Astral Gods

Chapter 24 The Blooming of the Male Mulberry Flower

With the arrival of spring, many of the life-giving plants planted on Ziling have regained their vitality. Under the spring sunshine, their roots frantically devour the nutrients in the soil, and their leaves similarly frantically devour the sunlight and primal force.

For a moment, a surge of primal force, terrifying even to insects, rose up on Purple Ridge. Fortunately, the concentration of primal force on Purple Ridge was sufficient for these life forms to grow naturally; otherwise, additional primal stones would have been needed to replenish their primal force.

Of course, if the Force is insufficient, they will not forcibly concentrate all the Life Seeds in this mountain forest.

There are many hills nearby, so you can just set aside a patch to plant on. Originally, this place was only meant for Lord Purple Plum, but as the number of insect warriors increased, the planting area spread across the surrounding dozen or so peaks.

Time flies, the weather changed from spring to summer, and three months passed. This time, nothing unexpected happened, and the yew successfully advanced from the fourth-year stage to the fifth-year stage.

This time, Lord Purple Plum selected a vine plant called Multi-Seed Green Grape for it to cultivate as its life seed, and planted the sunflower life seed in it.

The sunflowers grew very quickly, reaching over 1 meter in height in just three days. In the following days, the yew tree took care of fertilizing and weeding the seedlings.

Zishan, who has now been promoted to a fifth-year junior rhinoceros beetle warrior, is now twenty or thirty centimeters tall and can do a lot of work.

Now there's no need to worry about birds snatching it away; there aren't many species that can defeat a rhinoceros beetle warrior of the same size.

Therefore, Zizhu relaxed its guard on it a lot. In addition, Zihuai and Ziai had been promoted to intermediate warriors and no longer needed Zizhu and Zitong to stay and take care of them. Zizhu and Zitong went back to work in their own territories.

In any case, Purple Ridge is the core territory of their Twin-Forked Rhinoceros Tortoise tribe, and normally no other Zerg warriors would enter it. The area within fifty kilometers of their territory has been ravaged countless times by them, and they would even dig up a small mouse from the ground.

There's not much to worry about in terms of safety. If something happens to them here, then all the other species on the mountainside will basically be wiped out.

Early in the morning, the three brothers were in the center of their territory, using the metal buckets made for them by Lord Purple Plum to dig soil from the humus cultivation pool and then deliver it to their life-sustaining trees to add nutrients to their life-sustaining trees.

There are now nine life seeds for the purple locust and purple artemisia, and four life seeds for the yew.

There aren't many of these seeds, so we only need to work on them once every three days, and each time it only takes half a day to get things done.

Just as the purple locust finished fertilizing its own seedlings and was helping the male mulberry seedlings of the yew tree to fertilize, it suddenly saw many buds sprouting on the tree.

"Hey, are the yew, the artemisia, and the male mulberry in bloom?"

"Blooming?" Upon hearing Zihuai's words, Zishan and Ziai dropped their buckets and flew towards the male mulberry seed.

The three little ones lay under the tree, looking up, and discovered that it really did look like a flower bud.

"Has it bloomed yet?"

"Has it bloomed yet?"

"It seems so!"

"I think so?"

"Yew, you're only a novice warrior. Can your Life Seed even bloom?"

"I don't know."

"Is it possible?"

"I don't know either."

The three little ones lay under the tree, staring at each other innocently with their big eyes. They were only a little over two years old, and had only been awakened as Force Warriors for a year. They were not even three years old yet, and had no idea at all what age plants were suitable for flowering and fruiting.

Zishan looked at Zihuai: "Shall we go ask Zizhu?"

Zi Huai looked at Zi Ai: "Are you going?"

Zi Ai: "..."

Fortunately, Zitong was working in its territory not far away. Zi Ai ran to call Zitong, and Zitong ran back and forth to call Lord Zili and Zizhu. All the insects gathered under the tree, looking at the male mulberry flower buds.

Purple Pearl asked Lord Purple Plum, "The male mulberry tree is only in its early stages. Is it suitable for it to bloom now? Will blooming now affect its growth?"

Lord Purple Plum thought for a moment and said, "Male and female plants are slightly different. Female plants need to flower and bear fruit, and bearing fruit is the most energy-consuming and nutrient-intensive process, and it will also delay the growth rate of the seed."

Male plants only have one flowering stage and don't have the pressure of fruiting, so they should be better off.

"Then..." Zizhu seemed somewhat tempted, "Should we keep it?"

Lord Purple Plum: "We're not in a hurry to get the little warriors' life seeds to produce Force food. Let's be on the safe side and pick them all."

However, there's no need to pick them all; leaving ten flowers shouldn't have any impact.

"Then we'll use the remaining male pollen to pollinate the wild divinely bestowed seeds, intermediate warriors, advanced warriors, mountain lord-level warriors, lord-level warriors, and even the life-giving seeds of armored kings, and see if pollinating mulberry trees at different stages will have any different effects."

Upon hearing Lord Zili's arrangement, the three children excitedly exclaimed, "Lord Zili is meticulous!"

"Long live Lord Purple Plum!"

"Lord Purple Plum is incredibly meticulous!"

"Stop flattering me." Purple Pearl waved her tentacles and tapped each of the three little ones on the head.

Lord Zili glanced coldly at Zizhu: "What? You have a problem with me?"

"Well……"

Zitong changed the subject: "Lord Zili, shall I ask King Xuecao to come and remove the excess flowers?"

"Go."

Soon, Zitong summoned Xuecao Zuowang, who then directed his bee swarm to remove the unopened flower buds, leaving only ten buds.

Snow Grass King marveled at the flower buds on the tree: "Lord Purple Plum, Purple Pearl, you plan to use these male flowers to pollinate the mulberry seeds of your tribe's warriors. Is this a feasible plan?"

"To be honest, we don't know either, but let's give it a try. There's no harm in it."

The queen bee of Snow Grass is a lord-level snow bumblebee. The queen bee gave birth to six queen bees, and these six queen bees work in the territories of the main peak, purple ridge, flower ridge, and blue ridge respectively, assisting the rhinoceros beetle warriors in managing their life seeds and guarding their territories.

The changes in the yew seed could not be kept secret from Zuo Wang, who had been staying on Ziling Mountain, but Lord Zili and the others did not officially announce that the yew seed sac could nurture the divinely bestowed seed.

Xuecao Zuowang only knew that there was a divinely bestowed seed that was planted as a life-giving seed, so he found it quite strange to see it bloom.

Lord Purple Plum countered, "King Snowgrass, no one knows the matter of seedlings flowering and bearing fruit better than your bee colony. Do you think this plan is feasible?"

Speaking of this, Xuecao Zuowang immediately began to speak eloquently: "I have been managing my territory in Ziling for decades. I am the one who pollinates the life seeds of your rhinoceros beetle warriors. I have quite a bit of experience in this regard."

"As far as I know, if a lower-grade male flower pollinates a higher-grade female flower, the quality of the resulting fruit will be slightly lower."

For example, if I use pollen from a common mulberry tree to pollinate the flowers of a special type of mulberry tree, the resulting fruit will be of a lower grade than fruit of the same type.

I use pollen from higher-grade male flowers to pollinate lower-grade female flowers, resulting in higher-quality fruit.

"Take the Green Bamboo King as an example. The female mulberry species it produces, when pollinated with lord-level male flowers, produce fruits that are not as good as those of the same type of hermaphroditic species. It's just that the mulberry fruit is very effective, and you have no substitutes, which is why you have been reluctant to give it up."

"Similarly, when I pollinated Lord Purple Mulberry God-given Seed with Lord-level male flowers, the fruit it produced was inferior to that of God-given Force food of the same level."

"Let's go back to the story of the divinely bestowed Xiong Sang. It's only in its initial stage now. It has the quality, but it hasn't reached the required level yet."

If used to pollinate King-level Destiny Seeds, the effect might be even worse than pollinating Lord-level Destiny Seeds.

However, if you use it to pollinate the divinely bestowed seeds of wild mulberry trees in your tribe's intermediate stage, the effect will be better than pollinating the male flowers of the lord level.

In other words, the closer the level of a divinely bestowed destiny seed to an ordinary destiny seed, the better its effect will be.

"Once the male mulberry reaches the intermediate stage and is pollinated by wild, divinely bestowed mulberry trees, the quality of the fruit produced should reach the top level."

At this moment, Zishan raised its paw weakly and asked, "Snow Grass King, the Purple Plum Divine Gift Seed is hermaphroditic, so why not use the male flowers from the Purple Plum Divine Gift Seed to pollinate the female flowers on ordinary plum trees? Wouldn't that also allow the fruit on ordinary plum trees to reach the divine gift level?"

Xuecao Zuowang shook his tentacles: "We've also done experiments on the problem you mentioned, and it doesn't work!"

After becoming a divinely bestowed seed, even a hermaphroditic fruit tree will have very few male flowers, just enough for its own use. If it doesn't use them for its own pollination but instead pollinates ordinary plum trees, wouldn't that be putting the cart before the horse?

"Oh." Zishan was speechless.

Everyone continues to wait.

Mulberry flowers are relatively small to begin with, so leaving only ten flowers poses almost no challenge to its growth. After about ten days, the ten male flowers gradually bloom.

One male flower can pollinate 10-20 female flowers. Snow Grass King personally directs the bee colony to collect pollen and pollinate the mulberry trees in its territory.

The first to be pollinated was a nine-year-old intermediate rhinoceros beetle warrior's seed. Its mulberry tree was the seed it was nurtured in its early stages, and it was already bearing a small amount of fruit.

Xuecao Zuowang pollinated 20 female flowers on the tree and marked them carefully, waiting to check the results after the flowers ripened.

Next, pollinate the 20 female flowers on the mulberry tree seed of Zizhu, then pollinate the seed of Zima Mountain Lord and Zili Lord. In addition, pollinate the divinely bestowed mulberry tree of Zisang Lord as well as conduct experiments.

Afterwards, they packaged the male flower pollen and traveled across tens of kilometers to pollinate the life-giving seed of the Green Bamboo King and the intermediate wild divinely bestowed mulberry trees planted on the main peak.

It took them a week to finish everything, and they were lucky to have the help of the bees; otherwise, with the clumsy claws of the rhinoceros beetle warriors, they wouldn't have been able to finish even if they worked for a year.