"Mantises? Understood."
Fang Yuan nodded. "There are plenty of people fighting crickets in the Capital City these days, and quite a few buyers for insects, too. But they mostly buy things old farmers catch out in the fields."
"As for the mealworms you mentioned, sir, we're still searching for and breeding them. Cockroaches are plentiful, but they're far too good at crawling. We're still breeding new varieties."
Feilian was an ancient name for cockroaches.
It had to be said that finding cockroaches in one's home was certainly repulsive.
But there was no denying that these omnivorous creatures, with their tenacious vitality, were truly experts at processing waste.
They ate all sorts of things: feces, spit, rotting meat, kitchen scraps, fruit peels, and more.
With disease and sanitation properly controlled, these cockroaches were also an excellent source of protein and could be made into feed for poultry and livestock.
One could say that cockroaches were a treasure.
The trouble was that cockroaches were far too good at crawling, and fast, too.
If they accidentally crawled into an ordinary household, they could breed into a whole swarm in no time.
Mealworms, by contrast, were manageable. They crawled relatively slowly and had no need to run all over the place. All they needed to do was eat and molt.
The Great Wei Sacred Dynasty did not have much industrial waste at present, so mealworms, cockroaches, and the like could already process a great deal of its garbage.
Besides being made into coarse feed, mealworms and cockroaches could also serve as food for Fire God Mantises.
In his previous life, some people who kept mantises also fed them mealworms.
All in all, breeding mealworms and cockroaches was very important.
Of course, Lin Ke had chosen this industry because Fang Yuan was a Gu master.