A month later, Xiao Fei finally returned to the sect safely.
Apart from encountering a group of rogue cultivators in the territory of the Scarlet Sun Sect, this mission encountered no further setbacks, and the transactions with the three major sects were completed smoothly.
After completing this assignment, Xiao Fei successfully received 10,000 spirit stones.
He also harvested over ten thousand Iron Fire Ant eggs.
Due to improper storage, nearly half of these ant eggs had died.
The first thing Xiao Fei did upon returning to the sect was to head to the Scripture Pavilion to search for books on raising spirit insects.
The Dan Xin Sect, with tens of thousands of years of accumulation, possessed an extremely rich collection of various materials.
After a period of searching, Xiao Fei found dozens of related books. He copied all of them using contribution points and brought them back to his cave dwelling for careful study.
Under the twenty-fold time acceleration within his spatial artifact, he finished reading all these books in just two days.
By this time, he was confident in his ability to cultivate the Iron Fire Ants.
He specially constructed a spirit insect room within his spatial artifact and placed all the remaining ant eggs inside.
Using a spiritual artifact, he forcefully cut his wrist and let out a bowl of fresh blood.
Then, using his spiritual sense as a guide and his blood as ink, he drew dozens of profound runes in the void.
These runes arranged themselves in the air to form a more complex rune. This rune then split into two, then into four...
Finally, it transformed into thousands of identical runes, precisely landing on each ant egg.
This was a master-recognition rune suitable for spirit insects. Once the rune integrated into the ant egg, Xiao Fei felt a connection established between himself and the eggs.
When the Iron Fire Ants eventually hatched, he would be able to directly command each of them.
At that point, he would be like a general commanding thousands of elite soldiers.
Controlling the life and death of every ant, he could wield immense power among these lowly creatures.
However, the operation he had just performed left Xiao Fei feeling somewhat drained, so he went to the kitchen for a hearty meal to replenish himself.
Next, he refined some medicinal liquids using spiritual herbs and sprayed them onto the ant eggs to provide nutritional support, at least once a day.
A significant portion of the thousands of ant eggs that had died earlier had starved to death.
The lifespan of Iron Fire Ants was much longer than that of ordinary ants, and their hatching time was also longer.
These ant eggs were meticulously nurtured by Xiao Fei in his spatial artifact for over a year, and finally, all of them hatched into white larvae.
The white larvae had little mobility. After another six months of feeding, these ants all turned fiery red.
As soon as they crawled out of the spatial artifact, they devoured an acre of spiritual herbs, which pained Xiao Fei greatly.
That same day, he rebuilt a spirit insect room in his cave dwelling specifically for raising the Iron Fire Ants.
After all, Iron Fire Ants did not grow further once they reached adulthood. Raising them outside would save a considerable amount of resources.
Only a few Iron Fire Ants with the potential to become queens were temporarily kept in his spatial artifact. Xiao Fei, fearing they might be lonely, thoughtfully left dozens of male ants to keep them company.
Iron Fire Ants had a rather varied diet, with spiritual grasses, spiritual fruits, spiritual grains, and the bones and flesh of demonic beasts all falling within their dietary range.
He even threw some spiritual ores into the rearing room, and they would eagerly take bites.
According to the experiences of his predecessors, the Iron Fire Ants could be strengthened through different rearing methods.
Coincidentally, there was a large lump of profound iron and a basin-sized piece of profound iron essence in his spatial artifact. Xiao Fei simply threw them into the rearing room.
Initially, these Iron Fire Ants were quite picky, only wanting to eat spiritual grasses, spiritual fruits, and demonic beast meat, and disliking gnawing on stones.
The profound iron ore had been in there for half a month, and they hadn't touched it at all.
Pickiness wouldn't do!
Xiao Fei simply cut off their food supply. Apart from the large lump of profound iron ore, he stopped feeding them any spiritual fruits or the like. Eat it if you want, or don't.
Three days later, the Iron Fire Ants, driven by hunger, climbed onto the ore and gnawed at it whenever they had the chance. In just over ten days, they had made the piece of profound iron pitted and uneven.
Watching the gradually shrinking profound iron ore, he felt that these Iron Fire Ants were quite ambitious.
Every Iron Fire Ant possessed a heart that yearned for strength. At that moment, he felt deeply gratified; these were good ants.
He picked up an Iron Fire Ant and weighed it in his hand; its weight had increased significantly.
He squeezed it hard; it was very hard, and fine black metallic patterns had grown on its fiery red shell.
If this continued, after consuming all the profound iron, the shells of the Iron Fire Ants should all transform into profound iron components.
While these Iron Fire Ants were being forced to eat stones, the few potential queens kept in his spatial artifact enjoyed much better treatment.
They consumed elixirs carefully concocted by Xiao Fei daily. After eating their fill, they would fly into the air and engage in some "shameful" activities, exhausting many male ants. There was no greater happiness in life than this.
Two years later, Xiao Fei emerged from his cave dwelling with all his Iron Fire Ants and called out to the pond in front of the cave.
"Second Sister! I'm going out to release the ants, do you want to come?"
"I'm here!"
Xiao Lan's figure appeared on a peach tree. She was currently hanging her neck from a branch, idly swinging like on a swing.
"Of course, I'll go with you. Staying here all the time is getting boring."
As Xiao Lan spoke, her body dissipated, transforming into a wisp of black smoke and entering the Soul Nurturing Bead.
"Little brother, this Soul Nurturing Bead is a bit small. It's too crowded inside."
"Second Sister, why don't you say you've gotten fat? You eat so much raw meat and souls, it's no wonder you're not getting thinner."
Xiao Fei did not hold back, directly hitting Xiao Lan's sore spot.
Xiao Fei had collected a lot of blood threads from bald men in the Fallen Dragon Abyss in the past. Over the last two years, he had fed them all to Xiao Lan.
This had greatly increased Xiao Lan's strength, and she was not far from the middle stage of Foundation Establishment.
"Little brother, don't talk nonsense and ruin your second sister's reputation. I still want to find a good husband to marry in the future."
"Second Sister, how about Zhu Yu? If you think he's suitable, I'll trick him outside the sect gates one day and kill him to give to you."
Xiao Fei thought of Zhu Yu, that pretty boy who was quite popular with female cultivators. He had already become an idol in the hearts of many female cultivators.
He heard that Zhu Yu had a tooth knocked out in the last sect competition.
Then, that tooth ended up at an underground auction, fetching a high price of 1000 spirit stones.
The female cultivator who bought the tooth then pulled out her own tooth and had Zhu Yu's tooth embedded.
He also heard from Huang Feifei that nowadays, no matter what product was made in the sect, as long as Zhu Yu's portrait was drawn or embroidered on it, it would become very popular.
Currently, many robes, handkerchiefs, water cups, underpants, and insoles featured Zhu Yu's portrait.
Even the feeding bowls for the spirit pigs raised by the sect had Zhu Yu's portrait painted on them, supposedly to help the pigs grow better.
Xiao Fei mused, if he were to chop off all three of Zhu Yu's legs, he wondered how much they would sell for.
"Are you talking about that pretty boy? Sister isn't interested."
Xiao Fei flew on his sword, chatting nonsense with his second sister via spiritual sense, and didn't feel lonely. Soon, they flew to a cluster of mountains that were rarely visited by humans.
This area still belonged to the Cui Hua Mountain Range, the territory of the Dan Xin Sect. It was uninhabited, but there were demonic beasts active here.
He wanted to test the strength of the Iron Fire Ants today, to gain some practical experience. It wasn't good to always stay confined in his cave dwelling.
Xiao Fei flew among the mountains for a while and finally found a Mountain Shaking Bear.
He immediately released several thousand Iron Fire Ants. Before he could even give an order, these Iron Fire Ants all charged furiously towards the Mountain Shaking Bear in front of them.
In just a few breaths, the demonic beast was completely devoured by the ant swarm, leaving not even bone fragments. They also gnawed away a considerable amount of the surrounding wild grass.
During the two years Xiao Fei had been raising them, the Iron Fire Ants hadn't seen a sliver of meat, nor had they eaten a single blade of spiritual grass.
Blood food was an innate temptation for the Iron Fire Ants.
Once released by Xiao Fei, as long as they saw any living creature, the ant swarm would immediately tear it apart and devour it, leaving nothing behind.
Xiao Fei drove the ant swarm through the mountains. Wherever they went, not a single living creature was left.
During this time, they also successfully hunted a second-order demonic beast.
Xiao Fei was very satisfied with the performance of the Iron Fire Ants. Against Foundation Establishment cultivators, he might not even need to act himself.