Several hundred meters away from Zhou Qingfeng and others, above an ant cave dozens of meters high, a gray shadow was hanging upside down and crawling slowly on the edge of the rough cave wall.
Gray Shadow's hands and feet are covered with delicate grappling hooks to facilitate his firm fixation. However, the grappling hooks occasionally encounter the glowing moss that can be seen everywhere. When moving, the moss falls off and floats towards the acidophilic ants crawling around on the ground.
One of the worker ants touched the fallen moss with its antennae and looked up. However, the eyes of the ant colony, which were accustomed to living in darkness, degenerated and turned a blind eye to the gray shadows dozens of meters away. After a while, an ant guard flew over to investigate. The gray shadows had already
Leave that area.
On the platform below the gray shadow, 'Chief Alchemist' Fabro was busy and sweating profusely. The reagents and equipment that the ant colony could provide were too few, far from being compared with his laboratory in Cold Wind City. He only
He can rack his brains and use various native methods to mount the horse.
Behind Fabbro, Marbury, the son of the city lord, and several of his other subordinates looked very agitated. They acted arrogantly in front of Zhou Qingfeng, but they were just trying to maintain the so-called "aristocratic demeanor". In fact, they were also arrogant.
Angry.
The expedition team from Cold Wind City followed the route taken by Zhou Qingfeng, thinking that this way they would be able to enter the elven ruins more smoothly, but there were a lot of troubles along the way.
Zhou Qingfeng had an information network and two to three hundred hidden servants. Sophia built a reconnaissance network two to three kilometers ahead to avoid possible monsters and dangers as much as possible, saving time and energy.
There are only fifty men and horses in Cold Wind City, and if the number of people increases, the logistics will not be able to keep up. Due to the lack of an effective warning network, they either ran into jackals or were surrounded by kobolds along the way, causing a large number of casualties and losses in the constant battles.
Before the long-legged city lord could feel sad that the elites his family had cultivated for many years had been lost one after another, he and his remaining troops were surrounded by acid-loving ants. During the escape, Marbury, the son of the city lord, was left behind and became an ant.
The captives of the group.
If I had known this, the Lord of the City would not have left the Gray Mud Village even if he died, so what if he let Zhou Qingfeng enter the Elven Ruins first? But now there is no regret medicine.
"Fabro, how long will it take to prepare the correct potion?" The underground world is extremely boring. Apart from ant colonies, there are moss and mushrooms. Marbury stared at Fabbro and could ask more than a hundred times a day. "You.
Can’t we speed up the progress?”
"Your Excellency, you must be patient." Fabbro, who was in working mode, did not shy away from the current difficulties. "I have some clues now, but I am facing too many difficulties. Please don't disturb me too much."
"But my grandfather clearly said in his diary that he had a subtle method."
"Perhaps your grandfather was wrong."
"My grandfather was the hero of the North, 'Long-Legs' Leven."
"But your grandfather was not an alchemist."
Before Marbury lost his mind, his followers persuaded him to pull him away from Fabbro. On the empty cave platform, only the focused and troubled Fabbro was left, and a lot of medicines brought by acidophilic ants.
, plus a large number of ant corpses and eggs that were scrapped from experiments.
And the gray shadow hanging from the ceiling of the cave.
Zhou Qingfeng is also facing difficulties. Mondino wants to build an analytical array, but the underground ant colony cannot provide the corresponding materials at all. The young man can only force himself to hypnotize himself into the information network and use the soul crystal to exchange it with the succubus.
It took two days to build the magic circle, and even Xili came to help - the necromancer discovered that this human-looking golem maid not only had excellent archery skills, but also had a very in-depth understanding of arcana and magic nets.
Xili's method of transforming the magic circle is super simple. She doesn't talk about the principles or operations. She often just says one sentence - the magic circle you are drawing now is different from what I have seen.
At first, Mondino argued that his professional knowledge was being questioned. But soon everyone found that as long as he changed it according to Xili's words, the effect would be better. As for why, I don't know - the necromancer had to shut up and turn around.
And humbly ask for advice.
Previously, we built an analytical array for constant runes. This time it was simpler, just analyze it. The bodies and abilities of acidophilic ants are much simpler than those of werewolves. The team was busy until the third day, and many ant corpses and ant eggs were collected.
Pull out the arcane runes in it.
Zhou Qingfeng borrowed the power of the Necromancer as usual, activated arcane vision, looked up at the arcane runes floating above the magic circle, and first compared the differences between infected and uninfected acidophilic ants?
It only took two or three hours for Sophia, who controlled the information processing center, to come to the conclusion that whether it was an ant corpse or an ant egg, whether it was infected or not would not affect its essential arcane runes.
"Brother, I have a suggestion. Can you use the information network to link the brains of everyone in the team and provide computing power to analyze these runes? Then consume the green crystal first to build an accelerator, which will improve the performance by dozens of times.
times the computing power.”
With the help of the computer knowledge in Zhou Qingfeng's head as a foundation, Sophia has been evolving through self-study. The little girl's idea is to treat more than a dozen people in the team as a computing node and use accelerators to coordinate the use of computing power.
"If we can succeed, we will not only know what is causing the rot in the ant colony? We can even deepen our understanding of the arcane runes related to it."
Zhou Qingfeng did not think about Sophia's suggestion for too long. He happily consumed the green crystal equivalent to a doctor's knowledge and ability, allowed it to be converted into an accelerator for the data center, and actively linked to other members of the team.
people.
Analyze and share together.
At the critical moment when you will die if you don't succeed, you must use all your strength.
So everyone gathered under the analytical circle and looked up at the floating arcane runes. The runes that were originally condensed together were continuously disassembled, and a large amount of calculation work was quickly completed in one minute and one second.
There are actually two characteristics of acidophilic ants, one is 'acid' and the other is 'spiritual connection'. Considering the characteristics of 'rot', the first thing to be analyzed is 'acid'.
'Acid Gland' and 'Acid Protection' are the secondary runes associated with 'Acid'. When the 'Acid Protection' rune appeared, Zhou Qingfeng immediately received a call from Mondino, Justen and others.
Double request - they want this rune.
Wizards and priests are particularly excited because they often encounter acidic items. Many divine and arcane spells include acid attacks. If you can get 'acid protection', it will be a huge advantage.
Zhou Qingfeng was not stingy and allowed Sophia to record the information about the relevant runes and transmit it to everyone in the team. But the analysis of 'acid' ends here. 'Rot' has nothing to do with this series of runes.
.
The only way is to analyze the 'spiritual connection'. This rune combination is much more complicated than the 'acid liquid'. Zhou Qingfeng had to consume a lot of soul crystals and life gel to maintain the lives of everyone in the team.
When the high-intensity consumption continued until the fifth day, the 'spiritual connection' was deduced into multiple secondary rune structures. The cause of the curse of 'rot disease' finally appeared - the previous guess was correct, there are two types of ant colonies in the ant colony.
A curse.
Xili was the first to see through the strangeness. She said on the information network: "Rot disease is caused by problems with the spiritual connection of the ant colony. When there are too many ant colonies, the queen's ability to control the ant colony decreases, and a single acidophilic ant
Your physiological functions will go out of control."
In Zhou Qingfeng's view, the current rune analysis is a bit like checking for bugs in the program code. A lot of computing power is invested in it, and the evolution is constantly simulated until the problem is discovered.
There were too many "rune codes" for the werewolf, and Zhou Qingfeng could only roughly understand its functions. The "rune code" for the acidophilic ant was much simpler. With enhanced computing power, he finally found its flaws in the runes.
The cause of the rot in the ant colony itself has been found. Unless its natural runes are modified, the bug will always exist. But the rot of the ant eggs is another matter.
The deduction continued, and during the rune analysis of the ant eggs, a line of foreign curses from infinite distance became more and more obvious. Cyric exclaimed: "These ants have been cursed by a certain god."
Cursed by the gods?
Xili also discovered the problem and said in a deep voice: "The queen ant must be hiding something from us. The rot disease is related to spiritual connection, but the infection of the ant eggs is a curse from the outside gods. There are other secrets hidden in the ant nest, but the ants
He didn't want to tell us afterwards.
Foreign curses are actually not difficult to solve, and some alchemical potions can do it. However, ordinary people cannot tell who the curse comes from, and they often pò jiě randomly and feel complacent. But if the curse comes from gods, it will definitely be counterattacked once it is divulged.
The queen ant wants us to bear the consequences of the curse transfer, and this is its truly sinister intention. If our alchemy skills were not so poor and we were forced to analyze the runes directly, we would not be able to discover the reason."