Creating a paradise in an ant nest

Chapter 2 My Shrinking World

"What monster?!"

Liu He saw a monster the size of an off-road vehicle waving its tentacles and lunging at him menacingly.

Its shape resembles both a spider and an ant, and it moves effortlessly along the tunnel walls.

Could it be that he died in the mouth of a monster during his second time travel?

That's just too pathetic.

Nearly.

Closer!

The first thing that catches the eye is a pair of tentacles that sway up, down, left, and right.

Next came the head with huge jaws.

"Giant ants?"

Upon closer inspection, Liu He realized that the monster before him was a giant ant magnified countless times, complete with antennae, large teeth, a slender waist, and a plump rear...

Two tentacles gently touched him.

"Friendly? Obedient?"

He was puzzled as to perceive fluctuations of "friendliness" and "obedience" in the ants.

The giant ant's mandibles could easily bite him in half, but he felt no fear.

"Wait, could this be my ant colony?"

He traveled to the cultivation world with the ant box and maintained a vague telepathic connection with the queen ant.

At this moment, this telepathic connection is stronger than ever before.

He wasn't sure if the giant ant in front of him could understand him, so he said, "Take me to the queen ant."

Its antennae twitched twice, as if it understood, and it crawled deeper into the tunnel.

"Hey, wait for me!"

The six-legged ant crawled too fast for Liu He to keep up with.

He simply climbed onto the ant's back and rode on it to continue his journey.

The deeper you go into the tunnel, the darker it gets.

Liu He didn't know how many turns the ant made, he only knew that it was going deeper and deeper into the ground.

"I can't see them, but I can feel that there are many ants around me."

He heard rustling sounds of climbing all around him, and waves of consciousness that seemed "friendly and obedient".

Ants have extremely poor eyesight; they rely on their antennae to receive scents and pheromones to perceive their surroundings.

Their tiny heads have little intelligence and no emotions like joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness; they rely solely on pheromones to "communicate" and collaborate to complete various complex tasks.

Pheromones are their language.

"I seem to be able to sense their pheromones, and my words can also be converted into pheromones that they can hear."

Liu He quickly realized this.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

"This is the royal family."

The most central area of ​​the ant nest, where the queen ant lives and lays her eggs, is the "royal palace".

Liu He sensed clear pheromones from the queen ant, conveying only one signal: "I am the queen ant."

The queen ant is the absolute core of the ant colony. She is placed in the safest place and fed nutritious food by worker ants. In case of danger, the ant colony will give her priority protection.

This is a law etched into the genes of ants.

After Liu He appeared, the queen ant released another pheromone: obedience.

"Haha, that's interesting."

He had become the highest-ranking member of the ant colony, even higher than the queen.

"It's too stuffy here, take me out for some fresh air."

He patted his giant ant mount.

For someone his size, shrunk countless times, the anthill was quite spacious. But it was too dark there; he wasn't used to it.

The giant ant mount couldn't understand his commands and carried him around the anthill, sometimes to the worker ant colony, sometimes to the food storage room.

"Get to the ground, the ground!"

"Oh dear, how stupid."

After several attempts, Liu He finally found the right password: "foraging for food".

The giant ant mount crawled out of the ant nest.

An ant nest forms a raised, cone-shaped mound of earth on the ground, resembling a volcano, and is also known as an "ant mound".

The ant mound has many openings that connect to the underground nest.

Stop.

Liu He rode the giant ant out of the hole, then dismounted and stood on top of the ant mound.

This was the first time he had seen the world from the perspective of an ant.

The bright moon in the night sky is both very distant and enormous.

A tree stands nearby, its canopy disappearing into the clouds. From a distance, it looks like a pillar supporting the heavens and the earth.

The flowers and plants were magnified countless times, and even a single foxtail grass looked as immovable as a giant tree.

The chirping of insects and birds came from all directions, which made Liu He feel a strange sense of unease.

"There are countless snakes, insects, and rodents in this forest."

Normally he would not be afraid of mere insects, but now he has shrunk countless times.

A large number of ants were busy coming and going around him.

They carry plant seeds and grass seeds they have found outside in their mouths and transport them back to their nests.

Or they might clean out food scraps and other garbage from the nest.

Or they might be moving soil and stones to build their nests.

As they passed Liu He, they all emitted "obedience" pheromones.

Just then, Liu He saw a monster appear in the distance that was dozens of times larger than a giant ant.

It leaped dozens of feet into the air and landed with a "thud" near the anthill.

Liu He saw it clearly.

Its entire body is a murky dark green, and its thick armor is covered with rough particles and ferocious protrusions, which gleam with a cold, hard luster under the moonlight.

Its six legs were as thick as giant logs, with dark red membranes protruding from the joints, covered with a dense array of sharp barbs.

The most terrifying thing is its two giant, axe-like, serrated mandibles, which seem capable of crushing everything in the world when they open and close.

It is a grasshopper.

It was discovered by ants and was fleeing in panic, but it accidentally stumbled into an anthill, getting closer to hell.

The ants around it swarmed up like madmen, climbing onto its body, searching for gaps in its armor and weak points in its joints, and tearing at it with their pincer-like mandibles.

The giant grasshopper, writhing in pain, used its serrated mandibles to bite the ant in front of it in two, then gnawed and chewed it up.

However, there were too many ants around it, and even though it fought desperately, it could only kill a few ants, while more ants crawled onto its body.

It kicked, jumped, rolled, and struggled, but could not stop its death from coming.

"This cricket won't survive."

Liu He watched with great interest from a distance.

He often watched his ant colony hunt insects, and this was the first time he had observed the battle from this perspective.

Grasshoppers, mantises, centipedes, and all sorts of insects are on the ant colony's menu.

Individually, ants are weak. However, ants act in colonies, with colonies of thousands or even tens of thousands of ants capable of hunting prey much larger than themselves.

"Sigh, another ant has been bitten to death."

He was heartbroken to see an ant being killed by a grasshopper in its struggle.

These ants are his soldiers, his "subjects," and he feels heartbroken to lose even one of them.

"Bring it on, attack!"

"Support! Attack!"

At his pheromone command, more and more ants emerged from the anthill and pounced on the grasshopper.

In no time, the cricket was overwhelmed by swarms of ants.

Under normal circumstances, an ant colony would not send out so many ants to hunt a single grasshopper.

Liu He summoned so many ants in order to finish the battle quickly.

After a while, the grasshopper was completely devoured, leaving only its hard, inedible remains. The ants carried the broken shell away from the nest as trash.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The sun is about to rise, and a touch of white appears on the horizon.

Liu He stood atop the anthill, looking around at the numerous ant nest entrances and the countless ants going in and out.

He was full of vigor and high spirits.

Who says ants are weak?

As the saying goes, "Many ants can kill an elephant." A thousand-mile dike can be destroyed by an anthill.

"Ants are invincible if there are enough of them!"

"I want to build an ant kingdom here underground."

"And I am the king of this miniature world!"

Then, he saw a "mountain" fall from the sky.

"boom"!

The earth shook violently, and soil and rocks rolled down.

The enormous monster was like a mountain of flesh, its gluttonous maw opening wide to devour an ant.