I Am the Swarm

I don't know how much time has passed, and Rowan has long been too lazy to count.

The long-term peace in the territory has caused many worker ants to never go to the battlefield after hatching. And this also gives them a chance to die of old age.

The worker ants died in batches, and new ones were added immediately, which did not affect the operation of the swarm in the slightest.

The advancing direction of the North Road army has always been along the river, and it has also experienced various changes in the middle, but the general direction has not changed.

Just a few days ago, news came from their army ants that the army was stopped by a very wide river. The navy, who had been following along the river, went to explore the river and suffered heavy losses. But it didn't seem to have encountered any enemies. The news was somewhat contradictory and the expression was unclear. Rowan decided to go and see for himself.

As we continue to move north, the temperature is getting lower and lower.

However, because this planet has a large temperature difference between day and night, like a desert on a cliff, it even freezes at night.

Therefore, the plants and insects here are very resistant to cold, and the various resistances in the genes of the swarm are standard, so there will be no problems due to low temperature.

The plants on the road have also gradually changed, from large-leafed plants to coniferous plants.

The temperature was getting lower and lower, and Rowan even encountered a sudden blizzard on the road. Although it lasted for a short time, it only took about half an hour for the snow to pass.

But in just half an hour, the thickness of the snow on the ground reached about 20 centimeters.

This thickness has basically no effect on Rowan's long legs. But for small insects, although they also have a certain ability to resist cold, if they are sealed in ice and snow, they are still very deadly.

After dozens of days of long-distance travel, Rowan finally reached the so-called "river side".

This is "the riverside"?

Looking at the endless water surface, the ice layer that occasionally drifted over it, and the salty taste. Although the army ant has little knowledge, for Rowan, who has been bombarded with information and even seen it with his own eyes, this is clearly a sea.

The insect swarm actually hit the seaside?

This is Rowan's first question? For him who had eaten and slept all day and woke up to eat, he couldn't remember how much time had passed.

Does this planet even have a sea?

This is Rowan's second question. After all, it was an unfamiliar planet to him.

Then he got excited. He didn't know how many species were hidden in the ocean, maybe he could harvest good genes.

Not long afterward, he found the North Road Army.

And they can quickly find their tricks after running thousands of kilometers. It's because Rowan has been following the river on the other side of the old nest. After several turnovers, the river has merged into a larger river, and it has been extended to here.

And the North Road Army is stationed here, and their pheromones are left everywhere by the river, guiding Rowan to the correct position.

When Rowan arrived at the station, a large underground base had been dug up and mushrooms had been planted here. In this place where the temperature is very low, the heat emitted by the mushrooms is like heating, which makes the cave warm like spring.

Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten to build a passage for Rowan to enter and exit. So that Rowan could only freeze outside.

In fact, the base stationed in this base is only a small team, the number is about five or six million.

And the army on the North Road has long since left. After all, it takes hundreds of days and nights to pass information back and forth. And with the size of the North Road army, it is impossible for them to be stationed somewhere for a long time, and they need to keep moving forward to obtain food supplements.

This team stayed here just to wait for Rowan, and to cooperate with some of his actions and experiments by the way.

The moment Rowan saw the sea, he almost understood why the description of the army ant was inconsistent.

Those sampan and diving worms do not encounter enemies, but they only have freshwater templates and no components to filter salt. Therefore, when they enter the sea water, there is a high probability of being killed.

Since you didn't encounter an enemy, the next step is to explore.

During the period of waiting for Rowan, the team also gained something.

They hunt several crustaceans like crabs, hermit crabs and prawns on the seashore.

And these are exactly what Rowan needs most before exploring the ocean.

After eating a little of each, he dug a hole by himself, and then let the stationed digging ants dug a heat dissipation channel from the plantation in the base to the hole, and installed "heating" for the room.

Then he slumped in comfortably.

After waking up again, Rowan was a little puzzled when he saw that there was no sloughed carapace in the cave.

After examining the whole body carefully, it seems that there is no change. There is no crab gills, nor any other strange things.

Rowan scratched his head with difficulty.

"Strange? Why didn't new respiratory organs grow?"

Then I thought that the existing organs may have mutated, and this needs to be tested in the field to know.

Fortunately, it's not far from the seaside. Rowan stretched his long legs and arrived at the seaside after a while.

After thinking about it, I don't feel safe. After all, I'm taking myself as an experimental subject~www.novelmt.com~ What if he can't take too much salt?

In fact, the safest way is to return to the mother's nest and query the genes. But it took too long to come and go, and Rowan didn't want to wait that long to reveal the answer.

So, he crawled towards the mouth of the river not far away. There is a transition area between freshwater and seawater, where the test is much safer.

He first came to the freshwater area and slowly entered the water. Because he had acquired the ability to dive, he was not panicking.

As the river flooded him, he immediately felt a difference.

This time I entered the water, my breathing was much easier than before. It seemed that there were indeed some changes.

Next, he tried to close the ventilation holes linking the air sacs between the carapace and the abdomen. If he dared to do this in the past, he would definitely feel suffocated immediately, but this time, he didn't notice too many abnormalities.

He can still breathe underwater normally.

This is real underwater breathing, which draws oxygen directly from the water, not the pseudo underwater breathing that carried an "oxygen tank" before.

Through careful sensing, he finally found the change.

Also, there are two places.

First of all, his carapace can filter water and filter out the oxygen in the water to supply what the body needs.

Secondly, at the base of his foot, some membrane-like structures protruded outward from the body wall, which were filled with capillaries. They can also filter water and salt, and draw oxygen.

Because their location is too hidden, and they are still blind spots in Rowan's field of vision, they have not been discovered before. The changes on the carapace are even more subtle, and from the surface, it is impossible to see the difference from the previous one.

This is also the reason why Rowan did not notice any changes before.

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