Force Astral Plane: Starting with the Chimera Ants

Chapter 16: The Mysterious Golden Egg

Upon hearing this, Ye Zhi immediately twitched her antennae in response, giving a positive signal. At the same time, she slowly opened her mandibles and gently placed the translucent white ant egg down, her antennae lightly patting it.

The cypress didn't move; after all, its massive body would likely damage the eggs of the first-instar ant queen. It simply asked with some surprise, "Little guy, has your egg-laying ability not been affected by the chimera?"

"It was still affected to some extent," Ye Zhi said truthfully. "The egg seems to have been produced from the life sac."

He didn't hide anything; on the contrary, he wanted to take the opportunity to find out if there was any precedent for this situation. After all, the other person had been in this world longer than him. What if this counterintuitive thing could be explained by the magical Force?

Upon hearing this, Ye Zhi noticed that not only the Black Citron Ant King, but also the Red Citron Ant King and even the relatively taciturn Green Citron Ant King, all twitched their antennae, sending out signals of surprise.

Wu Yuan's two thick, long tentacles, like steel whips, swayed, emitting a mental force: "Little guy, don't move yet, let me check what's wrong."

Upon hearing this, Ye Zhi stopped moving and lay down on the ground. Immediately, he felt a strange force sweep across his body, from head to toe, inside and out, through every corner.

That seems to be another way of using mental power, which is also recorded in the inherited memories. However, Ye Zhi's current use of mental power is still not skilled enough to perform external scanning.

"That's really strange, little guy. Do you feel anything is wrong with how you lay eggs?" Wu Yuan shook its antennae repeatedly, seemingly having never seen this situation before, and asked with some concern.

"It feels like my body has been hollowed out," Ye Zhi replied, recalling that he did indeed feel that way when he gave birth to this egg.

In response, the cypress twitched its antennae and then swayed them. A worker ant immediately stepped forward, opened its mandibles, and regurgitated a pool of liquid food, which appeared to be chewed and partially digested meat, from its "social stomach" and spread it on the broad leaf in front of it.

In Ye Zhi's previous life, among the ants she knew, the social stomach was a common container for storing food, including semi-digested protein foods. She didn't care about anything else and went forward to eat voraciously.

Wu Yuan couldn't see anything wrong, so Ye Zhi simply ignored the counterintuitive phenomenon of egg-laying in the life sac - chimera. It was a product of a bug in the code of genes. Now that the program could run thanks to the bug, why bother with so much?

But then, Wu Yuan's telepathic signal appeared in his mind again: "However, little guy, it's best if you don't lay eggs for now."

Upon hearing this, Ye Zhi raised her head, and as if anticipating this, Wu Yuan gently shook its antennae and added:

"Firstly, the molting and evolution are rapid in the early and intermediate stages, so the ant eggs produced in the early stages are difficult to play a role in the later stages. Secondly, the worker ants in the early, intermediate, and advanced stages lack intelligence, and unexpected situations may occur here. It is best to wait until the intermediate stage, when you can move out of the nest independently, and then raise the ant colony."

This is indeed a substantial issue – in the inherited memory, although worker ants and soldier ants absolutely obey the commands of the queen and assistant queen, their energy is limited and they cannot perfectly micromanage the actions of each worker ant. They can only issue general commands and let them complete detailed tasks based on their instincts.

Worker ants must be at least at the level of the mountain lord before they possess the ability to make judgments, will not instinctively drive away all non-nest worker ants within their territory, and will have the ability to accurately identify specific non-nest species.

This explains why the lord-level worker ants of the slender, long ant species can recognize themselves as belonging to the same weaving ant species as the deceased "Blue-skinned Trifoliate Orange Ant King," and bring themselves back to the Black-skinned Ant King. Other worker ants can also tacitly accept the existence of Ye Zhi, the weaving ant king.

Having figured out the problem, Ye Zhi lightly tapped her antennae, then looked at the eggs she had already laid, casting a questioning glance at Wu Yuan.

"Since this one has already been laid, let's keep it for now and see if it hatches normally." Wu Yuan slowly pushed the spider silk bag containing the Force food in front of him forward, and tore the bag open with a ripping sound. "These are some Force foods that have been formulated to comprehensively enhance physical constitution. Take two of each kind every day, and don't eat more."

Ye Zhi immediately twitched her antennae, responding with a signal of affirmation and joy, and released her jaws, which were still struggling to suck in liquid food, to take a grain of Force food and put it into her mouth.

The familiar energy flow surged into his limbs and bones, then quickly converged into his life sac. He ate two of each type of food that Wu Yuan had taken out, like eating sunflower seeds, and occasionally added a bite of minced meat.

After consuming nearly twenty primal force foods, Wu Yuan slowly retracted the spider silk bag with a somewhat surprised look in his eyes: "Alright, little guy, although your absorption ability is quite good, don't eat too much at once. Wait until around dusk to eat the rest, keep things stable, and you can undergo your second evolution in about ten days."

Ye Zhi was somewhat reluctant to part with it. He just felt that he could eat more. He had no knowledge of the Force and had never seen other low-level warriors evolve. Naturally, he did not know that his chimera body was excessively efficient at absorbing the energy contained in the Force food compared to other Force creatures of the same level.

......

After consuming a dozen or so Force-based foods, Ye Zhi returned to his nest. Reflecting on what had happened, he continued to sense the flow of energy within his body.

The original energy that had been transformed into one's own surged out of the life sac, flowed through the blood throughout the body, and, like nutrients, supplied every cell before returning to the life sac to complete a new cycle.

But at that moment, he suddenly felt a strange sensation. With a thought, his life sac began to operate, and another egg was "spit out" from his mouth, which he held between his jaws.

He clearly felt that this time, it wasn't just his body that felt hollowed out; even the primal energy gathered within his life force had been partially extracted by this egg. The natural primal force in the air was forming an invisible miniature vortex, converging towards his body.

Looking down, the egg's shell surprisingly shimmered with a pale golden luster, a stark contrast to the previous egg's lustrous milky white. Beneath the shell, faint traces of primal force seemed to flow, somewhat resembling the patterns on the surface of the God-given Seed.

Following Wu Yuan's example today, Ye Zhi released a wisp of spiritual energy and scanned the "golden egg" in front of him. He immediately sensed that the egg contained a life force far exceeding that of an ordinary egg, which made him even more astonished.

As he regurgitated a few drops of nutrients to replenish his depleted energy, he skillfully placed the "golden egg" on the soft ant silk mat, alongside the ordinary egg, all the while pondering.