Build a Swarm Tech Tree in Konoha

Chapter 5 Sugar is a Good Thing
Perhaps it was because the pride of the Uchiha family did not allow retaliation, and there was no follow-up to the fight with the children of the Uchiha family. A year passed quickly, and Tetsumaru was five years old.

The economic situation of the Younu family is getting worse. In the past year, the entire family has sacrificed, disabled and retired a total of 22 ninjas, accounting for almost [-]% of the total number of ninjas in the family.

The oil girl family is not good at management, and the main income is the commission of the family ninja's task gold. The income has decreased, but the number of orphans has increased, making ends meet.

The number of children in the nest house has increased by a dozen, and the family ninjas have frequently sent out missions, and the number of children who come to eat during the day has also increased by more than thirty.In addition to Sachiko, two retired ninjas also came to help take care of the children, barely able to take care of them, but the quality of the food supply in the Nest House was getting worse and worse.

Among the children, Younv Tiewan is the oldest. He ate wild vegetable rice balls without oil and salt, and watched the room full of younger brothers and sisters eat.

Now there are no big bowls, two rice balls mixed with wild vegetables and a small bowl of wild vegetable soup per person are not enough to eat.

The disheveled faces of the children and the frowning of the three family ninjas made him feel uncomfortable.

In her previous life, she lived in a country that was completely free from the threat of war and was on the rise. Younv Tetsumaru only heard about the tragedy of war and famine through the news, and never had an intuitive experience of being there.

After eating, she took the older children of the same age to help clean up the tableware, and the depressed Younv Tiewan went out alone.

The time traveler is an old guy whose psychological age is over 40 years old. The children can feel his difference. Although they all recognize his status as the king of children, they can't play with him.

Younv Tiewan herself doesn't like to play with little kids. As his body develops, he gradually gets rid of the dilemma of being controlled by his body, and deliberately keeps a distance from children, which can effectively avoid being taken into the ditch.

After the fight with Uchiha's family last year, the name of "Boss Tetsumaru" spread throughout Konoha Village. Obedience, all the children around the family listen to his greetings, which is more effective than Yume Sachiko's orders.

Wandering around the village, today’s Muye Village can clearly feel the pressure of soaring prices. The prices of sugar, wine, and grain have more than doubled compared to last year. Fresh meat, milk, and fruits are even more expensive. Not at all.

Muye Village is located in the core of the fertile Fire Country, and even if it has been reduced to this level, other ninja villages can be imagined.

In the normal years after the end of the war, prices continued to rise without disasters. This is a textbook-like prelude to a classic war, and a new round of war is brewing.

The problem is that the last war started in a muddle-headed way, and the fighting was sticky. Everyone was not used to large-scale ninja confrontation, and the death rate was terrible.

The corpses of ordinary ninjas were strewn across the field, and the kages standing at the top of the ninjas were also doomed. Except for Sand Yin, who withdrew from the war early, all the second generations of the four major ninja villages died.

The shadow death rate of the five major ninja villages is as high as 80.00%, and the small ninja villages such as grass ninja village are simply wiped out. It is conceivable how high the death rate of ordinary ninjas is, and how much shadow it has caused on the ninjas.

What's more, the so-called end of the war is not at all straightforward. After several years, the conflicts between the villages are still very fierce, and all the countries have been dragged to exhaustion. It is really difficult to break out of war.

Ninja society is in the feudal era, the social system is backward and simple, but the simple structure is more tenacious.

A mere economic crisis cannot detonate a war. It is not because daimyo and village leaders do not pay attention to the people at the bottom, but because the suffering at the bottom does not affect the power operation of the superstructure at all.

Even if a village dies, it will be a big loss to the direct lord, but it will have no effect on the higher daimyo.

What's more, the Ninja World War is characterized by its closed nature. The battlefield covers the entire world, but it's just fighting between ninjas and does not involve the mobilization of civilians. Therefore, as long as it does not affect the daimyo's taxation, war will not be considered.

Perhaps in another three to five years, the ninjas are so poor that they will starve to death, and the fear of hunger will overcome the fear of death before the war will be detonated.

It's just that the Younv family can't support it now. Younv Tiewan doesn't know how the Younv's family survived in his memory, but he has money and can't watch his brothers and sisters starve.

……

The house in the family has been renovated, and the yard is full of vitality. The lush grass covers the whole yard, leaving only a narrow path and laying stone slabs to prevent the encroachment of plants.

Follow the path into the small stone house next to the west wall, which is the research room of Younv Tiewan.

After the fight, Younv Hefeng copied Younv Tiewan's bedroom. At that time, they took out hundreds of jars from the bottom of the bed and cabinets, which contained more than 200 kinds of insects, totaling nearly [-].

After that, the number of fried meat with bamboo shoots doubled and doubled again, but Younv Tiewan also benefited. Younv Hefeng built a separate small house in the yard to store these bugs.

Younv Tiewan has obtained a lot of achievements here, including a complete set of techniques for breeding sugar ants.

Last year, through the cooling stimulation experiment, sugar ants differentiated into sugar pot ants for the first time in the country of fire, and began to gather sugar.However, the simple cooling stimulation is not enough. It is technically equivalent to natural collection and cannot be scaled up.

Later, Younv Tiewan discovered that it was not the temperature that directly affected the ant colony, but the queen's pheromones. He collected the queen's pheromones in a vacuum test tube.

As a means for the queen to command the ant colony, pheromones are extremely complex, and a long and difficult analysis work had to be started.

This job lasted for six months, and because there was no progress, Younv Tiewan wanted to give up more than once.

Detecting whether there is a specific component in the sample and how much it is, this qualitative analysis test is very simple, and the result can be obtained in a few minutes in a laboratory with complete equipment and pharmaceuticals.

Uncertainty analysis is a tiankeng, because we don't know what the specific ingredients are, so we must first use spectroscopic, X-ray, and fluorescence analysis to determine the ratio of elements.

Then guess what kind of molecules these elements can be combined, and the ratio between different molecules, and make a qualitative analysis of each guessed result.

In the laboratory of the previous life, several brothers studied a biological toxin. The component analysis took two full years, and the sample material consumed 1.2 tons, which is 1.2 tons.

If you don't know the specific ingredients, you can't synthesize them artificially, and you can't raise sugar ants on a large scale.

Younv Tiewan, who came from the industrial age, knows very well that the gap between natural collection and industrial synthesis directly determines whether breeding ants can make money, so she gritted her teeth and persisted.

Six months ago, Younv Tiewan's golden finger improved, and with the help of insight, he vaguely observed the macromolecular structure in pheromones, so there were only seventeen or eight possible combinations of ingredients left.

The analysis work was completed that afternoon, and the subsequent artificial synthesis was not difficult for practitioners majoring in biochemistry.

The next day, the four pheromones that control the production of sugar pot ants were successfully synthesized, and all the pheromones of sugar ants were synthesized a week later.

Since then, Younv Tiewan has completely controlled the sugar ants, and can manipulate the activities of the ants at will, collect sugar and harvest it.

With the help of pheromones, he also differentiated tree ant populations. In fact, there is no difference between the ants, except that the grazing insects have been changed to scale insects.

Scale insects are parasitic on trees, and they can also secrete honeydew and insect wax. Not only can they produce sugar, but they can also produce wax, which is even more beneficial.

With two big trees and grass in her yard, Younv Tiewan raised two nests of tree ants and three nests of grass ants.

Enough to support the family, how big is the output gap between industrialized farming and natural collection?

Sugar ants in the Land of Grass need a territory of two square kilometers and are harvested once a year, while Tie Wan can graze five colonies of sugar ants in a 350-square-meter yard and can harvest six times a month.

The output gap between the two is more than two thousand times.

The sugar and wax produced by the five colonies of ants in the courtyard brought huge income, equivalent to two B-level tasks per day, stable and risk-free.

If you can earn money in a safe and sound way, who careless to earn money for your life?

Father simply stopped accepting ninja tasks and concentrated on taking care of the bugs in his house.

The family's economic situation has improved, the father is no longer performing dangerous tasks, and the mother's sense of security is almost exploding, and the small life is naturally prosperous.

……

"Father, I have an idea."

It is not unnatural for Younv Tiewan to call Younv Hefeng's father now.

Oil girl Hefeng, wearing a straw hat, squatted in the grass to check the status of ants, aphids and grass, and stood up when she heard her son's voice.

He took off his hat to fan the wind, smiled and said to his son, "You talk, I'm listening."

"The food of the brothers and sisters in the Nest House is getting worse and worse. I want to hand over the ants to the clan for management."

"it is good."

Ok?
Younv Tiewan was a little surprised, but seeing Younv Hefeng's gratified smile, he knew that the family wanted to hand it in a long time ago, and they were waiting because they were concerned about their own feelings.

Wait for me to bring it up myself?
I was a little moved.

"As a boy, responsibility is the number one quality. You can tell Elder Zhihui yourself."

"Ok."

Younv Tiewan ran to the hut, took a large glass bottle and tool bag, walked into the grass on the left side of the path, and found a large wooden box familiarly.

Lifting off the cover of the wooden box reveals densely packed ants, and the ants start to commotion after being illuminated by light.

Younu Tiewan took out the watering can from the kit, sprayed Valium to appease the ant colony, then opened the core in the center of the box, carefully picked out the sugar bowl ants inside with tweezers, and fixed it to the side of the special big funnel.

The sugar pot ant is a strange flower among sugar ants. It will actively eat and eat during the autumn and winter seasons, until its stomach expands to [-] times and becomes a sugar ball the size of a grape, which cannot move at all.

The overfed sugar bowl ants will enter a state similar to hibernation, and will be dragged to the core area of ​​the ant nest by worker ants to protect them. They will serve as a storehouse for the ant colony to survive the winter. The sugar in their stomachs will not be digested or corrupted.

Now Younv Tiewan uses pheromones and cooling to deceive the ant colony, causing them to experience a round of seasonal changes in spring, summer, autumn and winter every five days.

Therefore, the sugar pot ants in the ant colony will continue to repeat the process of eating and dormant, and in the hands of Younu Tiewan, they become a means of harvesting ant sugar.

Younv Tiewan fixed the 24 sugar pot ants, put the funnel on the glass bottle, and took out the next watering can to spray new pheromones.This is the pheromone emitted by the queen ant in the early spring, which will prompt the sugar pot ant to spit out all the sugar liquid to help the ant colony survive the spring famine.

Soon the sugar bowl ants vomited out the sugar liquid and returned to their normal shape. Younu Tiewan clamped them back to the wooden box, and the next batch came.

In the core area of ​​the ant nest, there are more than 300 sugar bowl ants densely packed, and the sugar solution collected soon filled the glass bottle.Seal the glass bottle filled with sugar solution and cover the box of the ant nest.

Spray prosperity pheromone tomorrow, spray reserve pheromone three days later, and use ice packs to cool down the ant nest, and harvest ant sugar again on the sixth day.

However, fort sugar is not as good as honey.

Honey not only has a strong fragrance, but also contains antibacterial enzymes, which has a long shelf life and can be used as a disinfectant if it is fresh enough.

Fort sugar is a simple sugar formed after aphids hydrolyze plant cellulose, and it is not fermented after being collected by ants, so it is sweet but not fragrant.

The freshly harvested ant sugar is attractive in light green or light gold depending on the collected plants.

If it is left untreated, it will become sour and astringent due to the degradation of sugar within two days, especially like vinegar that has failed to brew, and it will produce disgusting black flocs, no one will have an appetite.

These problems are not difficult at all. You can add fragrance if you don’t have a fragrance. It is not difficult to distill flower essential oil or alcohol cold-extracted fruit essence, so the two methods are used together.

The short shelf life of ant sugar is not a problem. Add plant ash water to neutralize the acidic components, then purify, dehydrate and dry, and solidify into anhydrous sugar blocks, which can be stored for a long time.

Younu Tiewan divides the collected ant sugar stock solution into two parts, and processes one part directly into candy cubes.Wrap the candy, put the other half of the stock solution, various tools, and medicine powder into the backpack.

During the whole process, Oily Girl Hefeng kept watching, and Oily Girl Aiko didn't cook after get off work, and stayed with the child all the time.

After packing up everything, Younv Tie Wan bid farewell to her parents, not caring the slightest bit about the darkness of the sky, and strode towards the forbidden area of ​​the clan.

The young parents smiled happily, and then began to clean up the housework, prepare supper, and wait for the children to come back.

……

In the middle of the night, Elder Yuyue Zhihui and several other elders gathered around a table, watching with great concentration as Yuyue Tetsumaru performed ninjutsu.

Zi, Shen, Hai, the three handprints were completed, and Younu Tiewan clasped her hands together.

Water escape and gather water.

The hands were slowly separated, and a fist-sized water polo gathered in the middle.

At the same time, the clear sugar liquid in the jar was dehydrated and dried, and then the iron pill was divided with a knife to obtain a finished sugar cube of half a catty.

The old men divided the candy into finger-sized pieces, and each of them picked up a small piece and put it in his mouth to taste.

"Sweet! Fragrant!"

"No smell, delicious."

"A nest of ants can harvest so much in five days. This ant sugar is better than honey."

"Such a good candy can be sold for more than 400 taels now, how many pieces are there?"

"120 yuan, hiss, this, so much."

Younv Zhihui was the leading elder, he tasted the candy silently, his expression gradually changed from ecstasy to hesitation.

"Almost 5 taels, this, this is too much..."

The scene suddenly became quiet, Suitang's voice could be heard, and a burst of murmurs stunned everyone.

Younv Tiewan rubbed his stomach. He planned to finish talking before having dinner. He didn't expect Elder Zhihui to attach so much importance to sugar. until midnight.

Younu Tiewan's appetite is getting bigger and bigger, and she is so hungry that she doesn't eat one meal. Now she misses two meals together with supper, and she is very hungry.

"Hahahahaha."

A group of old men laughed together, and the atmosphere suddenly eased.

"Okay. Tiewan, you go back to rest first. Let us old guys discuss it later."

"There's no need to worry so much. After all, it's a good thing. It just depends on how much benefits our family can get."

"Yes."

"That's right, at least the children in the family can have enough to eat."

"Tiewan, go back and rest."

Younu Tiewan saluted: "I will take my leave first, elders, please take care of your health."

The old men continued to discuss how to explain to Hokage, how to communicate with the Senshou family, which one to join forces with, which one to recruit, etc...

Oil girl Tetsumaru came home, and with him were two family ninjas who took away seventeen pairs of ant queens and ant kings in the eclosion state that had been sealed away from his home, as well as tens of thousands of ant queens and ant kings stuck on cardboard. Aphid eggs and scale insect eggs.

After seeing off the two ninjas, Tetsumaru, the oil girl, enjoyed a big bowl of noodles made by her mother, and then went to sleep.

Two days later, Younv Tiewan noticed that the food supply for the orphans in the clan had returned to three meals, and the amount was enough to feed everyone.

This is the official start of the Ant Sugar business. Although the ranch is still planning and has no output, it has already received money from the partner and the family's economic situation has improved.

Quite a sense of accomplishment.

(End of this chapter)