Astral Gods

Chapter 133 The Season of Divinely Blessed Fruit (Part 1)

For the yew, which possesses many divinely bestowed seeds, the ripening of the fruits from the two life-giving seeds, the three-lobed snake grape and the sunflower, was merely the beginning.

Time flies, years pass, and in the blink of an eye, it's March of the new year again. The chill of early spring gradually fades away, and the warm, moist air permeates the forest.

The two male mulberry trees of the yew tree, blessed by God, have once again blossomed in full bloom.

The flowering of male mulberry trees this year is comparable to that of last year, and may even be slightly more abundant.

The reason for this is that the second male mulberry tree cultivated by the yew tree was a divine gift, and after another year of growth, it has fully matured.

The plant's pollen production capacity has completely caught up with the first male mulberry tree, a divinely bestowed species, that was cultivated.

The two male plants grew side by side, their branches laden with blossoms. They gathered all their strength to bloom, eventually producing a total of 44,000 male flowers. The dense clusters of flowers covered the branches, and the pale golden pollen floated gently in the wind, exuding a rich vitality.

Based on last year's pollination ratio and results, the pollen produced by these 44,000 male flowers is enough to accurately pollinate 880,000 female mulberry flowers.

Last year, the yew tree used some of its pollen to pollinate more than 50,000 wild mulberry trees, which were blessed by the gods. Nourished by the divine pollen, the wild mulberry tree blossomed and bore fruit with all its might. However, the fruit is not yet fully ripe and is still slowly developing on the branches, so it cannot participate in this year's pollination distribution for the time being.

This is why the amount of pollen that the yew can allocate for the pollination of the Rhinoceros Beetle Warriors has been greatly increased this year.

Besides the share taken up by wild mulberry trees, the more than 1,000 additional male flowers produced by the two male trees this year have further increased the pollen reserves.

With these two factors combined, the total amount of pollination available for the Rhinoceros Beetle Warriors this year is more than 70,000 times more than last year.

At the same time, the female mulberry tree of the yew tree has also ushered in a new growth cycle. Last year, this female tree produced 10,000 fruits, which is equivalent to 200 bunches of plump mulberries.

These fruits from last year are still hanging on the branches, not yet fully ripe, but new branches have already sprouted again, and clusters of new flowers have quietly bloomed. A rough count shows that there are more than 10,000 new flowers.

The yew tree squatted under the female mulberry tree, carefully observing the growth density of the flowering branches and the budding state of the flowers. After repeatedly comparing the growth data and yield of the past two years, it was clear in its mind.

The production of these ten thousand-plus flowers has almost reached the growth limit of this female plant, representing the maximum flowering and fruiting capacity it can bear under its current divinely bestowed level and growing environment.

Compared to the orthodox divinely bestowed seed, its yield is only two-fifths, a huge difference. However, insects shouldn't be too greedy; even this is enough to make all insects envious.

After sorting out all the pollen quotas, the yew began to allocate them in an orderly manner. The total pollination quota for 880,000 flowers was allocated, and 10,000 flowers were allocated to its own female mulberry trees.

Then, 60,000 pollination shares were allocated to each of the purple locust and purple artemisia species. These fixed allocations consumed a total of 130,000 portions of pollen.

The remaining 750,000 flower pollination quotas, just like last year, were all used to pollinate the life seeds of the advanced rhinoceros tortoise warriors in the tribe who still had evolutionary potential, helping to further enhance the tribe's core combat power.

Having learned from the tedious experience of pollinating the entire mountainside last year, Xuecao Zuowang, taking into account this year's ample pollen quota, proposed a more efficient and convenient new solution to Zili Lingzhu and Xuelian Bee Queen after careful consideration.

It proposes that, given the abundance of 750,000 pollen samples, the scattered pollination method used last year should be abandoned, and 75 mature mulberry trees should be carefully selected within the four major branches of the Rhinoceros Tortoise tribe's territory for centralized, targeted pollination.

This plan demonstrates its significant advantages. By concentrating all the pressure of fruit production on these seventy-five mulberry trees, it ensures both the quantity and quality of the fruit without interfering with the normal flowering, fruiting, and evolution of other species within the tribe.

At the same time, it can save a lot of energy for the bee colonies under the command of the Snow Lotus Queen Bee. Unlike last year, it no longer needs to send out a large number of worker bees to fly all over the mountains and fields to find mulberry trees for pollination in the vast territory, which greatly reduces the labor burden of the bee colonies.

Snow Grass Queen's suggestion was immediately praised by Snow Lotus Queen. Recalling last year's pollination work, in order to complete the pollination task of many mulberry species in the tribe, she sent out almost all of her queens, leading a huge number of worker bees to travel around the mountains and forests all day long. The high-intensity continuous work made the entire bee colony exhausted and caused great losses.

If it only lasted for one or two years, it wouldn't be a problem. However, the male yew trees have already formed a stable pattern of life, flowering and requiring pollination every year.

If such a large-scale operation is carried out every year, even with a large number of bee colonies, it will eventually become unsustainable.

Based on Snow Grass King's suggestion, Snow Lotus Bee Queen further optimized the plan, refining it. She directly instructed Lord Purple Plum to select eight highly evolved advanced warriors in Purple Ridge to allocate pollen quotas more precisely.

Five of the high-ranking warriors each controlled three mulberry trees, each bearing 90,000 mulberries.

The remaining three advanced warriors' mulberry seedlings each produced 100,000 mulberries.

This allocation method not only makes precise use of all pollen quotas, but also saves the bees from the trouble of Xuecao Zuowang leading the colony across many mountains and on long journeys, thus increasing efficiency several times over.

Snow Lotus Queen Bee is the companion queen bee of Green Bamboo Bee. They grew up together since childhood and have a deep bond.

Normally, it only focuses on assisting the Rhinoceros Tortoise Warriors in pollinating their life-sustaining species, and incidentally helps the Green Bamboo Armor King and the Green Fruit Island Lord manage their territory affairs, rarely offering opinions on the overall management decisions of the tribe.

However, once it formally makes a suggestion, even the Green Bamboo Armor King, who holds a venerable position within the tribe, will give it careful consideration.

With King Qingzhu Jia currently away and not yet returned, Lord Qingguo, who is in charge of tribal affairs, naturally would not refuse Queen Xuelian Bee's reasonable plan and immediately nodded in agreement.

Moreover, the mulberries that these mulberry seedlings eventually produce will be distributed as a core benefit of the tribe to many high-ranking warriors, enhancing the overall strength of the tribe, and will not have any impact on the final outcome.

The pollination work proceeded smoothly. From mid-March to mid-April, for more than a month, Xuecaozuowang led its elite team of professional bees, working day and night between the selected mulberry and yew trees, meticulously pollinating each flower.

The flowers on the two male mulberry trees, which were planted with yew trees, finally withered and died by the end of April, completing their mission.

As we enter early May, the warmth intensifies, and the fragrant wood species nurtured in the middle stage of the fifth age of yew trees reach the moment of fruit ripening.

The fruit of the fragrant wood is only the size of a soybean, about the same size as the three-lobed snake grape. Its fruit contains pure spiritual power and has quite unique effects.

Its core function is to enhance the ability to break illusions through the mind. In actual combat, it can greatly improve a warrior's resistance to and ability to break illusions. It has a strong restraining effect on various illusion attacks and is a rare and extremely useful divine gift in battle.

The yew tree carefully picked all the ripe fruits from the fragrant wood tree, carefully peeled off the tender flesh, and shared it with its two brothers, absorbing the spiritual power within the fruits.

The fruit of the fragrant wood is similar to that of the three-lobed snake grape; the amount of pulp in the fruit is not much, and the three of them can just finish eating it.

This also saves you from eating the more valuable fruit pits. Since the fruit flesh just doesn't keep well, the effect is the same as the pits, so you indirectly save money.

The fruit pits, brimming with primal energy, were carefully dried and stored away, awaiting the tribal trade fair to determine the specific distribution plan from King Qingzhujia.

Zihuai, holding a dried fruit pit, asked, "Zishan, could you set a price for the fruit of the fragrant wood tree?"

Looking at the fruit of the fragrant wood, Zishan thought for a moment and said, "Selling the fruit for 8 ore stones each should not be a problem. The Thousand Star Islands have been fighting with sea beast warriors for many years, and many of the sea beast warriors have hallucinogenic abilities. If we take them there, I'm afraid they would sell for 10 ore stones each and be very popular."

"Eight rough stones per stone?"

Both the Fragrant Wood and the Red Heart Cherry are small trees. This year, only 1 fruits remained on the Fragrant Wood tree. After deducting the 800 raw stones required for the fruits, the net output value is equivalent to 7200 raw stones. This output is higher than that of the Three-lobed Snake Grape, but lower than that of the Sunflower.

This fragrant wood plant flowered and was pollinated last March. After a long gestation period, it finally ripened in mid-May this year, with the entire fruiting period lasting 15 months. Among all the divinely bestowed plants, it is considered to have a fast growth cycle.

The crucial point is that by the time the fruit of the fragrant wood ripens, the natural flowering season for this year has already passed. For the next six months or so, this plant will be in a period of idle growth and will be unable to flower and bear fruit again, which is equivalent to wasting half a year of its growth cycle.

Based on this growth cycle, this fragrant wood species can only be considered to bear fruit once every two years. The yield of 7200 raw stones is halved. Although its fruit effect is outstanding, its output and cycle are ultimately limited.

However, they had no time to worry about the yield of the divinely bestowed seeds of the fragrant wood at this moment. The aftertaste of the fragrant wood fruit had not yet dissipated, and the branches had just been cleared.

Immediately afterwards, the multi-seeded green grape seed eagerly reached maturity.

The emerald green and pale purple bunches of fruit hung heavily, their plump skins gleaming warmly in the sunlight, and the air was filled with a sweet yet rich earthy aroma.

Last year, they left 500 of the plumpest grapes on the multi-seeded green grape seedlings.

The characteristics of multi-seeded green grapes are extremely prominent. Not only are the seeds abundant, but the flesh is also thick, juicy, and has a smooth and sweet taste.

Its effect is a comprehensive enhancement of the most common and widely applicable earth element in the race, which is of great benefit to Zerg warriors who have awakened earth-type talents, and can greatly increase their probability of awakening their abilities.

Of the three brothers, Zi Huai and Zi Ai have not yet awakened any talents, while Zi Shan, although she has awakened her talents, has not awakened any earth-type talents.

They all possess the potential of earth-based talents and can be consumed in small quantities of multi-seeded green grapes, but should never be overindulged.

The three insects carefully picked the fruit and put the glistening flesh into their mouths. However, after each of them ate two thousand fruit, they clearly felt that the earth element energy in their bodies had reached a critical point. Eating more would affect their subsequent evolution, so the three brothers immediately stopped eating.

Zi Ai is calm and composed, and always acts with great discretion. She wiped the juice from the corner of her mouth and said quite consciously, "The number of ripe multi-seeded green grapes is so great that we can't even consume all of the pulp."

I'll go and invite Lord Purple Plum over right away to see how to uniformly arrange and distribute the fruit pulp.

As soon as she finished speaking, Zi Ai flew towards Ziling Mountain. Not long after, a booming sound of wings flapping came from afar, and Lord Zi Li arrived at the place accompanied by Lord Zi Ma.

It looked up at the heavy, seeded green grapes on the branches, its gaze sweeping over each plump, ripe fruit, sensing the surging, gentle earth-based primal energy within them, and a look of joy appeared in its eyes.

Zerg warriors can enhance their physical attributes and reduce the risk of failing to evolve by consuming food containing life, strength, or spirit-based primal forces.

After advancing to the Mountain Lord level, Zerg warriors must consume Force food that aligns with their awakened talents to increase the probability of their abilities being generated.

If one only consumes ordinary elemental food, the probability of awakening one's abilities during their lifespan will be very low.

If one consumes food imbued with divine power, the probability of awakening one's abilities during their lifespan will greatly increase.

The Rhinoceros Tortoise tribe has a great need for elemental divine power food of both earth and metal types, and every year they have to buy millions of primal stones of earth and metal divine power food from the Flame Spider Merchant.

Now that the multi-seeded seeds of the yew tree are beginning to be produced, the amount of earth-type divine-given food purchased from the Flame Spider Merchant can be reduced appropriately, saving some raw stones.

There's also the pulp of the multi-seeded green grapes, which is a considerable amount. The more people eat, the more raw stones they can save, allowing them to buy more other divinely bestowed raw food, thus indirectly strengthening the tribe's power.

Without much hesitation, Lord Purple Plum waved his tentacles: "Purple Hemp, eat as much of the multi-seeded green grape pulp as you can, don't waste it."

"Isn't this inappropriate?" Hearing Lord Zili's words, Lord Zima Mountain felt a little embarrassed. Lord Zizhu Mountain had also awakened the earth element talent, and it hadn't eaten it yet!

Among the Twin-Forked Rhinoceros Golden Turtle tribe, there is a chance to awaken the talents of the metal and earth elements after advancing to the Mountain Lord level.

However, 70% of the Twin-Forked Rhinoceros Tortoise warriors in the tribe will awaken metal-type talents, while only 30% of the Twin-Forked Rhinoceros Tortoise warriors will awaken earth-type talents.

However, the elder of the three Zishan brothers, the Lord of Zizhu Mountain, had just awakened the earth element talent, so it should be the one to eat first.

Lord Purple Plum swayed its tentacles and said, "Purple Pearl isn't in the tribe right now, so you can eat first. Anyway, there's plenty of time in the future, and it'll have plenty of opportunities to eat."

The yew tree has a special destiny and is not suitable for widespread publicity. Only the Green Bamboo King, a few lords, and a very small number of mountain lords in the tribe know about its special destiny.

Among the many mountain lords, the Purple Hemp Mountain Lord is one of them. In this situation, it is most appropriate for the Purple Hemp Mountain Lord to eat the excess fruit pulp.

If it can't finish eating, Lord Purple Plum will pick the fruit, and then Lord Green Fruit will find a Twin-Forked Rhinoceros Golden Turtle Warrior that has awakened its earth-type talent and is about to advance in age, so that it can eat the remaining fruit and avoid waste.

"Then I won't stand on ceremony." The three brothers stood quite a distance from the divinely bestowed seed of multi-seeded green grapes. They picked the ripe green grapes, placed them in a metal tray, and presented it to the master of Zima Mountain.

The owner of Zima Mountain peeled out the fruit pulp and stuffed it into his stomach one by one.

The Rhinoceros Tortoise clan is known for its thick shell, strong defense, and power. The Purple Hemp Mountain Lord's strong earth-type talent and the attributes of the multi-seeded green grape are a perfect match.