The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 20 Attacked
  On the other side, the location of the second pioneer female.

Different from the first one, which is mainly responsible for exploration, the second pioneer mother's mission is to expand. It does not go straight to the ocean, but keeps moving along the shallow sea, looking for rich sea areas along the way, and is built by the accompanying nesting workers. It pupates into the mother nest and expands its territory.

So far, the Second Expeditionary Fleet with the Pioneer Mother No. 2 as the core has sown three new nests. Everywhere they go, the soldiers hunt a large creature and place its body next to the nesting workers that are pupating. Once the mother nest has finished pupating, it will start to produce workers to collect food and supply the sea ringo. Clusters proliferate at full speed.

But now, as he continued to move forward, Lin Yi discovered something unusual.

The female pioneer slowly dived to the seabed, stretched out three pairs of chelicerae, and gently turned over a huge shell on the seabed - it was the head shell of a Poseidon shrimp.

But at this time, the familiar head shell was covered with shocking and hideous scars.

There are tiny scratches all around the shell, as if there was something scratched by a file-like structure full of fine teeth.

In the middle, there is a deep irregular scratch, which should be caused by the sharp blade-like structure gnawing from both ends.

The hard head shell of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp acts as a solid helmet as its name suggests.

Even if Binghao was born out of a giant feather-winged horseshoe crab and had structurally reinforced sickle limbs, it would be difficult to break open. In this era, it is difficult to imagine what kind of creature can break through such an "iron head".

The structures that best match the scars are probably the large corner stones represented by the corner stones and interior corner stones.

The largest corner stone shell ever discovered was nine meters long, and it was indeed possible to make such scars on the head shell of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp.

However, the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp is a typical upper water filter feeder. Although Cornerstone is different from the mainstream view in Lin Yi's previous life, it is not a filter feeder, but it is not an active swimming predator, but a trilobite-eating trilobite on the bottom of the sea. It is a benthic predator whose shell is too bulky and affects its swimming ability, so it is unlikely to conflict with the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp.

But after thinking about it, Lin Yi just thought that the body of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp fell on the seabed after its death, and was discovered and eaten by the corner stone. Without paying too much attention, he controlled the pioneer mother to continue swimming forward.

But soon, more wreckage appeared in Lin Yi's sight. Not only the head shell of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp, but also the cone-shaped shell of the hornstone, but this shell is still covered with scars, and some simply break into two parts, exposing the internal air chamber diaphragm.

Of course, there are indispensable the exoskeleton fragments of large trilobites such as Pseudomonas and others, and the exoskeleton fragments of horseshoe crabs, etc., which together form a pile of debris that looks like a skeleton. Lin Yi felt a little confused as to what kind of creature could cause such a terrifying scene.

While thinking, a few small horned stones, which I don't know whether they are rectangular stones or beaded horns, swam next to the pioneering mother. They swung their tentacles and swam beside the mother. From time to time, they separated from the pioneering mother and fell into the wreckage. He shuttled back and forth in time, so agile and light, which was incompatible with this mountain of corpses and sea of ​​blood.

But Lin Yi vaguely felt that something was wrong. The female pioneer used her chelicerae to pick up the remains of a large trilobite and looked at it carefully. The strong exoskeleton unique to Ctenophora is torn apart violently, which must require a huge force on the level of a large hornstone. But the inside is very clean, as if it was scraped off bit by bit by a small creature, and it doesn't look like it was done by the same creature.

Then he looked at the few small horned stones that were still swimming nearby. He had never seen the appearance of these small horned stones, but compared to the common small horned stones, their shapes were slightly weird, and they did not resemble the structural proportions of small horned stones. It looks like...a large corner stone scaled down!
  Lin Yi suddenly reacted and controlled the pioneering mother to quickly turn around. The water-jet propulsion system and paddle-like paddling feet were fully activated, thinking about retreating behind and away from this land of right and wrong.

But it's too late. In the compound eyes, something was chopping through the waves in the distant water. Its slender body passed by at high speed, leaving a long white water line behind it. The dark red lines on the gray-white shell with a metallic luster looked like it was dyed with blood, making it particularly ferocious.

The huge shell is several times longer than the pioneering mother frog, and is no less than the largest corner stone.

The cone-shaped shell proves that it is also an unknown corner stone, but its astonishing speed shows that it is not a bulky benthic species like the corner stone that eats trilobites on the sea floor, but a huge predator that is as big as the corner stone. By.

Facing such an opponent, the pioneer mother had no ability to resist. She was completely at the mercy of others. She had no choice but to continue to run the water jet propulsion system at full speed to escape. At the same time, several soldiers broke away from the back of the pioneer mother and lined up behind it. , facing the huge unknown corner stone rushing towards him.

But the opponent only slightly changed direction, and the sharp end of the conical shell pierced the soldiers blocking the front like a lance. The strong chitinous exoskeleton was pierced like a hot knife through butter.

Under the huge kinetic energy, Bing Hao's entire body was torn apart from the puncture point, and blue horseshoe crab blood spurted out and spread among the waves.

But Jiao Shi's movements did not stop. The huge body that remained unabated brought up a wave of water, rushing away several nearby soldiers and heading straight for the pioneering mother. A pair of them resembled later generations of squids, but their eyes, which were countless times larger, revealed murderous intent. Ten tentacles were waving, revealing a sharp horny beak with a cold light shining in the middle.

The soft tissue part of this corner stone alone is more than two meters long, and the soldiers modified from the feather-winged horseshoe crab template appear extremely small in front of them.

Each of the ten tentacles is thick and long, and unlike the corner stone's tentacles, the inner sides of these ten tentacles are covered with fine tooth-like horny protrusions, making their entanglement a real death embrace.

Although the control ability of this structure is not as good as the suction cups on the tentacles of cephalopods in later generations, it can still be used in this era, and in some aspects, it is even more powerful than the suction cups. The scratches on the head shell of the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp earlier prove this.

The huge conical shell like a lance was raised, trying to pierce the pioneering mother grass again like a soldier's body.

But the combination of five pairs of paddling legs and a water-jet propulsion system allowed the pioneering female's body to successfully avoid this fatal sting. Immediately, the nearby soldiers surrounded and attacked again, intercepting the charging corner stone.

The funnel-shaped structure connected to the water jet propulsion system on the corner stone changes direction and sprays out a stream of water in the opposite direction. The huge body decelerated suddenly, and then the structural advantages of the cephalopod were fully exposed. It opened its ten tentacles, saving the time to change direction, and went straight towards the pioneering mother. A pair of sharp horny beaks opened and closed, trying to turn the pioneer mother into part of the debris pile.

(End of this chapter)