3: Chapter 3 Hatching Iron Ant Eggs

This spiritual energy continuously spread through his body. With every cycle, Chi Anlin could feel his body becoming a bit sturdier.

Perhaps because his original body was too weak, this sensation was exceptionally distinct.

As the spiritual energy washed through him, it felt as though impurities were being expelled. Through the mirror, Chi Anlin could see black impurities constantly oozing from his body.

In short, his pores were spraying filth.

"Contracting a monster has this many benefits?"

Chi Anlin enjoyed the sensation. However, in his memories, contracting a monster was like experiencing a brush with death; one's mental strength would be drained, and the spiritual energy feedback was also exceptionally painful.

Could it be due to the influence of blood energy?

Looking at himself in the mirror, Chi Anlin sighed. It seemed he wasn't some buried genius with too much talent, but rather truly too much of a loser; otherwise, he wouldn't have expelled so much filth.

Beside him, the Ant Queen was sprawled next to a cactus on the table, using its antennae to touch the cactus's spines, filled with curiosity.

Chi Anlin glanced at the Ant Queen. Although it was small as a Mortal Rank monster, it required a lot of energy; otherwise, it wouldn't have produced those weak ants before.

After taking a prepared fish from the kitchen and tossing it onto the table in his room, Chi Anlin thought for a moment and took out a few Spirit Gathering Pills from a drawer.

These were things he usually ate, but they were essentially useless as the spiritual energy they provided dissipated quickly.

They could barely serve as supplies for the Ant Queen.

After ordering the Ant Queen to start production, Chi Anlin went to the bathroom to wash off the filth on his body.

Back in the room, the Ant Queen crawled toward the carp and began to eat. Its ferocious mandibles easily tore off the fish meat, and before long, it had consumed an amount of meat nearly equal to its own size.

However, it was clear that this Ant Queen wasn't like those in novels that could gain nutrition through constant eating; its digestive capacity was limited. Eating this much meat had already caused its abdomen to swell.

The energy in the fish meat wasn't enough to produce Mortal Rank high-grade Worker Ants. The Ant Queen tilted its head and looked at the pills nearby.

...

Red-legged Cultivating Fierce Antss have a long growth period, taking about forty days from egg to cocoon, and another twenty-seven days from cocoon to Worker Ant.

If things proceeded at this pace, by the time these ants developed, he would already be preparing for his final exams.

As a combat weakling who always ranked last in practical combat, if it weren't for his family's connections, he probably would have been dropped into an ordinary class by now.

People in ordinary classes were basically those unable to cultivate, left with no choice but to pursue academic studies.

However...

Chi Anlin looked at the insect eggs on the table.

Just now, he had finished scrubbing himself thoroughly in the bathroom. After coming out half an hour later, he found the Ant Queen standing on the table like a statue, motionless.

Through some deduction, he put in a lot of effort to understand what had happened.

After getting full, the Ant Queen discovered the pills containing more energy, but with its stomach capacity, it was difficult to eat them.

So while thinking, with the Ant Queen's current intelligence, its CPU had clearly overloaded, and it had entered a crashed state.

He sighed. Perhaps in the future, he should fuse the Ant Queen with some brain-boosting medicine; otherwise, with its IQ, it would likely crash again when encountering complex commands.

But this time also made Chi Anlin realize that this wasn't a game; there had to be logic, and the Ant Queen still needed to digest.

Maybe he could enhance its digestion speed through fusion? Or perhaps fuse it with a Storage Ring... Forget it, he couldn't afford a Storage Ring; they were frighteningly expensive.

However, what puzzled Chi Anlin was that there were no male ants around the Ant Queen. How were these eggs produced?

With doubt, Chi Anlin used Appraisal on the ant eggs.

[Name]: Iron Fierce Ant (Egg)

[Attribute]: Metal

[Level]: Mortal Rank, Level 1

[Potential]: Mortal Rank, Mid-grade

[Hatching Time]: One day

The hatching time of the larvae was greatly reduced. Being of Mortal Rank quality, it had already absorbed most of the energy while inside the Ant Queen's abdomen, so the hatching time was much shorter.

After they hatched, Chi Anlin would buy some spiritual metals for them to devour, increasing their defense and thus achieving the goal of improving their strength.

Currently, the main problem he faced was insufficient energy. Fortunately, his pocket money was quite ample, so he could make some small purchases.

Once the ant colony developed, he could release them to grow freely, but for now, he had to focus on rapid breeding.

The mutated Iron Fierce Ants inherited the characteristics of the Red-legged Cultivating Fierce Antss, which was that Worker Ants could also reproduce and lay eggs.

Although the quality of the eggs produced by the Worker Ants certainly wouldn't be as high as those from the Ant Queen, they were barely acceptable as basic labor.

In the wild, only high-status Red-legged Cultivating Fierce Antss could reproduce; if they encountered eggs from low-status ants, they would even kill them.

And the Ant Queen wouldn't allow Worker Ants to reproduce either.

But as Chi Anlin's bonded beast, the Ant Queen was naturally unconditionally obedient and would control the hierarchical behavior of its subordinate Worker Ants.

Chi Anlin thought for a moment. Producing two high-quality ant eggs a day required too much energy; it would be better to directly produce ordinary Ant Soldiers to kill small insects.

Speaking of which, he had been quite foolish. He had clearly had so many Worker Ants but had killed them all, leaving the current Ant Queen as a lone commander.

"Ant Queen, produce ordinary ant eggs."

On the table, upon receiving the production command, the Ant Queen gently flicked its antennae and lowered its body to begin producing.

Before long, eggs were produced one by one. These eggs were much smaller than the Mortal Rank mid-grade eggs. Due to the influence of the Ant Queen herself, the hatching time for ordinary eggs was also much faster.

Wriggling larvae soon appeared within the translucent eggs. Chi Anlin raised an eyebrow; with such a fast development speed, cultivation really couldn't be linked to science.

The Ant Queen wasn't a perpetual motion machine either. After producing fifty eggs, it stopped. Producing this many eggs put a certain burden on it, so it needed time to recover its vitality.

If it were ordinary eggs, the current Ant Queen could produce two hundred a day. But if they were Mortal Rank mid-grade eggs, it could only produce two; forcing production would harm its foundation, which would be a thankless task.

[Name]: Iron Fierce Ant (Egg)

[Attribute]: Metal

[Level]: None

[Potential]: None

[Hatching Time]: Ten minutes

While waiting for them to hatch, Chi Anlin began searching for metal products. After hatching, the Iron Fierce Ants could enhance their defense by eating, but the larval stage was still quite vulnerable, and he didn't know how long it would last...

Although ordinary Iron Fierce Ants didn't have much combat power, the pre-mutated Red-legged Cultivating Fierce Antss were capable of taking on mealworms individually. If fifty Iron Fierce Ants were released into the yard, they could kill many insects in a single night.

Metal products were nothing more than iron basins, pots, and the like. Chi Anlin wasn't sure about the appetite of these Iron Fierce Ants, so he brought them all upstairs.

Naturally, the higher the grade of metal for the Mortal Rank mid-grade Iron Fierce Ants and the Ant Queen themselves, the better. So before they hatched, Chi Anlin planned to visit the market to buy some Mortal Rank metals.

Returning to the room, Chi Anlin excitedly waited for the Iron Fierce Ants to hatch. This gave him a much greater sense of achievement than playing with bugs in his past life.

Before long, the Iron Fierce Ants hatched. Chi Anlin was stunned. Logically, shouldn't these Iron Fierce Ants be in a larval state? How did they hatch directly into their adult form?

One by one, ferocious-looking Iron Fierce Ants tore through their eggshells. They were about the size of a pinky finger. Chi Anlin felt that these ants could even hunt small animals like mice.

The newly hatched Iron Fierce Ants began to devour the iron, making a harsh scraping sound. As the iron basin disappeared, Chi Anlin noticed a metallic luster beginning to shimmer on the ants' bodies, each one becoming like a piece of art.

Picking up an Iron Fierce Ant, Chi Anlin examined it closely. Then, he gently squeezed it and found that its hardness was already comparable to some beetles.

Truly terrifying.

Maybe he should change his approach and have the Ant Queen focus entirely on producing ordinary Iron Fierce Ants. That way, in just five days, there would be thousands of Iron Fierce Ants in the backyard.

The Ant Soldiers continued devouring the iron basin. Chi Anlin thought for a moment and used his phone to buy some new iron basins. Since they all looked identical anyway, no one would notice anything once the labels were removed.

Otherwise, when his mother returned and found so many iron basins missing, he couldn't exactly say he fed them to the ants, could he?

Rubbing his hands, Chi Anlin thought that if just these few iron basins could increase the Ant Soldiers' defense by this much, what if it were rare metals, similar to Mortal Rank metals?

Thinking about how he would have an army of ants in the future, Chi Anlin couldn't suppress the excitement in his heart.

Beast taming is totally outdated; mass-producing troops is the way to go.

However, Chi Anlin's ideal Worker Ants should evolve directly by using metals. But this was just a small synthesis; being able to use metals to accelerate growth was already very good.

After tossing a bunch of Worker Ants and fish meat into the backyard and ordering them not to harm the few rabbits, Chi Anlin let them grow on their own.

These Worker Ants also possessed the ability to reproduce, which gave Chi Anlin the chance to snowball. Although their strength wasn't great, they made up for it in numbers.

If an Iron Fierce Ant was injured and unable to recover, its companions could finish it off. As long as they possessed the Ant Queen's bloodline, the blood energy from the creatures they killed would go directly to Chi Anlin.

After finishing all this, Chi Anlin locked his room door to prevent his parents from entering and harming the Ant Queen. After all, it would be hard to explain his contract with the Ant Queen; to them, it was impossible to contract this type of monster without powerful mental strength.

Next, it was time to head to Xincha Road.