Chapter 006 - Pupation and Evolution
Wang Chong watched helplessly as the mason insects sealed the cave entrance.
Suddenly, a realization struck him, and he couldn't help but laugh; Now, he was the dominant presence in this insect chamber!
His gaze swept across the room, lingering on the pile of brain matter, and he hesitated.
Should he eat that brain matter?
Wang Chong was uncertain. He was now fairly sure that consuming it would trigger another evolution.
But his memories as "Wang Chong" made him nauseous at the thought.
After much deliberation, he decided on a compromise: let the nurse insects eat the brain matter first, then he would consume the nurse insects!
There must be a reason why the insect colony didn't let larvae directly eat the brain matter but had nurse insects consume it first.
He was now certain that the adult insects meant him no harm, but if he devoured the nurse insects, leaving the larvae hungry, that might change. So, he decided to stick to his old profession—slaughtering insect eggs!
Ha ha!
Wang Chong laughed heartily as his ten legs moved swiftly. He took advantage of the fact that the nurse insects hadn't yet arranged the eggs, making them easier to attack while still in piles.
He rushed to the egg clusters. Wang Chong's body was now about the size of a vertically halved chicken egg, while each pile of eggs next to a nurse insect was about half the size of a chicken.
He raised four legs high and plunged them down!
"Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop!" A series of satisfying bursting sounds filled the air as egg fluid splattered everywhere.
Excited, Wang Chong continued his frenzied stabbing.
The nurse insect, clearly never having encountered such a situation before, lacked the intelligence to process it. Acting on instinct alone, it began stuffing broken eggs into its mouth...
Wang Chong thought excitedly, surely you can't eat all these eggs?
Despite the convenience of the eggs being piled together, it still took about fifteen minutes to destroy them all.
After satisfying his hunger with a large number of eggs, Wang Chong moved on to the next nurse insect.
The cave was vast—at least from Wang Chong's current perspective.
It seemed to resemble a corridor, long and narrow. Some areas were too high and dark for Wang Chong to see, but they appeared to be about as tall as a human ceiling. The lower areas were only about half a meter high. The ground was uneven, with some areas resembling terraced fields. There were also several branching paths, causing Wang Chong to get lost several times.
Due to the complex terrain, Wang Chong only found fifteen nurse insects that day. Each nurse insect was guaranteed to have a pile of eggs nearby.
With six days left until the eggs hatched, Wang Chong knew he needed to destroy as many as possible!
Over the next six days, he became more familiar with the terrain and more efficient in his destruction. However, many nurse insects had already spread out the eggs, slowing Wang Chong's progress.
Five days passed in a flash.
During these five days, Wang Chong's small wings grew considerably stronger. His elytra became more durable, and his outer shell hardened to the point where larvae probably couldn't bite through it anymore.
Wang Chong's destruction rate peaked on the fourth day when he managed to destroy twelve piles.
Now... it was time to enjoy the fruits of his labor!
Wang Chong was excited. After days of running back and forth, he had a good idea of where the nurse insects were located.
He approached the first nurse insect.
Amusingly, this nurse insect had managed to salvage about a thousand eggs, presumably from the broken ones...
The nurse insects had grown significantly over the past few days, now as thick as chicken eggs and as long as ballpoint pens.
"You're destined to become food anyway, so you might as well benefit me," Wang Chong thought to himself before pouncing on it!
The nurse insect writhed in pain, but its instinct was to be eaten by larvae. Although the insect eating it now was somewhat different, instinct prevailed, and it only twisted without struggling.
After devouring about half of the nurse insect, Wang Chong couldn't eat anymore. He suddenly realized a problem.
It seemed... he could only eat three or four nurse insects at most, while there were sixty to seventy in the chamber...
On the last day before the eggs hatched, Wang Chong, having eaten his fill, scoured the area for any eggs he might have missed. He actually found two more clusters.
When he found the last cluster, the eggs had already hatched, and a swarm of larvae was devouring the nurse insect.
Wang Chong quietly retreated.
One more day until pupation.
It seemed that the adult insects emerging from pupation were quite docile, so Wang Chong didn't bother destroying them.
Moreover... he was beginning to feel the urge to pupate himself.
After consuming the third nurse insect, Wang Chong instinctively sensed it was time to pupate!
First, he secreted a sticky fluid from his "rear end," then used his legs to flatten the fluid and draw a circle around himself. The fluid soon solidified and hardened...
Wang Chong's legs seemed to have a special coating, as the sticky fluid didn't adhere to them at all.
Finally, he used his mouth to create a small knot inside the pupal case.
Wang Chong's body underwent dramatic changes, accompanied by intense pain.
He had intended to observe the process closely, but his consciousness slowly faded into unconsciousness.
Time passed indeterminately.
When Wang Chong awoke, his pupal case had become quite brittle, easily broken with a single kick.
Eager to see his new body, he examined himself.
A thin green line had appeared on his elytra. This delicate green line seemed mysterious, likely more than just a decorative pattern, though its purpose was yet unknown.
All ten of his legs had developed sharp, backward-facing spines, hard enough to easily saw through wood.
His field of vision seemed to have expanded greatly, allowing him to see things on both sides simultaneously.
Most excitingly, his wings had finally fully developed!
Overjoyed, Wang Chong opened his elytra, and his wings unfurled from beneath.
"Buzz buzz buzz—" His body instantly shot upward, colliding with the cave ceiling before falling back down.
"Ha ha! Full power!" Wang Chong got up and continued experimenting.
If he were human, falling from a height hundreds of times his body length would surely be fatal. But Wang Chong didn't even feel dizzy. After a moment of surprise, he laughed and took off again.
While his insect instincts were present, it still took Wang Chong quite some time to master the basics of flight.
Finally, after buzzing around half the cave, Wang Chong suddenly froze.
In his memory, queen insects could only jump briefly and glide for short distances.
But now... he was truly flying!
Moreover, in his previous shock, he had overlooked the many flying queen insects he had seen, like the hand-sized insects and the bubble insects...
Adding to this, Wang Chong recalled that he had been killed when queen insects entered the water...
Clearly, the queen insects were undergoing some changes or evolution...
It was then that he realized he hadn't seen any larvae... no, adult insects for a while.
Last time, they were about to pupate, so there should have been a swarm of adult insects waiting to leave by now.
Suddenly, he noticed pupae forming on the cave walls.
He realized that he had already missed one generation of larvae. This was now the second pupation...
By this calculation, he must have spent at least ten days in his pupal state.
Did growing wings really take that long?
Wang Chong was puzzled.
After some thought, he decided to leave with this batch of adult insects.
Although he wasn't hungry now, Wang Chong had discovered that for queen insects, there was no such thing as too much food.
By constantly filling his stomach, he could greatly accelerate his evolution.
After searching for a while, as he expected, he couldn't find any nurse insects. They must have been eaten by the larvae before pupation. So, Wang Chong set his sights on the pupae.
While eggs were the size of sesame seeds and larvae about twice that, pupae were now half the size of a rice grain.
The queen insects' digestive abilities were truly remarkable. Almost as soon as food entered the stomach, it was converted into energy and distributed throughout the body.
It took about six hundred pupae before Wang Chong felt satiated.
Two days passed.
During these two days, Wang Chong consumed over two thousand more pupae.
He didn't notice any significant changes, except that the green line on his elytra had become more prominent, and from certain angles, it seemed to refract a golden light.
The buzzing sound around him grew constant as a large number of adult insects gathered, waiting for the mantis-like insects to open the exit.
These adult insects were about the size of rice grains, their wing beats making them slightly smaller than flies. Like Wang Chong, they had elytra and large mouthparts.
Wang Chong's body, the size of half a chicken egg, stood out prominently among them. However, the swarm treated him as one of their own, so leaving shouldn't pose much of a problem.
Crack.
A faint sound finally came from above.
Soon, a beam of light shone down. Sure enough, it was the digging mantis-like insect.
As the opening gradually widened, adult insects began to fly out.
Wang Chong couldn't help feeling a bit nervous.
When the exodus of adult insects reached its peak, he mixed in with them and flew out.
Blue sky, white clouds, tall trees, and green leaves.
A breathtaking scene unfolded before his eyes.
Wang Chong felt a surge of emotion.
I'm back!