Our neighborhood has been transported again.

Chapter 370 Insect Plague
Upon hearing that there were many palm-sized black insects, Qin Ziwen took it seriously.

In nature, sometimes the most terrifying prey are not the large animals, but rather these small, ubiquitous adversaries.

He reassured Li Yue, who was running over, "Don't rush, stop and talk slowly."

Li Yue stopped, braced his hands on his knees, and gasped for breath.

"I went home to get something, and when I went downstairs I stepped on something hard. I thought it was a rock, but it moved, which startled me. Then I realized it was a palm-sized beetle, quite hard. I stepped on its back, and it didn't deflate at all. It even bit off a piece from my boot." Li Yue lifted his foot, and Qin Ziwen could clearly see that a large chunk of Li Yue's boot had been torn off, as if by pliers.

A large section is missing at the beginning.

Hundreds of people gathered in the open space outside the residential area, each holding a torch. In front of them, a moat was formed by burning coals and charcoal.

On the other side of the river, countless black insects converge to form a river.

Whether intimidated by the firelight or the heat, the insects huddled on the ground, their claws scraping against the hard mud, making a rustling sound.

"Brother, come and see. These bugs appeared out of nowhere. They eat everything and are very aggressive." Qin Ziwu held a black bug in his hand.

If he hadn't seen the dense, still-moving abdominal claws, he would have thought it was a black mouse.

[Common Black Beetle: ☆☆]

He took the black beetle from his younger brother. When he took it, he could feel the insect struggling with great effort. It was quite strong. The most exaggerated thing was its mouthparts. The lobed mouthparts kept wriggling and almost opened to 180 degrees.

Qin Ziwen thought for a moment, then bent down, broke off a stone from the ground, and placed it near the black insect's mouth.

It almost instinctively grabbed the rock and began to gnaw at it with its mouthparts.

A harsh scraping sound came from his ear, and as he watched, the black beetle in front of him began to gnaw on the stone.

Qin Ziwen's pupils contracted slightly. The bite force was astonishing!
If they can eat stones, wouldn't it be an easy task for them to eat people?

He looked at the insects again. There were many of them, and they were in a mess. He wondered how so many insects survived.

Are we going to eat dirt?

They still feed on other insects.

If such a large number of them are all carnivorous, that would be terrifying.

Ants can kill an elephant, and the black beetles here are no longer just ants.

Qin Ziwen frowned and looked at the surrounding firelight. As long as the flames were burning, the insects dared not approach for the time being, but if the flames went out...

Or perhaps the insects have learned to circle around and come from the side.

Thinking of this, alarm bells rang in his mind, and he silently estimated how much firewood he would need to build a moat made of flames.

A rough calculation yielded a despairing answer.

With the current coal and timber reserves in the community, it can only maintain a moat made of firewood for a maximum of three days if it is to be maintained 24 hours a day.

After three days, the rate of excavation can no longer keep up with the rate of consumption.

"No, this won't work; the fuel supply simply won't keep up," Qin Ziwen sighed inwardly.

We need to find other ways to resolve this predicament.

Simply relying on defense is definitely not going to work.

"Have you discovered their weaknesses?"

Zhao Pu said, "So far, we've discovered that they are afraid of firelight."

"Anything else?" "That's all."

"Du Yu." Qin Ziwen turned to look at Du Yu.

A black beetle, still wriggling, was stuck in the tip of Du Yu's spear.

"My lord, this creature has strong defense, but is a bit slow and not very intelligent." Du Yu paused. If it were intelligent, these black beetles wouldn't have been temporarily kept out like this. They could have simply circled around to avoid the flames. It seems these insects are a bit "stubborn".

Wang Jun said, "Everything in the universe has its counterpart. Since there are black beetles, there must be something underground that feeds on them, just like there are anteaters in nature."

Yuan Ming said impatiently, "Nonsense, of course we know they have natural enemies, but where are we going to find them in the short term?"

Wang Jun was speechless. "Why are you in such a hurry? Since there are black beetles nearby, there should be traces of their natural enemies not far from them. As the saying goes, there is always an antidote within seven steps of a poisonous snake. With so much food, the traces of their natural enemies must not be too far away, otherwise they would have already become a plague."

Upon hearing Wang Jun's words, the atmosphere fell into a brief silence. Many people were speechless; wasn't this already an overabundance?

Then everyone looked at each other and simultaneously came up with the same answer.

"Could it be that those centipedes specifically eat these black beetles?!"

"Are there any survivors?" Qin Ziwen asked Cao Biansheng.

Cao Biansheng's lips twitched. This thing was ugly and fierce. At the time, he was only concerned with killing it and no one was spared. "Chairman, all the centipedes in the hospital have been killed, but there may still be some remaining in the cave behind the hospital."

"Where is the body?"

“I still have two corpses with me. I’ll have someone bring them over to take a look,” Li Yue interjected.

Seeing Qin Ziwen looking over, Li Yue explained, "I saw that its shell is quite hard, and I wanted to keep two to study and see if the shell on its back could be made into armor."

When Li Yue's men brought the centipede, its outer shell had been mostly removed, leaving only the tender white flesh inside, along with some organs and blood vessels.

Upon smelling the centipede's blood, the group of black beetles stirred and became even more excited.

It was as if it had smelled something delicious.

"Is this thing their natural enemy, or perhaps part of their diet?" Qin Ziwu wondered.

Wang Jun said without changing his expression, "Chickens are the natural enemy of centipedes, but if a dead chicken is buried underground, its corpse will attract centipedes. Everything in the universe has its counterpart. If there are any living ones, then we can verify this."

"President, what I'm actually thinking is that even if we had live centipedes, one or two might not be enough to drive away this swarm of insects. Perhaps we should consider other ways to deal with it."

Qin Ziwen felt the black beetle struggling in his hand, narrowed his eyes, picked up a smoking charcoal stick from the side, and poked it against the side of its black shell.

"Zi"

Thick white smoke billowed in the air. The hard, black shell instantly shrank and carbonized upon contact with the high temperature, and was easily burned through.

There was a burnt smell in the air, like roasted protein.

"They really are afraid of high temperatures. In that case, let's burn them! Let's lure them over and set them on fire! Using their fear of high temperatures, we'll lure them into the trap and roast them all!"

Upon receiving the order, the Qin Alliance began to take action, choosing a location for the trap near the south gate entrance, where the environment was naturally suitable for setting up a trap.

With the charcoal fire as the boundary, a large net is gradually spread out, with dry, flammable materials separated in the middle.

While Qin Meng was busy, another underground cave, about one kilometer away from the residential area, a place resembling an ancient town, was in imminent danger.

The bluestone walls surrounding the town were crawling with black insects, which swarmed into the town like locusts.

(End of this chapter)