Chapter 22: Experiments
Luo Wen muttered complaints as he found himself traveling farther to hunt lone black ants, dragging them back to the nest. The extra effort annoyed him, but it was worth it. Days of feeding the brood nest with meat had finally restored its vitality, enabling it to begin another wave of spawning.
As he worked, Luo Wen reflected on his previous approach. Last time, he directly hatched a fully grown insect—a black beetle. While it only took two days to mature from egg to larva and then to adult, Luo Wen suspected it might have skipped a pupal stage, condensing four growth stages into one. Though this yielded a combat-ready ally, the process consumed an enormous amount of the brood nest’s flesh to sustain the beetle’s massive body.
This led Luo Wen to a hypothesis: would allowing the brood nest to lay eggs and letting them develop naturally be far less resource-intensive?
His observations supported the idea. Over the past few days, constant feeding of tree roots had caused the black beetle to grow slightly. Initially, its undersized form was due to the brood nest’s limited size at the time of its creation. Luo Wen had thought the beetle was akin to a factory-made product, fixed at “manufacture.” But this new organic biotechnology was unlike the mechanical systems he once knew—it held endless possibilities.
Seeing the black beetle continue to develop, Luo Wen realized he’d underestimated the brood nest’s potential. It was time to try producing an egg and letting it hatch naturally. This time, he chose to create an ant egg using unaltered black ant genetic material, aiming to test whether it carried a communication system.
The brood nest produced a small, pale-yellow egg without any noticeable strain. Luo Wen was thrilled—his hypothesis seemed correct. Producing eggs for natural development was indeed the optimal approach.
However, his excitement was short-lived. As he stared at the fragile egg, he realized he had no experience in egg care. Before he could devise a solution, tragedy struck: the black beetle, wandering nearby, stepped on the egg. Its sharp claws pierced the delicate shell, spilling its contents onto the ground.
Luo Wen froze, dumbfounded. The beetle, oblivious to its actions, continued patrolling. The egg’s stillness, combined with its tiny size relative to the beetle, had made it an unnoticeable casualty. Blaming himself for his lapse in focus, Luo Wen accepted that the egg was beyond saving.
Though frustrating, the incident sparked new thoughts. While the brood nest evolved from Luo Wen and was technically part of him, its creations were not true Iphieash. Both the black beetle and the egg were proof. If Iphieash could be bred this way, they wouldn’t be so rare.