was definitely the one closest to possessing a complete individual consciousness. In fact, it was the core of the Vulcan Ant's collective consciousness. This was its most important function in this colony other than reproduction. It could be said that the collective consciousness of the entire Vulcan Ant society was determined by the mutation talent and growth of the queen.
This queen was still very young. It had only been about two years since she became the ruler of this kingdom. This caused it to be far from developing a mature consciousness system, making it even harder for it to make accurate and clear judgments.
This limitation caused the collapse of the collective consciousness of the Vulcan Ant when the two systems collided. It also caused it to be unable to analyze the crux of the problem after losing control of the kingdom. Instead, it was quickly driven by an even more stubborn instinct.
The great enemy that descended from the sky was thrown to the back of its mind. What it needed to do now was to consolidate its resources and strength, using a more advantageous structure among a bunch of low-level consciousnesses to reclaim its kingdom and become the ruler of this world once again.
In the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, it undoubtedly had an overwhelming advantage. But the current scenario was:
Alien invasion!
The former queen and the future overlord were not given any chances. A bloody beam of light tore through the barrier between the mental and material planes, directly piercing into the 'heart' region.
This was an artillery attack from the direction of the Polar Domain.
Ever since Luo Nan was tossed around by the Dimensional Crossbow, he had taken a liking to this sort of tyrannical and fierce offensive method that came from the Polar Domain.
Right now, he no longer had the tyrannical collective consciousness of the Vulcan Ants. There was Mo Lun in the void of the abyssal region. There was the seed imprint in the depths of the lava. The Wraith Sign itself had long since transcended space and boundaries. All kinds of interference had disappeared, and there were two positions of reference at the same time. There was absolutely no reason for the attack to miss the mark.
The bloody beam of light silently drowned the area where the Vulcan Ant Queen was. A similar hue flooded the entire ant room.
At this moment, inside the "heart", countless zygotes and unzygotes, the dense troop of soldier ants, and the "eggplant queen", which was supposed to be the toughest, were all twisted and destroyed in the intense ripples of light.
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