Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 547 The entire convoy was wiped out.
“Sorry, old friend.” Nagano Soya, sitting in the cockpit of the White Tiger, sighed, reached out and grabbed the chain tied to the metal box, then let go of the hand holding the heavy trailer.

"It's an honor to be your subordinate." The accountant's relieved voice came through the communication channel, followed by a muffled gunshot.

The heavy trailer suddenly slowed down, creating distance between itself and the speeding White Tiger. Then, the vehicle swerved sideways, overturned, rolled several times, and crashed heavily into an armored off-road vehicle that was rushing up from behind.

With a deafening roar, flames shot into the sky as countless flesh-eating ants frantically devoured the burning carcass amidst the flames—they felt no pain, were unafraid of death, and had no self-awareness. Their sole mission upon hatching was to consume as much biomass as possible in this world and then deliver it to the queen ant hiding deep within the nest.

The Longcheng City Defense Army once launched two "insect extermination operations" in this area. The first operation used dozens of bunker-buster bombs, which directly killed the queen ant deep in the insect nest.

The second pest control operation involved using drones to inject large quantities of oxygen-mixed gel-like incendiary agent into the insect nest through the holes, burning the nest completely.

But none of that worked. In a short time, the flesh-eating ants would reappear in the area and reproduce into a large colony.

Researchers have discovered that once the queen ant dies, the strongest individual among the remaining surviving carnivorous ants will immediately mutate and become a new queen ant.

Researchers initially thought this was due to the effect of some kind of pheromone, but they soon discovered that this mutation was not related to pheromones. Even when the surviving carnivorous ant was far away from the nest, it could still sense the death of the queen and complete this "inherited" mutation.

This seems to be an underlying logic in the flesh-eating ant meme—these flesh-eating ants are more like a whole rather than a group of organisms, and the so-called queen is not the leader of the ant colony, but rather the reproductive organ and energy storage organ of this whole.

Later, the researchers came up with a solution: instead of killing the queen ant directly, they captured and contained her—this way, the queen ant wouldn't die and cause a new queen ant to appear, and the population growth of carnivorous ant colonies in the wild could be curbed to the greatest extent.

However, forty-two hours after the flesh-eating ant queen was captured, all her bodily functions failed, and no matter what methods the researchers used, they could not revive her… At the same time, a new flesh-eating ant queen reappeared in the desert. “Besides death, if the flesh-eating ant queen cannot properly perform the tasks of concentrating biomass and reproducing ordinary flesh-eating ants, she will die on her own, thus allowing a new queen capable of performing these tasks to be born from the remaining flesh-eating ants. Therefore, controlling the queen alone is insufficient to control the entire flesh-eating ant colony.” —Excerpt from Chapter Six, Part Fourteen of the “Flesh-Eating Ant Research Report”.

"To eradicate the entire carnivorous ant colony, every single carnivorous ant must be killed. In fact, given the current state of the federal government, we believe there is no need to do so. Carnivorous ants almost never leave their inherent territory located in the uninhabited area of ​​the Hexi Corridor. According to the results of the third special experiment, even if the queen carnivorous ant is released to another place, she will try every means to return to that area. Therefore, we can conclude that this strange creature has almost no impact on current human civilization." —Excerpt from Chapter 16 of the "Carnivorous Ant Research Report".

"Dr. Carlton believes that some kind of strange creature may exist beneath the territory of the flesh-eating ants, which is why they have remained in the area. We organized three survey missions and mobilized all the resources we could find in Longcheng, but still found nothing. Chang'an suggested that we stop the research project, arguing that the flesh-eating ants were not worth studying. Dr. Carlton insisted on continuing the research, and Chang'an did not reject his request, but stopped funding the research project." —Excerpt from the fourth paragraph of the "Supplementary Documents to the Report on Flesh-Eating Ant Research."

"The Dragon City garrison agreed to Dr. Carlton's request. Colonel Xu believed the monsters should be eliminated, and eradicating the flesh-eating ants would at least open up a safer path in the no-man's-land. (Note: Colonel Xu was a hawk within the Dragon City garrison, firmly believing that the army should not remain entrenched in Dragon City but should take the initiative to reclaim the Hexi Corridor no-man's-land, which was essentially no different from an occupied area.) However, after three special military operations, the soldiers discovered that the flesh-eating ants would consciously bury their eggs in various corners of the desert. Even if all the flesh-eating ants in their territory were eliminated, the hidden eggs would immediately hatch, and new queens would emerge. They were like cockroaches, impossible to eradicate. Dr. Carlton demanded that the garrison continue to cooperate with his research, promising to completely eliminate these insects using meme-level technology, but the garrison refused." —Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Carlton Noren's assistant, a Level III encrypted file.

Upon learning that Nagano Soya's convoy had been wiped out by the Flesh-Eating Ants, Zhulong sighed and said, "This is the norm for free hunters... Many people think that free hunters are like superhumans in novels, possessing all sorts of abilities beyond ordinary people and easily earning far more than the wages of ordinary people. But in reality, being a free hunter is definitely a high-risk profession. Death is commonplace for them... I used to know many hunters active in Lungmen, but now less than one in ten are still alive... Many hunters regret leaving the profession soon after, but becoming a registered hunter again is much harder than becoming a free hunter again. Ninety-nine percent of free hunters can't meet those requirements."

“I see quite a few free hunters living a comfortable life, don’t I?” Sun Hang asked.

"It's just survivor bias. People living in the interior will never know the stories of hunters who were eaten by flesh-eating ants or died in Giant Hill," said Zhulong. "Only a very few strong or lucky ones will become stories passed down among people."

“Although it’s pitiful that these hunters were eaten by the flesh-eating ants, it’s a kind of natural selection. If they can’t even deal with such monstrous creatures as flesh-eating ants, they’ll only be a hindrance when they go to Egypt with us… and they might even die a more gruesome death.” Sun Hang said calmly, “Zhulong, do you think this kind of assessment method is a bit too cruel?”

Zhulong: "This world has always been cruel."

(End of this chapter)