novelraw Chapter 752 - 607: Airflow Barrier
Chapter 752 - 607: Airflow Barrier
...
"White Poplar. Can you confirm now, how many flowers and fruits will bloom?"
"Yes! I can now bloom 15 flowers and bear 15 fruits."
"What about the blossom-fruit cycle? Has it shortened? About how many years?"
"That, I'm not sure about."
"Then what about the life-extending effect of the fruit? Has it improved?"
"Well, I'll only know after I bear fruit."
"Alright. How is your recovery?"
"I've long since fully recovered."
"Can you try bearing fruit next year? I'll arrange for Round Cypress to use Life System Origin Force Ant Honey Leaf Application, to reduce your burden."
"I can..."
...
The Life-Extending Divine Good is rather special; upon breaking through to King Level, there are three directions for improvement: quantity of fruits, life-extension effect, and the blossom-fruit cycle.
The number of fruits leapt from nine to fifteen, which is a substantial quantitative increase.
By this pattern, with such a large boost in quantity, there generally won't be a qualitative improvement—the life-extending effect likely won't increase further.
As for the blossom-fruit cycle, Dragon Cypress estimates it has shortened from sixteen years to eleven years.
Earlier blooming, earlier fruiting—it's just in time to produce two rounds of fruits before migrating to the Southern Hemisphere.
...
Dragon Cypress called the Barley Bug Tribe warriors together to host a small celebratory banquet in the Purple Tung Insect Nation, celebrating his successful advancement to Insect King.
Afterwards,
Spruce and Yellow Stem both stayed behind, while Ivy returned to Huagi Mountain to take charge of the autumn harvest.
Dragon Cypress, meanwhile, took Ink Orchid westwards to the Snow Cedar Mountain sub-nest, traveling along the Divine Force Barrier, and began using the flora and fauna along the way to train his Refinement Ability.
The round beads produced from refinement were officially named 'Refining Beads'; animal ones are milky white and called 'White Refining Beads'; plant ones are pale blue and called 'Blue Refinement Beads'; refining common Origin Force Food yields Primordial Pearls, while refining Divine-Given Origin Force Food yields beads called 'Ant King Pearls.'
Dragon Cypress and Ink Orchid took their time, wandering back to Xianglan Mountain.
After six months, the common Life Seed Plants of Dragon Cypress gradually completed their transitional evolution and successfully advanced to King Level.
At this point, Dragon Cypress had truly, completely finished the Insect King evolution.
Common Life Seeds begin as ordinary plants, and after being nurtured by a Life Pouch, their life level leaps to become Origin Force Plants. Only after evolving to King Level do they begin to manifest souls, but they still lack consciousness.
In emergencies or when migration is needed, both Dragon Cypress and Assistant King can use Soul Bonds to control them and let them coalesce a Tree Heart.
...
Large Ants of various King Levels feathered and emerged into the world.
Ancestral Divine Power acted upon the bloodline and was passed to the ant colony; as expected, the body lengths of the large ants all reached between 1.2 and 1.5 meters.
Soldier Ants of the Strength System were the sturdiest—the King-Level large Soldier Ants could reach about 1.5 meters in length.
After repeated tests, every ant's basic physical qualities had doubled along with Dragon Cypress. The most important was that their bodily Primordial Energy storage was now twice as large.
Now, Blue Ants had mastered two ways of refining food: one is the traditional method, refining food into thick, liquid ant honey; the other is activating the complete Refinement Ability to process food into Refining Beads.
Ant honey is sweet and delicious, bringing in over three million Source Stones of trade and processing profit for the Kingdom each year.
Refining Beads are bland in taste, but highly concentrated in energy and nutrients; they're much easier to store and transport, and are well suited for rapid recovery during campaigns and battles.
The transformation among the Blue Ants was quite satisfactory.
The changes among other ants at King Level were minimal; essentially, they all smoothly inherited Dragon Cypress's abilities from each system, and the ability strength ratios also remained unchanged.
...
As Dragon Cypress currently had nothing else to attend to, he continued along the Divine Power Barrier heading south, picking out encountered flora and fauna along the way to train his Refinement Ability.
He finally arrived at Zilian Mountain, entered the sea area, and in the deep ocean, specifically captured and refined large fish.
The White Refining Beads produced during the practice were not wasted—they were all gathered up to be later sent back to the Ice Cellar in Xianglan Mountain for storage.
The work of the Dominating Throne in producing ant eggs could not stop, so Dragon Cypress placed them in the Zilian Mountain sub-nest for cultivation. A batch of Specialized Soldier Ants, Blue Soldiers, and Green Soldiers was first raised—gradually raising Xiangshanlan's combat power to King Level.
Late autumn,
In the Zilian Mountain sub-nest, four Micro Soldier Ants designated for testing feathered and emerged.
Their bodies' shapes tended toward the physique optimized by Dragon Cypress with 'Adaptive Evolution'.
They were sent into an Origin Force vacuum to test their survival, and they survived just fine.
This directly confirmed that Wangbai Seed's 'Adaptive Evolution' did indeed alter the bloodline and could be inherited by the ant colony.
However, no 'Adaptive Evolution Divine Pattern' could be seen on these Micro Soldier Ants.
Initial judgment: ants cultivated by the Dominating Throne, like those raised by regular Ant Kings and Bee Kings, cannot inherit Divine Marks—they can only inherit part of the power of the Divine Mark Ability.
Moreover, some types of Divine Mark Abilities are utterly non-inheritable.
For example, Sea Beast Devouring and Dragon Cypress's planned Whirl Beast Devouring—these abilities Blue Soldiers cannot inherit at all.
Now, Dragon Cypress needed to know whether ants cultivated by the Dominating Throne could partially inherit 'Adaptive Evolution' Ability and whether they could molt and optimize for the environment.
If so, that would be extraordinary.
If not, then Dragon Cypress would have to pay attention to his own body shape when cultivating ant swarms in the future.
When cultivating Specialized Soldier Ants and Green Soldiers, he would need to adjust to forms suited for mountain and forest warfare.
When cultivating Specialized Blue Soldiers, he would need to adjust for amphibious warfare-ready forms.
Micro Soldier Ants' bodies were too small to test abilities; confirmation would have to wait until Large Soldier Ants and Specialized Soldier Ants feathered and emerged, which would still take time.
...
In late autumn,
Dragon Cypress and Ink Orchid continued their roving merchant trading as usual, searching around the continent for Divine-Given Seeds.