The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 317: Flying Creatures

The signal was getting closer and closer. On the outside, the infrared night vision monoculars of some ancient web-winged flying insects could already capture a large infrared heat signal approaching, but due to the far distance, the outline could not be clearly seen.

A considerable number of the dense ancient web-winged flying insects broke away from the cluster and formed a smaller flying insect formation to meet the strange creatures flying over. They were ready to find out what was going on. Below, the spread of fungal spores was still continuing, preparing to analyze the other party's genetic sequence in detail.

Previous spore-spreading insects simply improved the stinging needle structure that was used for both tissue collection and spore injection into a spray hole. The sac-like structure that originally stored the fungal blanket tissue was completely changed to store spore liquid for spraying.

However, this batch of ancient web-winged flying insects that have left the cluster are slightly different. They are equipped with some structures that can be traced back to the early days of the nest landing, but now after improvements, they are still a very practical means - a spray system based on special chemicals.

At present, this system has divided the chemical substances and enzymes into different types according to the reaction speed by changing the types and proportions of chemical substances and enzymes. These are used for propellant that pushes the warhead out of the barrel, warhead charge that causes damage, and jet fuel used as a basic version of rocket propulsion.

These special ancient web-winged flying insects are equipped with the simplest and crudest design - two huge sacs running through the abdomen, with matching reaction chambers and injection structures, as well as more lethal warhead charges.

The two sacs contain booster fuel, a design that can be traced back to the terrestrial arthropod class of that time - the interceptor cockroaches, but these special ancient web-winged flying insects are more structurally sound and efficient, and their uses are slightly different.

Back then, considering the opponent's flight grade - the poor flying ability of the Ancient Web-winged Cockroach, this was the only possibility to intercept the Kui-winged Diver, but it turned out that the effect was not very good.

But now, the structure installed by Lin Yi simply uses this version of the ancient web-winged flying insect as a disposable suicide drone. The original plan was to solve the target without deploying large-scale combat types, but it was not used. Instead, it can play a certain role now.

The flying creatures were getting closer and closer, and their shapes appeared in the sight of the ancient web-winged insect. Unexpectedly, not only were they not any known creatures from the planet Dikla, but their appearance was also quite strange even by the standards of alien creatures.

These creatures generally retain the characteristics of the small flying dragons of the Dikla star, but the details are extremely strange.

Their heads do not have the upper and lower jaws arranged in a convergent manner like the ordinary Dikla creatures that have evolved in a similar way to the creatures on Earth, but rather a special closed structure with a rather strange appearance.

As the distance got closer, these strange flying creatures began to show their edges, with their head structures wide open - the jaw-like shape was actually composed of six cephalopod-like tentacles, with a layer of membranous tissue connecting the tentacles, just like the octopus-grade creatures from the former helicon nest.

Dense keratinous protrusions also exist between these tentacles, making their overall head structure even more bizarre and hideous. Moreover, coupled with the complex structure of the main body, the only shortcoming of the octopus horn stone back then was that the toilet plunger-like appearance no longer existed on them.

Behind the head-like structure, there are two pairs of similar tentacles extending upward and backward from the head, like a pair of horn-like structures, and the "horns" are also connected by a thin film-like structure, and there is a fluorescent flash on the membrane-like structure. While thinking, the distance between the two sides has become quite close, and the hideous and strange head structures are clearly presented in the compound eyes and simple eyes of the ancient web-winged flies. The large group of ancient web-winged flies also began to operate various systems in their bodies and began to accelerate.

Powerful wakes spurted out from the end of the abdomen, and then the bodies of these flying insects accelerated to an astonishing speed that was difficult to achieve by flapping their wings alone. They rushed into the clusters of those strange creatures and then activated the sac structure in their bodies, allowing the liquid to slowly begin to react.

Loud explosions echoed in the hollows of the underground world, and at the same time, blood mist mixed with various special chemicals bloomed. Those were the last traces left by the explosion of the bodies of those disposable suicidal ancient web-winged flying insects.

As the loud explosions rang out, the bodies of the enemy flying creatures were torn apart, falling to the ground with a trail of tissue fluid, and soon broke into even more pieces.

These suicidal ancient web-winged flying insects were originally prepared for large creatures on the ground. The effect of converting them into air explosions at this time is not very good. The power is somewhat excessive when facing a single enemy individual, and the small killing range brought by the smaller shrapnel-like exoskeleton structure makes it difficult to severely damage multiple enemy individuals at the same time.

However, Lin Yi had no intention of completely eliminating these individuals. As long as he could cause some casualties so that he could more conveniently analyze the genetic sequence, there was really no need to kill them all.

While the group of strange flying creatures above were entangled with the group of ancient web-winged flying insects, some spore-sprinkling ancient web-winged flying insects below took the opportunity to fly over the fallen corpses and began to sprinkle fungal carpet spores.

Considering that the open-tube circulatory system + acidic blood of the lack of virtue is unlikely to appear in organisms with a very different second morphology, this batch of fungal spores are still ordinary cheap spores without any strange functions.

As for the upper part, the victory or defeat of the suicidal ancient web-winged flying insects and the enemy is no longer important. Now, further analysis of the gene sequence has become the top priority. The consumption of this amount of nutrients is really insignificant compared to the continuous output of the mother nest group with the already formed bioreactor as the core in the rear.

In the absence of that little bit of nutrients, there is no benefit for Lin Yi to kill them all. Instead, it would be better to keep them as a protected area, which would bring greater benefits for sustainable development. After determining the secrets behind these special creatures, interference in this place can be completely stopped.

A bio-fission reactor and its supporting fungal tissue facilities can also be discarded at will for Lin Yi. Anyway, the resources are mined on site and there is no need to transport them away. He can just let them dissolve and return to nature.

Until some new circumstances made Lin Yi change his mind about the environment here - there have been preliminary results in the analysis of the genetic sequences of two species, the large ground predator that is suspected to be eusocial and the strange flying creature with jaws composed of tentacles similar to cephalopods, and the results shown are quite surprising and unbelievable.

(End of this chapter)