Chapter 5 Sugar is a good thing

Perhaps because the pride of the Uchiha family does not allow retaliation, there was no follow-up to the group fight with the children of the Uchiha family. One year passed quickly, and Tetsumaru Aburame was five years old.

The financial situation of the Aburame family is getting worse and worse. In the past year, the entire family has sacrificed, injured and retired a total of twenty-two ninjas, accounting for almost 20% of the total number of ninjas in the family.

The Aburame family is not good at management, and its main income is the commission from the family's ninja missions. The income has decreased, but the number of orphans has increased, and it is difficult to make ends meet.

The number of children in the nest house has increased by about ten. The family ninjas frequently go on 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 child. They were able to take care of the child, but the quality of the food supply in the nest house was getting worse and worse.

Tetsumaru, the oily girl, was the oldest among the children. He ate the wild vegetable rice balls without oil and salt in several bites, and watched the room full of younger brothers and sisters eating.

Now there is no big bowl. Each person has two rice balls mixed with wild vegetables and a small bowl of wild vegetable soup, which is not enough to eat.

The looky faces of the children and the frowning brows 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. Aburame Tetsumaru only heard about the tragic conditions of war and famine through the news, and never had an immersive intuitive experience.

After finishing the meal, Aburame Tetsumaru, who was in a depressed mood, went out alone with the older children of the same age to help clear away the tableware.

The time traveler is an old guy with a mental age of over forty years old. Children can feel that he is different. Although they all recognize his status as the king of children, they cannot play with him.

Aburame Tetsumaru himself was not willing to play with little kids. As his body grew, he gradually got rid of the dilemma of being controlled by his body. He deliberately kept a distance from children, which could effectively avoid being taken into a ditch.

After the fight with the Uchiha family last year, the name "Tetsumaru Boss" spread throughout the Konoha Village. He is very good at fighting and very reliable in his work. Therefore, Aburame Tetsumaru's words are not only heard by the children of the Aburame family. Obedience, all the children around the family obeyed his orders, which was more effective than Sachiko Aburame's orders.

Wandering around the village, today's Konoha Village can clearly feel the pressure of skyrocketing prices. The prices of sugar, wine, and food have more than doubled compared to last year. Fresh meat, milk, and fruits are even more expensive and not available in the market. Not at all.

Konoha Village, located in the heart of the rich Land of Fire, has fallen to this level. It is conceivable that other ninja villages have fallen to this level.

In normal times after the war, prices continue to rise without disasters. This is a textbook classic prelude to war, and a new round of war is brewing.

The problem was that the last war started in a haphazard manner, and the fight was sticky. No one was used to large-scale ninja confrontations, and the death rate was very scary.

The dead bodies of ordinary ninjas littered the land, and the kages who stood at the top of the ninjas could not escape the same fate. Except for Sunagakure, who withdrew from the war early, all the second-generation heads of the four major ninja villages died.

The death rate of the five great ninja villages was as high as 80%. Small ninja villages like the Grass Ninja Village were simply wiped out. You can imagine how high the death rate of ordinary ninjas was, and the psychological shadow it caused to the ninjas. .

What's more, the so-called end of the war is not straightforward at all. Several years have passed and the conflicts between villages are still very fierce. All countries have been exhausted and it is really difficult for a war to break out.

The society of the ninja world is in the feudal era, and the social system is backward and simple, but the simple structure is more durable.

A mere economic crisis cannot trigger a war. It is not that the daimyo and the village leaders do not pay attention to the people at the bottom, but that 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 impact 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 is only a fight between ninjas and does not involve the mobilization of civilians. Therefore, as long as it does not affect the daimyo's taxation, the war will not be considered.

Maybe if it continues for another three to five years, the ninjas will be so poor that they will starve to death. The fear of hunger will overcome the fear of death, and then war will break out.

It's just that the Aburame family can't hold on now. Aburame Tetsumaru doesn't know how the Aburame family in his memory can survive, but he can't watch his brothers and sisters starve if he has money.

…

The family's house has been renovated, and the yard is full of life. Lush grass covers the entire yard, leaving only a narrow path, which is paved with stone slabs to block the encroachment of plants.

Follow the path and enter the small stone house next to the west wall. This is Aburame Tetsumaru's research room.

After the fight, Aburame and Feng ransacked Aburame Tetsumaru's bedroom. At that time, they found hundreds of jars from under the bed and in the cabinets, containing more than 200 kinds of insects, totaling nearly 10,000.

After that, the amount of fried meat with bamboo shoots was doubled and doubled, but Aburame Tiewan also benefited. Aburame and Feng built a small independent house in the yard to store these bugs.

Aburame Tetsuwan has achieved a lot of results here, including a complete set of sugar ant breeding techniques.

Last year, through a cooling stimulation experiment, sugar ants differentiated into sugar bowl ants for the first time in the Land of Fire and began to polysaccharide. However, simple cooling stimulation is not enough. Technically, it is equivalent to natural collection and cannot be scaled up.

Later, Aburame Tetsumaru discovered that it was not the temperature that directly affected the ant colony, but the queen's pheromones. He used a vacuum test tube to collect the queen's pheromones.

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

This work lasted for six months, and Aburame Tetsumaru wanted to give up more than once because there was no progress.

This qualitative analysis test is very simple to detect whether there is a specific component in the sample and how much it is. The result can be obtained in a few minutes in a laboratory with complete equipment and chemicals.

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

Then guess what kind of molecules these elements can be combined into, as well as the ratios between different molecules, and conduct a qualitative analysis of each result of the guess.

In the previous life's laboratory, several seniors were studying a biological toxin. The composition analysis took two years and consumed 1.2 tons of sample materials. That's right, 1.2 tons.

If we don’t know the specific ingredients, we can’t synthesize them artificially, and we can’t cultivate sugar ants on a large scale.

Aburame Tetsumaru, who came from the industrial age, knew very well how big the gap between the yields of natural collection and industrial synthesis was, which directly determined whether farming ants could make money, so he gritted his teeth and persisted.

Six months ago, Aburame Tetsumaru's golden finger improved. With the help of insight, he vaguely observed the macromolecular structure of the pheromone, so there were only seventeen or eighteen possible combinations of ingredients.

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

The next day, the four pheromones produced by the sugar ants were successfully synthesized, and a week later all the pheromones produced by the sugar ants were synthesized.

From then on, Aburame Tetsumaru completely controlled the sugar ants and could control their activities at will to collect sugar and harvest it.

With the help of pheromones, he also differentiated a population of tree ants. In fact, the ants were no different, except that the grazing bugs were changed to scale insects.

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

With two big trees and grass in his own yard, Aburame Tetsumaru raised two nests of tree ants and three nests of grass ants.

It is enough to support a family. How big is the difference between the output of industrial farming and natural collection?

Sugar ants in the Land of Grass require a territory of two square kilometers and can be harvested once a year, while Tiewan can graze five groups of sugar ants in a yard of 350 square meters and can harvest six times a month.

The difference in output between the two is more than two thousand times.

The sugar and wax produced by the five ant nests in the courtyard brought huge income, equivalent to two B-level tasks every day, which was stable and risk-free.

If you can make money safely, who would be so heartless as to earn money for your life?

My father simply stopped taking on ninja missions and concentrated on taking care of the bugs in his own home.

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

…

"Father, I have an idea."

It's not unnatural for Aburame Tetsumaru to call Aburame and Feng's father now.

Wearing a straw hat, Aburame and Kazuki squatted in the grass to check the ants, aphids and the status of the grass. When they heard their son's voice, they stood up.

He took off his hat to fan himself, smiled and said to his son, "You said it, I'm listening."

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

"good."

Um?

Aburame Tetsumaru was a little surprised, but looking at Aburame Kazuya's pleased smile, he understood that his family had long wanted to hand him over, but he was waiting out of concern for his own feelings.

Wait for me to bring it up myself?

I was actually a little touched.

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

"OK."

Aburame Tetsumaru ran to the hut, took a large glass bottle and a tool bag, walked into the grass on the left side of the trail, and found a large wooden box with familiarity.

When the lid of the wooden box was lifted, a dense crowd of ants was revealed. The ants began to commotion when the light hit them.

Aburame Tiewan took out a spray bottle from the tool bag, sprayed diazepam 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 them to the edge of a special large funnel.

The sugar pot ant is a weird type of sugar ant. During the change of seasons between autumn and winter, it will actively eat until its belly swells to 200 times and turns into a sugar ball the size of a grape, completely unable to move.

The overfed sugar bowl ants will enter a state similar to hibernation, and are dragged to the core area of ​​the ant nest for protection by the worker ants. It serves as a reserve granary for the ant colony for the winter. The sugar in their stomachs will not be digested or corrupted.

Now Aburame Tetsuwan uses pheromones and cooling to deceive, confusing the ant colony's cognition and experiencing a seasonal change of spring, summer, autumn and winter every five days.

Therefore, the sugar bowl ants in the ant colony will continue to repeat the process of eating until they are dormant, and in the hands of Aburame Tetsumaru, they have become a means of harvesting ant sugar.

Aburame Iron Pill fixed the 24 sugar bowl ants, fastened the funnel to the mouth of the glass bottle, and took out the next watering can to spray new pheromones. This is the pheromone emitted by the queen ant in early spring, which will prompt the sugar pot ants to spit out all the sugar liquid and help the ant colony survive the spring famine.

Soon the sugar pot ants vomited all their sugar liquid and returned to their normal size. Aburame Tetsumaru clamped them back into the wooden box, and then the next batch came.

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

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

However, the quality of ant sugar is not as good as honey.

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

Ant sugar is a simple sugar formed by aphids hydrolyzing plant cellulose. It is not fermented after being collected by ants, so it is sweet but not fragrant.

Freshly harvested ant sugar has an attractive light green or light gold color, depending on the plant from which it was collected.

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

These problems are not difficult for you at all. If there is no fragrance, just add fragrance. Whether it is distilled flower essential oil or alcohol cold extraction fruit essence, it is not difficult, so use both methods 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 it, and solidify it into anhydrous sugar cubes, which can be stored for a long time.

Aburame Iron Pill divides the collected ant sugar solution into two parts, and processes one part directly into sugar cubes. Wrap the candy cubes and put them into the backpack with the other half of the liquid, various tools, and medicinal powder.

Throughout the whole process, Aburame and Feng watched on. Aburame Aiko did not cook after get off work and stayed with the child.

After packing everything up, Aburame Tetsumaru said goodbye to his parents, not caring about the dark sky, and strode towards the forbidden area of ​​​​the clan.

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

…

At midnight, Elder Shiki Aburame and several other elders gathered around a table and watched Aburame Tetsumaru perform ninjutsu attentively.

After completing the three mudras of Zi, Shen and Hai, Aburame Tetsumaru clasped his hands together.

Water Escape·Gathering Water.

The hands slowly spread apart, and a fist-sized water ball gathered in the middle.

At the same time, the clear sugar liquid in the jar was dehydrated and dried. Next, Tiewan cut it with a knife, and obtained a half-pound finished sugar cube.

The old men cut the candy into finger-sized pieces, and each person 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 candy is better than honey."

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

"One hundred and twenty yuan, hiss, that's a lot."

Aburame Zhihui was the leading elder. He tasted the candy in silence, his expression gradually changing from ecstasy to hesitation.

"Almost fifty thousand taels, this, this is too much..."

The scene suddenly became quiet, and the sound of chewing candy could be heard. A burst of chirping sounds made everyone stunned.

Aburame Tetsumaru rubbed his belly. He planned to have dinner after talking about things. He didn't expect that Elder Zhihui attached so much importance to sugar that he insisted on calling all the elders who were looking after the house and asked him to demonstrate on the spot. Do it until midnight.

Aburame Tetsumaru's appetite is getting bigger and bigger, and she will feel hungry if she doesn't eat one meal. Now she has missed two meals together with midnight snack, and she is starving.

"Hahahahaha."

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

"Okay. Tiewan, you should go back and rest first. We old guys will discuss this later."

"There's no need to worry so much. In the end, this is a good thing. It just depends on how much benefit our family can get."

"That's right."

"That's right. At least the children at home can have enough to eat."

"Tiewan, go back and rest quickly."

Aburame Tetsumaru saluted: "I will take my leave now. Elders, please take care of yourself."

The old men continued to discuss how to explain to the Hokage, how to communicate with the Senju family, which family to join forces with, which family to rope in, etc...

Aburame Tetsumaru returned home, and two family ninjas were with him. They took away from his home seventeen pairs of ant queens and ant kings in their feathered state, as well as tens of thousands of ants stuck on cardboard. aphid eggs and scale insect eggs.

After sending the two ninjas away, Aburame Tetsumaru enjoyed a large bowl of noodles made by his mother and then went to sleep.

Two days later, Aburame Tetsumaru noticed that the food supply for the orphans in the tribe had returned to three meals, and the amount was enough for everyone.

This is the official start of the ant sugar business. Although the ranch is still planning and has no output, it has received money from its partners and the family's economic situation has improved.

It's quite a sense of accomplishment.