Chapter 396 - 368: Insect Plague
When Qin Ziwen heard about the large number of palm-sized black bugs, he grew serious.
In nature, the most terrifying threats weren’t always the large predators, but rather the small, insidious creatures that could get in anywhere.
He calmed Li Yue, who had just run over. "Don’t rush. Stop and tell me slowly."
Li Yue stopped, planting his hands on his knees and gasping for breath.
"I just went home to grab something. On my way downstairs, I stepped on something rock-hard. I thought it was a stone, but then the damn thing moved and scared the hell out of me. That’s when I realized it was a palm-sized beetle. It was incredibly tough—I stepped right on its back, and it didn’t even crush. It actually bit my boot and tore a chunk out of it." Li Yue lifted his foot. Qin Ziwen could clearly see that a large piece was missing from the front of Li Yue’s boot, as if it had been ripped off with a pair of pliers.
A large chunk of the front was gone.
Over a hundred people had gathered in the open area outside the Gated Community, each holding a torch. In the space before them, they had laid out a protective moat of red-hot coals and charcoal.
On the other side of this "moat," a dense swarm of black bugs converged, forming a river of their own.
Whether deterred by the light or the heat, the swarm of bugs cowered on the ground. Their claws scraped against the hard-packed earth, producing a faint, rustling sound.
"Brother, come take a look. I have no idea where these bugs came from. They eat everything and are extremely aggressive." Qin Ziwu held a black bug in his hand.
If not for the sight of the densely packed, writhing legs on its underside, he might have mistaken it for a black computer mouse.
[Ordinary Black Beetle: ☆☆]
Qin Ziwen took the black beetle from his brother. As it settled in his palm, he could feel it struggling forcefully; its strength was considerable. But the most shocking feature was its mandibles. The lobe-like mouthparts writhed continuously, opening to an almost 180-degree angle.
After a moment of thought, Qin Ziwen bent down, broke off a piece of rock, and held it to the black beetle’s mouth.
The beetle almost instinctively clamped onto the rock and began to gnaw.
A piercing, grating sound filled the air. Before his very eyes, the black beetle clutched the rock and chewed on it.
Qin Ziwen’s pupils contracted. ’Its bite force is this astonishing?!’
’If it can eat stone, eating a person would be even easier.’
He looked back at the swarm. There were so many of them, a chaotic mass. He had no idea what these creatures even ate to survive.
’Do they eat dirt?’
’Or do they prey on other insects?’
’If this many of them are all carnivorous, that’s a terrifying prospect.’
There’s an old saying: enough ants can kill an elephant. The black beetles here already had the potential to be those ants.
Qin Ziwen’s brow furrowed as he looked at the surrounding firelight. The flames kept the bugs at bay for now, but what if they went out?
’What if they learn to just go around the fire?’
At that thought, alarm bells screamed in his mind. He silently began to calculate how much firewood it would take to maintain a continuous moat of fire.
A quick mental calculation led him to a despairing conclusion.
With the Gated Community’s current reserves of coal and wood, they could maintain a round-the-clock fire-moat for three days at most.
After three days, their gathering rate wouldn’t be able to keep up with their consumption rate.
’No, this isn’t sustainable,’ Qin Ziwen sighed to himself.
’We need another way to solve this.’
’A purely defensive strategy is out of the question.’
"Have we found any weaknesses?"
"So far, just that they’re afraid of fire."
"Anything else?"
"That’s it."
"Du Yu." Qin Ziwen turned to look at Du Yu.
A still-squirming black beetle was impaled on the tip of Du Yu’s spear.
"High defense, slightly slow, low intelligence," Du Yu said, then paused. "If they were smart, they wouldn’t be held back like this. They’d just go around the fire."
Wang Yun spoke up. "In nature, everything has a counter. Since these black beetles exist, there must be something underground that preys on them, just like anteaters eat ants."
Yuan Ming said impatiently, "Obviously! We know they have a natural predator. But where are we supposed to find it on such short notice?"
Wang Yun was speechless. "What’s the rush? If the black beetles are here, traces of their predators should be nearby. It’s like the old saying, ’The antidote is always found within seven steps of the viper.’ With this much food available, their predators can’t be far off."
A brief silence fell over the group at Wang Yun’s words.
Then, they exchanged glances, all arriving at the same conclusion at once.
"Don’t tell me... those centipedes are what eats these things?!"
"Are any of them still alive?" Qin Ziwen asked, turning to Cao Biansheng.
Cao Biansheng’s mouth twitched. The things were ugly and vicious; who would deliberately keep one alive? "Leader, we killed all the centipedes at the hospital, but there might be more in their nest."
"What about the bodies?"
"I have two of the bodies. I’ll have someone bring them over," Li Yue cut in.
When Qin Ziwen looked his way, Li Yue explained, "I kept them because their carapaces seemed pretty tough. I was thinking of studying them to see if we could make armor out of the shells."
By the time Li Yue’s men brought the centipede over, its carapace had already been mostly stripped away, revealing the pale flesh, organs, and blood vessels underneath.
At the smell of the centipede’s blood, the swarm of black beetles grew agitated, becoming even more excited.
It was as if they had smelled something delicious.
"Are we sure this thing is their predator and not their prey?" Qin Ziwu asked doubtfully.
Wang Yun’s expression didn’t change. "A chicken is a centipede’s natural predator, but the corpse of a dead chicken will attract them. It’s all part of the natural cycle of predator and prey. We’d need a live one to be sure.
Leader, to be honest, even if we had one or two live centipedes, I doubt they could drive away a swarm this size. We should probably be thinking of other solutions."
Qin Ziwen felt the black beetle struggling in his hand. He narrowed his eyes, picked up a smoldering piece of charcoal from nearby, and pressed it against the side of the beetle’s black carapace.
SSSSSS...
Thick white smoke filled the air. The moment the intense heat touched the tough black carapace, it instantly shriveled, carbonized, and was burned straight through.
The air filled with a scorched smell, like burnt protein.
"So they are afraid of high heat. In that case, we’ll burn them. Lure them in, use their fear of heat to lead them into a trap, and then we’ll roast them all!"
With the order given, the Qin Alliance sprang into action. They chose a location near the south gate entrance for the trap, as the terrain there was naturally suited for it.
Using the line of charcoal as a boundary, a grand trap began to take shape, with a section of dry, flammable materials isolated in the middle.
While the Qin Alliance was busy, another underground cavern a kilometer away from the Gated Community—a section of Tuiyuan that resembled an ancient town—was in grave peril.
The town’s outer bluestone walls were covered in black bugs. Like a plague of locusts, they swarmed madly into the town.
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