Chapter 40: Chapter 35 Escape from Predicament i
Translator: 549690339
At this critical moment, with his life hanging by a thread, seeing Fourth arrive, Qin Niu felt a sourness in his nose and truly wanted to hug it and give it a fierce kiss.
At this moment, he no longer regarded the termites as pets, but as comrades who shared life and death with him.
Fourth and the Ant Queen risked their lives to come in and rescue him. How many dangers they had encountered along the way, how many difficulties they had faced, no one knew.
To save their master, they overcame all obstacles, dodged various dangers, and rushed to Qin Niuβs feet without looking back.
This loyalty and devotion to saving their master was something that Qin Niu would remember for a lifetime.
Fourth’s life was actually very short, just four months.
That was after drinking bear blood, which extended its life by a month.
Otherwise, it could only live for three months.
After escaping this time, Qin Niu was determined to find a way to extend its life.
“Go, lead the way ahead!”
Qin Niu, fighting against the drowsiness that assailed him, urged Fourth to lead the way quickly.
As the canopy pressed lower and lower, the cold energy that fell became denser, turning from a fine drizzle into a moderate rain.
It was also fortunate that he had practiced the Everlasting Spring Technique, and had managed to accumulate some skill, which barely allowed him to resist.
But he definitely couldn’t hold out for much longer.
Fourth’s crawling speed was astonishingly fast, this was still the first time Qin Niu had seen it display its full strength after the power boost.
It waved its antennae constantly, and every short distance there was a worker ant waiting ahead.
They were very intelligent.
They were using this method to rescue their master.
The crawling speed of the five strong worker ants was much slower than Fourth’s.
To hasten the escape, Qin Niu grabbed them directly in his hands.
With Fourth leading the way ahead, every time he encountered a worker ant waiting ahead, Qin Niu would quickly bend down and grab it in his hands.
After traveling some distance, possibly seventy or eighty meters, he suddenly felt as if he had passed through an invisible curtain of water. Following closely, the invisible pressure on his head and the cold energy falling like raindrops all disappeared.
When he looked up at the sky again, he could no longer see the canopy of the Ancient Banyan Tree.
Instead, it was a darkening blue sky.
“We’ve made it out alive!”
He exhaled a long breath of turbid air.
Looking back, he saw that the large banyan tree was still the same as before.
There was nothing unusual about it.
The only abnormal thing was that it was terrifyingly quiet.
There was no sound of birds singing, nor the calls of insects, behind him there was silence as if it were the forbidden land of life.
“Fourth, let’s go home.”
Qin Niu had barely escaped and did not dare to study it too much.
The sky was already darkening fast, and night would fall completely soon, so he needed to leave the mountain quickly.
Fortunately, his cultivation level had shot up a great deal, reaching over 70, and even if he encountered two Black Bears he could take them down instantly.
But when it came to creatures close to supernatural beings like the Ancient Banyan Tree, his level of cultivation was not even enough to be stuck in its teeth.
Fourth led the way ahead, and not far away, the Ant Queen lay quietly.
Around her, two strong Soldier Ants stood guard.
The Ant Queen was the most important existence in the entire ant colony. Not only was it an egg-laying machine, maintaining the renewal and expansion of the entire ant colony, but the pheromones it released were also extremely important for the entire ant colony.
“Smart little fellow!”
At first, Qin Niu did not quite understand why the Ant Queen stayed motionless outside.
Now he understood.
To the entire ant colony, it was like a beacon.
As long as it stayed outside, continuously releasing pheromones, Fourth and the other worker ants could find their way home.
This was also why the Ancient Banyan Tree couldnβt trap Fourth and the others.
Fourth’s intelligence was on par with the Ant Queen’s; it had inherited its mother’s qualities quite well.
It had even merged many of its father’s strengths.
For instance, its swiftness, a combination of Soldier Ant and Worker Ant, these were qualities other worker ants did not possess.
“Let’s go, I’ll take you home.”
Qin Niu gathered all the termites, strode out, and headed in the direction of the large camphor tree.
After this ordeal, he had developed a psychological shadow towards large trees.
The despair trapped beneath the Ancient Banyan Tree was something he could never forget in his lifetime.
Leading the ant colony directly back to their Ant Nest on the camphor tree, they eagerly crawled into the nest.
It seemed that, like humans, they all loved their home.
“I’ll come see you again tomorrow!” he called out.
Qin Niu looked reluctantly at the termite colony before hurriedly leaving with his basket on his back.
After descending the mountain, he came to his family’s poor field.
The corn was thriving vigorously, and the early-planted ones had essentially blossomed with female flowers bearing fruit.
Corn has two types of flowers, the male flowers that look like wheat spikes at the top, and the female flowers, which are the corn cobs located at the mid-section. They require cross-pollination, otherwise, the female flowers will produce fruit that are empty cobs without any corn kernels.
He planned to plant those few seedlings he had dug up from beneath the Ancient Banyan Tree in the field.
But when he took them out for a look, he was stunned.
All of them had wilted and turned yellow, as if they had been dead for many days, nothing like freshly dug seedlings at all.
Qin Niu felt a chill down his spine, it was too sinister.
They had only been dug up a short while ago, so how could they wither so quickly upon leaving the range of the banyan tree’s influence?
The weeds and small seedlings under the Ancient Banyan Tree, could it be that they had formed a symbiotic relationship with it? It was indeed a possibility.
He examined them closely for a moment but could discern nothing.
Although they were already dead, he still planted them in the ground. He would come back to check on them tomorrow morning.
By this time, the moon was bright and the stars sparse, signaling that it was night.
Being able to escape alive from under that Ancient Banyan Tree was truly a stroke of luck.
As Qin Niu walked past Wang Furen’s house with his basket, Wang Wanyan’s pretty face appeared from the window on the second floor.
“All Niu, pancakes, catch!”
She called out to Qin Niu in a low voice.
She was definitely afraid of being heard by Wang Furen.
A bamboo basket tied with a rope was lowered from the second floor.
“Thank you!”
Qin Niu looked up and saw her sincere eyes. He ultimately took out the pancakes wrapped in paper from the basket. There were four of them, still warm.
“Don’t be polite now! You need to be careful when you go into the mountains, you hear?”
Her concern for Qin Niu was always so genuine.
“Alright!”
Qin Niu nodded in agreement.
“You look much better than before, now you have the…”
“Cough!”
The cough of Wang Furen came from inside the house.
Wang Furen was intent on his daughter marrying a noble son and ascending to great heights like a phoenix, keeping a tight watch over her, worried that Qin Niu would whisk her away with just a few words.
Startled, Wang Wanyan quickly withdrew her head, sticking out her tongue at Qin Niu, then waved at him.
Qin Niu took the pancakes she had given him and went back to his house.
Although the pancakes were delicious, he now had bear meat, and his family was not in dire need of food.
But the kindness she had shown was worth more than gold.
Upon entering, Qin Niu noticed that the ‘trap’ outside his house had been triggered. But when he saw the ‘grasshopper’ stuck in the keyhole, he smiled with relief.
Er Dan had been here.
The ‘grasshopper’ was woven out of blades of grass.
It was a unique secret signal from Er Dan.
If it weren’t for being trapped by the Ancient Banyan Tree, he would have been able to return home that morning. Instead, he had been stuck under the tree all day long.
After unlocking and pushing open the door, just as he stepped inside, he heard footsteps from behind.
“Brother All Niu!”
Er Dan greeted him with a beaming face and a sly grin.
“Ran into a bit of trouble in the mountains, came back late. Come in!”
Qin Niu invited him inside. ππ―π’π’π΄πππ«ππππ.π π¬πͺ
“Seeing it getting dark and you hadn’t come down from the mountain yet, 1 even thought about asking my dad to take some people up to look for you! But then 1 saw you return, so I was relieved,” Er Dan spoke with a hint of concern showing on his face.
“I know it’s not easy for Brother All Niu to live alone, but the mountains are too dangerous.. Better come down earlier next time!”