When raptors bred, they personally pecked to death those timid, scrawny offspring, disemboweling them, tearing them into strips of flesh, and then feeding them to the remaining brave, robust chicks.
In this way, the parents could both make up for shortages of energy and food, and let superior genes be passed on as far as possible through survival of the fittest.
Practices and phenomena like these were too numerous to count throughout nature.
At the same time, the insectfolk civilization dwelling in the Insect Nest Hidden Realm regarded them as laws of the jungle that all living things ought to obey and revere.
The Insect Nest Hidden Realm was a vast land spanning three hundred thousand square kilometers.
It melded together a multitude of complex terrains. Its soil was fertile, its climate agreeable, and its resources abundant, providing life with an almost perfect environment for growth. Even within the Auling Labyrinth, which encompassed all manner of things beneath heaven and earth, it could be called a secret little world of enormous scale and exceptionally rare quality.
And the civilization at the top of this hidden realm's food chain was the insectfolk civilization.
The insectfolk civilization was formed by an alliance of insectfolk tribes large and small.
Different kinds of insectfolk developed into different tribes.
By the late period of insectfolk civilization's history, three tribes had become the most powerful: the Poison Bee Tribe, the Mantis Tribe, and the Centipede Tribe.
Of these, the Poison Bee Tribe was the largest in scale, and thus held the ruling authority of the Insectfolk Alliance year after year.
As for the Mantis Tribe and the Centipede Tribe, they stood in a rivalry of equal strength, sharing power on the second tier beneath the Poison Bee Tribe. For years, they suffered the Poison Bee Tribe's