Survival of the Nation: My luck was a tiny bit worse.

Marcus hesitated, then added, "But I'm not sure if these little creatures prefer coffee or insect blood—"

"Then let's try them all."

Ou Yun took out an empty kettle from his spatial ring. "Break a pot of plain coffee, a pot of insect blood coffee, and a pot of plain insect blood. Let's see which one they prefer."

"You want to tame them as pets?" Even Leng Ruolan found this hard to believe.

It seems there's nothing the eldest brother can't do, only things they haven't thought of!

"Not a pet."

Ou Yun's smile grew brighter and brighter.

"They're tools. Think about it, these little things can move freely in the sand, they're fast, there are many of them, and they react clearly to abyssal energy. Before they attacked us, they sensed the abyssal patterns on the stone slab and that's why they emerged from the sand. If we could establish some kind of interactive relationship with them—"

At this point, Leng Ruolan immediately responded with an "Oh."

"We can use them to detect abyssal energy."

Her eyes lit up. "It's like a detector, and it can cover a much larger area than we can walk in."

"And they're actually quite cute," Ou Yun added.

"Dude, you call that straw mouthpiece cute?"

"To each their own."

"..."

*

"You can try, but don't get your hopes up too high. The creatures in the forbidden area aren't so easy to tame."

"It's okay, just treat failure as an experiment."

Ou Yun had already handed the empty kettle to Marcus. "Here, Marcus, brew a pot of original coffee first."

Twenty minutes later.

Three pots of "coffee" with different recipes were placed in front of the group of little red monsters.

The first pot was pure desert coffee—brewed by Marcus strictly according to the recipe, without adding any insect blood.

A few little monsters came over and sniffed it, then backed away in disgust. One of them even spat a mouthful of sand into the pot with its straw.

"It seems they don't like pure coffee."

Douglas noted in his notebook, "Pure coffee, the target organism showed a clear rejection reaction."

The second pot is insect blood coffee—a mixture of coffee and sandworm blood, in a ratio of approximately ten to one.

All the little monsters crowded around, vying to stick the straws into the pot and drinking with great relish. After finishing, they turned red again and began to squeal happily.

"The mixture—the target organism showed a strong positive response, accompanied by significant behavioral changes," Douglas continued to record.

The third pot contained pure sandworm blood—heated sandworm blood—without any coffee added.

The little monsters gathered around and sniffed it; a few took a bite, and then they all retreated.

Their reaction is worse than that of pure coffee, but far less enthusiastic than that of insect blood coffee.

"Control group 3: pure insect blood - the target organism showed a moderate positive response, but much weaker than the mixed solution."

"So what they like is a mixture of coffee and insect blood," Ou Yun stroked his chin, "and the ratio is about ten to one."

"Caffeine and the insect blood components produce some kind of special chemical reaction," Marcus analyzed. "After the abyssal energy components in the insect blood are activated by caffeine, they may have a special effect on these little creatures—just like catnip has on cats."

"So this stuff is catnip from desert coffee worms?"

"It could also be Red Bull."

"Red Bull is served in a forbidden area?"

"...I was just using an example."

By this point in the experiment, everyone had forgotten that these little creatures had just mistaken them for enemy attackers.

Leng Ruolan sheathed the dagger at her waist, her gaze sweeping over the surrounding sand dunes.

These coffee worms (let's call them that for now) may seem harmless now, but who knows if they're just pretending to be docile.

In forbidden territory, the cuter something is, the more dangerous it often is—this is an ironclad rule she learned from countless brushes with death.

But after a while, she had to admit that these little creatures really didn't have any aggressive intentions.

After drinking their fill of coffee, they curled up and slept on the sand, belly up, with their six legs tucked into their chests and their mouths puffing out.

"They're snoring."

Alexander poked it with his stick and said, "Look at that one, it can even talk in its sleep."

"Was that sleep talking?" Douglas leaned closer to observe.

"Chirp—chirp chirp—chirp—"

"Okay, it really was sleep talking."

Ou Yun squatted down next to the sleeping coffee worm and tentatively reached out a finger to touch its scales.

The scales felt softer to the touch than they looked, with a leather-like texture.

The little thing felt comfortable being touched, so it rolled over and rubbed Ou Yun's fingers with the straw.

"They really don't seem to attack people."

The European Union concluded, "At least after drinking its fill of insect blood coffee, it will not attack."

"Then how do we take them on the road?"

Alexander asked, "We can't possibly brew coffee and feed them all the way here, can we? Coffee grass seeds are limited, and sandworm blood isn't something you can just get anywhere."

"It doesn't necessarily need to be fed all the time."

Marcus opened his notebook, which was filled with his observations of these little creatures. "Based on their size and appetite, a full meal should keep them active for at least twelve hours. That means we only need to feed them twice a day, morning and evening, and they'll stay with us all day."

"How large is their detection range?"

"Wait a minute, let me test it."

Douglas pulled a small stone from his backpack—a fragment of abyssal crystal he had picked up from the edge of the basin yesterday.

He placed the fragments on the sand and then retreated to a distance.

A coffee beetle that had just woken up immediately sensed something, pointed its straw at the direction of the crystal fragment, and its scales changed from dark red to a wary light purple.

It emitted a sharp crack, and all the coffee worms around it woke up at the same time, turning in unison in the same direction.

"Detection range - approximately fifty meters."

Douglas measured the distance between himself and the crystal fragment. "And there's a chain alarm mechanism. If one detects an anomaly, all the others will go on alert simultaneously."

"Its sense of smell is even more sensitive than that of a lynx."

Leng Ruolan finally squatted down and carefully observed the coffee worm that had turned purple.

"Moreover, they don't sense smells, but rather the fluctuations of abyssal energy. Yesterday, our lynxes couldn't detect sandworms from a distance because sandworms don't leave a scent when they move under the sand. But these little creatures can—the energy fluctuations they sense aren't blocked by the sand."

"So, with these, we essentially have a deep-sea energy early warning system covering an area of ​​fifty meters in this desert?"

Europe concluded.

"Theoretically, yes."

"Of course we should bring them along."

Ou Yun stood up, brushed the sand off his hands, and said, "Marcus, calculate how much coffee raw material we need to feed these little creatures."