Force Astral Plane: Starting with the Chimera Ants

Chapter 73: Hybrid Pollination

After flapping its wings and flying out of the main peak nest, Ye Zhi found a bamboo forest. It pulled out extremely fine ant silk, which turned into flying blades to cut the bamboo sections. Then it used ant silk rope to weave and seal one end, skillfully making a simple transport container.

Returning to the main nest incubation chamber, the spatial energy in the brain is activated, and twenty primary stage worker ants carry the semi-primitive queen's golden eggs in a single file, then wrap them with several more layers of ant silk to reinforce them, ensuring stable air transport of the bamboo segments.

There is no danger inside the inter-boundary passage. Twenty early-stage worker ants are enough to take care of the development of the golden egg larvae. As for the food problem, I can just make an extra trip every day to deliver the food.

Flying out of the nest, while it was still early, Ye Zhi picked up a bamboo joint, flapped its wings and took off, following the path that Zuo Wang Qing Yuan had led it along before, traversing through the dense forest, and flying all the way towards the cross-border passage.

After passing through the citrus grove and then through the dense, pristine rainforest, a towering, colorful barrier of divine power appeared in Ye Zhi's field of vision. He slowly descended, placing a bamboo section between the branches of a tall tree to rest.

Although it is still only thirty centimeters long, with the support of the ant silk flying blades, ordinary beasts can hardly pose a threat to Ye Zhi. The aura of the primal force life is naturally released, which makes ordinary birds and beasts dare not approach.

"what?"

But at this moment, Ye Zhi suddenly paused – what she could see with her compound eyes was a cluster of familiar pale yellow four-petaled flowers blooming at the base of a tall eucalyptus tree, a type of camphor tree, at the edge of the dense forest on one side, emitting a rich fragrance.

Looking down, there is a slender main vine clinging to the trunk, with long, thin leaves extending outwards, and at the end is a familiar insect trap structure with a pair of tooth-like protrusions.

This is a wild, common pitcher plant, as lush as the mother plant that once produced the divinely bestowed seed "Chimera". However, because it no longer produces the divinely bestowed seed, the full flower spikes weigh down the main vine, causing it to bend slightly.

Ye Zhi couldn't help but recall the day she first encountered the "Chimera" in its seed form.

At that time, he was nothing more than a deformed chimeric ant that had escaped the ant colony and was just waiting to die, while the mother plant had already grown into a lush, two-meter-tall plant, and the divinely bestowed seed, which gathered the essence of the entire plant, had already shown its extraordinary nature.

With a sigh in his heart, he changed direction and flew towards the wild, common pitcher plant, gazing at the tall plant and the flowers blooming at its top.

He did not intend to cultivate ordinary pitcher plant seedlings. After all, to be fair, pitcher plants are not a good choice for seedlings. Mature plants have a good yield, but they take a long time to germinate, and the seedlings are fragile and slow to develop, almost like some trees.

This time, Ye Zhi was simply reminded of her memories and decided to collect some common pitcher plant seeds to plant at the entrance of her new ant nest.

In this world, insect warriors often show a preference for a particular type of plant. The reasons may be strange, but they are mostly related to their experiences before or when they first awakened the Force.

Feeling inexplicably nostalgic, Ye Zhi wondered if she was ultimately unable to escape the common human tendency, but her movements never ceased. Her thirty-centimeter-tall body landed on the layer of fallen leaves in front of the plant, her compound eyes scrutinizing the flowers above, pondering as she combined her inherited memories.

The symbiotic flathead ants discovered the leaf weaver, an intruder of relatively enormous size, and frantically tapped on the vines and leaves to send out a warning signal. A large number of worker ants swarmed out, trying to "drive away" this uninvited guest.

Ye Zhi sighed inwardly. He had once caused a nest of the same flat-headed ants to be raided by the combat worker ants of the Mountain Lord-level Dark-bellied Giant Tooth Ant. He didn't want to take action now, and just silently spread his membranous wings.

The aura of the Force life form was released without reservation, forcing back the panicked flat-headed ants. Ye Zhi continued to observe, only to find that he seemed to have made a wasted trip.

Pitcher plants are dioecious, and comparing them with my memories, the stigma of this plant is about the same thickness from top to bottom, with a spherical end and a stronger scent, which is a characteristic of male plants. It's a pity that the leaves are not very fibrous, so it seems I can't collect seeds here.

As it flapped its wings to take flight, its compound eyes suddenly swept across the distance, revealing a cluster of equally lush inflorescences. The flowers were far more vibrant than those of the pitcher plant, but judging from their shape, they seemed to belong to another type of pitcher plant.

Most importantly, Ye Zhi discovered that the flowers of that other pitcher plant had a thick base to the stigma, which became thinner towards the top of the flower stamen, with the top splitting open like a smaller flower. This matched the standard of female flowers in the inherited memory, making it undoubtedly a female plant.

Since we're already here, why not try artificial—no, insect-based—hybrid pollination and see if these two different pitcher plants can make do?

While pondering, Ye Zhi shook her abdomen, pulled out a thread of ant silk, and skillfully wrapped it around the stigma of the male flower of the pitcher plant. After it was covered with pollen, she withdrew it.

Then, the ant silk retracts, leaving only a curved section covered in pollen, which coils at the end of its abdomen. The leaf-woven plant flaps its wings and takes flight, landing in front of another pitcher plant. The ant silk rope wraps around the pistil, and the ant silk, covered in pollen from the stamens, evenly sweeps the pistil over.

At this moment, Ye Zhi noticed that the pitcher plant next to her did not seem to match the known species in her inherited memories. It was somewhat similar to the apple pitcher plant, but not quite the same.

He pondered to himself that when he evolved to the intermediate level, he had awakened a lot of knowledge about the plants and animals of this world in his inherited memories, but the number of species was still vast and might not have been fully awakened yet.

It pulled out an ant silk rope, wrapped it around a nearby tall tree to leave a mark, and then Ye Zhi flapped its wings and took off again. Its compound eyes scanned the terrain, remembered the general location, landed, grabbed a bamboo joint with its six limbs, and turned to leave.

......

The brief incident did not affect Ye Zhi's main task. She continued flying forward, and the entrance to the interdimensional passage appeared before her.

From the air, it is just an ordinary mound, and no one would imagine that it connects to a passage leading to an unfamiliar continent.

It landed slowly, extended its forelimbs and claws, lifted the vines that had been specially covering the cave entrance as a concealment, and used its leaves and silken threads to entwine the bamboo joints, dragging them into the cave. Then it flapped its wings and continued forward.

Passing through the cave etched with the marks of time, a gap of unknown metallic texture appeared before her eyes. Ye Zhi simply continued to fly forward, along the passage made of large metal plates that resembled a corridor from her past life, towards the nearest, opened metal door.

According to the description of the Black Ant King, when the Green Ant King discovered this interdimensional passage, the interior had already been basically emptied, which should have been done by the insect warriors from the other side of the continent in the previous Force cycle.

Ye Zhi didn't pay any attention. She simply crawled into a room or cabin of suitable size, whose previous purpose was unknown. She put down the bamboo joints between her six limbs, then pulled out ant silk and began to arrange things in the room.