Chapter 368: Insect Plague |
Upon hearing that there were many palm-sized black bugs, Qin Ziwen took the matter seriously.
In the natural world, sometimes the most terrifying things are not the large prey, but rather these small opponents that can infiltrate everywhere.
He calmed down Li Yue who had run over. "Don't rush, stop and tell me slowly."
Li Yue stopped, propped his hands on his knees, and gasped for breath.
"I just went home to get something. When I was going downstairs, I stepped on something hard. I thought it was a stone, but the thing moved and gave me a fright. Then I realized it was a kind of palm-sized beetle, quite hard. I stepped on its back, and it wasn't fazed at all. It even bit a chunk off my boot and tore it away." Li Yue lifted his foot. Qin Ziwen could see clearly that the front of the boot on Li Yue's foot looked like a large piece had been ripped off by a pair of pliers.
A big chunk was missing from the front.
On the open ground outside the residential complex, over a hundred people had gathered. Each held a torch. On the ground ahead, red-hot coals and charcoal were spread to form a moat.
On the other side of the moat, densely packed black bugs converged into a river.
It was unclear whether they were intimidated by the firelight or the heat, but this swarm of bugs shrank back on the ground, their claws scraping against the hard, muddy earth, producing rustling sounds.
If not for seeing the densely packed, still-wriggling abdominal legs, he might have thought it was a black computer mouse.
[Common · Black Beetle: ☆☆]
Taking the Black Beetle from his younger brother's hand, he could feel the bug in his grasp struggling with considerable effort. Its strength was not small. The most exaggerated part was its mouthparts. The flap-like mouthparts kept twitching, opening to almost a hundred and eighty degrees.
Qin Ziwen thought for a moment, bent down, broke off a piece of stone from the ground, and placed it near the black bug's mouth.
It almost instinctively grabbed onto the stone and began gnawing with its mouthparts.
A sharp grating sound reached his ears. Under his gaze, the Black Beetle before him actually held the stone and began to chew on it.
Qin Ziwen's pupils contracted slightly. The bite force was actually this astonishing?!
If it can eat stone, wouldn't eating a person be effortless?
He looked again at these bugs. There were many of them, and they were chaotic. He also didn't know what so many bugs survived on.
Did they eat dirt?
Or did they feed on other bugs?
With such numbers, if they all had a carnivorous preference, that would be terrifying.
Enough ants can kill an elephant. The Black Beetles here now were far more than just a few ants.
Qin Ziwen frowned tightly, looking at the surrounding firelight. With the flames present, the bugs temporarily dared not approach. But what if the flames went out?
Or what if the bugs learned to circle around and approach from the sides?
Thinking of this, alarm bells rang loudly in his heart. At the same time, he silently calculated how much firewood would be needed to build a moat composed of flames.
Just a rough calculation yielded a despairing answer.
With the residential complex's current reserves of coal and wood, if they wanted to maintain a moat composed of wood-fueled fire for 24 hours, they could only last a maximum of three days.
Beyond eight days ago, the speed of excavation simply couldn't keep up with the rate of consumption.
"No good. Doing it this way, the fuel supply can't keep up at all," Qin Ziwen sighed inwardly.
They needed other methods to solve this predicament.
Merely defending absolutely would not work.
"Have you discovered their weaknesses?"
Zhao Pu said, "For now, we've discovered they fear firelight."
"Anything else?"
"Nothing."
"Du Yu." Qin Ziwen turned his head to look at Du Yu.
On the tip of Du Yu's spear was skewered a still-wriggling Black Beetle.
"Master, this creature's defense is strong, its speed is somewhat slow, and its intelligence is not high." Du Yu paused. If their intelligence were high, these Black Beetles wouldn't be temporarily isolated outside by them like this. They could simply circle around to avoid the flames. It seemed this swarm of bugs was a bit "stubborn."
Wang Yun said, "All things in nature are interconnected and restrain each other. Since there are Black Beetles, there must be creatures underground that feed on them, just like there are anteaters in the natural world."
Yuan Ming said impatiently, "Nonsense. Of course we know they have natural predators. But where can we find their natural predators right now?"
Wang Yun was speechless. "Why are you in such a hurry? Since there are Black Beetles nearby, traces of their natural predators' activities shouldn't be far away. As the saying goes, within seven steps of a poisonous snake, there must be an antidote. With so much food present, the traces of natural predators' activities definitely won't be too far, otherwise they would have already proliferated into a disaster."
Upon hearing Wang Yun's words, the atmosphere on site fell into brief silence. Many people were speechless. Wasn't this already a proliferated disaster?
Then everyone looked at each other, simultaneously thinking of a certain answer.
"Could it be that those Centipedes are specifically meant to eat these Black Beetles!?"
"Are there any still alive?" Qin Ziwen looked at Cao Biansheng.
Cao Biansheng's mouth twitched. These things were both ugly and fierce-looking. At the time, they were only focused on killing them. No one held back. "Guild Leader, the ones in the hospital are all dead. However, there might still be some remaining individuals in the cave behind the hospital."
"What about the corpses?"
"I still have two corpses over there. I'll have someone bring them over to take a look," Li Yue interjected.
Seeing Qin Ziwen look over, Li Yue explained, "I saw their carapaces were quite hard, so I wanted to keep two for research, to see if the shells on their backs could be made into chest armor."
When Li Yue's people brought the Centipede over, the shell on its back had basically been removed, leaving only the tender white meat inside, along with some internal organs and blood vessels.
After smelling the Centipede's bloody scent, this swarm of Black Beetles became agitated, but instead grew more excited.
It was as if they had smelled something delicious.
"Are you sure this thing would be their natural predator? Couldn't it be on their menu?" Qin Ziwu voiced his suspicion.
Wang Yun said with an unchanged expression, "Chickens are natural predators of centipedes, but when a dead chicken is buried underground, its corpse attracts centipedes. All things in nature are interconnected and restrain each other. If we could get a live one, we could verify it. Guild Leader, actually, what I'm thinking is, even if we have live Centipedes, one or two might not necessarily be able to disperse this swarm of bugs. It might be better to think of other countermeasures."
Qin Ziwen felt the Black Beetle in his hand struggling. He narrowed his eyes, picked up a smoking charcoal rod from beside him, and pressed it against the side of its black carapace.
"Sizzle..."
Thick white smoke rose into the air. The moment the hard black shell came into contact with the high temperature, it instantly dried up, carbonized, and was easily burned through.
A charred smell filled the air, like cooked protein.
"So they are indeed afraid of high temperatures. In that case, let's burn them! Lure them over. Let's have a grand beetle roast! Using their fear of high temperatures, lure them into a trap, and then roast them all!"
Upon receiving the order, the Qin Alliance began to operate, selecting a location near the south gate entrance for the trap. The environment here was naturally suitable as a trap.
Using the charcoal fire as a boundary, a large net was gradually laid out. In the middle were isolated, dry, flammable materials.
While the Qin Alliance was busy with this, in another underground cavern one kilometer away from the residential complex, a Shedding Abyss resembling an ancient town was in dire peril.
The bluestone walls surrounding the town were covered with black bugs. Like locusts, they were madly swarming into the town.