The three distinctively colored bees—the Blood Armor Bee, the Golden Armor Bee, and the Jade Armor Bee—had already shown considerable promise during their second stage of evolution.
Qi Ping had thought that if they could successfully complete their evolution, their innate talents and traits should be quite good. If one or two succeeded, he might acquire some excellent new bee strains.
He never expected all three to successfully evolve. It was a complete and pleasant surprise.
However, what delighted Qi Ping the most were the talents and traits these three displayed.
After several days of testing and communicating with the bees, he was able to fully identify their talents and characteristics:
The first was the jade-green bee:
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Species: Medicinal Bee (Mutation of the Marrowgold Bee)
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Bloodline: Tier 2, Low Grade
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Talents: Medicinal Intuition, Brewing Artisan, Honey Enthusiast
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Medicinal Intuition: Possesses an exceptionally keen intuition for the properties of spiritual medicines. Can easily extract different medicinal properties and combine them with other spiritual herbs.
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Brewing Artisan: Has a unique gift for brewing honey. Not only can it brew pollen into honey, but it can also brew certain spiritual medicines into honey, effectively extracting and purifying their properties.
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Honey Enthusiast: Possesses a strong interest in brewing honey. Enjoys researching the creation of various types of honey and experimenting with different kinds.
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Evaluation: A naturally gifted honey brewer, capable of developing honey with all sorts of astonishing effects! (Medicinal Bee: Leave the important task of honey research to us!)
Among the eight successfully evolved bees, Qi Ping was most satisfied with the Medicinal Bee.
Although its combat capability was quite lacking, its utility was incredibly powerful!
In terms of merging medicinal properties and brewing honey, it not only surpassed the Brewer’s Potbelly Bee but also didn’t suffer from the low intelligence of that species.
Furthermore, it had a genuine interest in researching honey creation!
Calling it a naturally gifted honey brewer might even be an understatement.
“It seems I can save myself the effort of researching honey formulas from now on. I can just leave that task to the Medicinal Bees.”
“As long as there’s enough variety in the spiritual herbs on my territory, they’re sure to develop some pleasantly surprising honey.”
He wouldn’t mind any type of effect—honey suitable for cultivation, for body tempering, for healing, for restoring spiritual energy, or for enhancing the Queen Bee’s abilities.
Who knows, they might even brew something with truly remarkable effects.
Overall, the Medicinal Bee was immensely valuable to Qi Ping.
The second was the dark golden bee.
Initially, Qi Ping thought it was a metal-attribute bee. But after testing and communicating with the bee itself, he discovered it was actually an earth-attribute bee.
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Species: Armorburst Bee (Mutation of the Marrowgold Bee)
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Bloodline: Tier 2, Low Grade
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Talents: Earth Element Affinity, Loam Carapace, Burrowing Stinger
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Earth Element Affinity: Possesses a high degree of affinity with earth-element power, allowing it to easily manipulate and utilize earth-element spiritual energy.
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Loam Carapace: Its body is covered in a layer of earth-attribute armor, granting high defensive capabilities and slightly enhancing its physical strength.
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Burrowing Stinger: Its tail has transformed into a special organ for condensing and firing earthen spines. It can fire stingers with armor-piercing properties that explode upon impact.
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Evaluation: Don’t underestimate the bee’s small stinger; it carries the power of a special attribute, capable of causing significant depletion and damage to both the physical body and spiritual energy.
Initially, Qi Ping was curious about the power the bees could unleash with their stingers. It wasn’t until he experienced it firsthand that he truly understood the power of the Burrowing Stinger.
Fired from a distance at incredible speed, upon exploding, it consumed a significant amount of spiritual energy. The special earth-attribute power attached to it even gave Qi Ping, a Foundation Establishment cultivator, considerable trouble.
A small number would be manageable, but a large swarm would undoubtedly be a nightmare-level threat.
Therefore, the Armorburst Bee’s combat effectiveness was also quite impressive.
Qi Ping had finally acquired his first bee strain that attacked using magical talent abilities.
“However, the most effective way to utilize them would be to combine them with formations, allowing the Armorburst Bees to form a large-scale earth-attribute formation. This would significantly enhance the ferocity and power of their attacks.”
Setting up a simple combined earth-attribute formation wasn’t difficult for Qi Ping now.
While he couldn’t develop intricate formations yet, arranging a basic battle formation allowing them to connect and support each other wasn’t too hard. Even a weaker effect could still enhance the combat power of an Armorburst Bee swarm by twenty to thirty percent.
The final type was the Blood Armor Bee, which had appeared earlier.
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Species: Blood Armor Bee (Mutation of the Marrowgold Bee)
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Bloodline: Tier 2, Low Grade
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Talents: Sturdy Physique, Bloodthirst, Blood Carapace
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Sturdy Physique: Significantly enhances physical attributes like strength, speed, and defense, while also possessing decent self-regeneration capabilities.
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Bloodthirst: Enters a frenzied state when injured, using its internal energy and vitality to launch vicious biting attacks.
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Blood Carapace: Its body is covered in a layer of blood-attribute armor (Note: Correcting the text which mistakenly says “earth-attribute” for this bee), granting high defensive capabilities and greatly enhancing its physical strength.
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Honestly, Qi Ping was slightly disappointed with the Blood Armor Bee’s combat abilities.
Not that it was weak, but at the Tier 2 stage, melee combat was often at a disadvantage compared to ranged attacks in fights between Foundation Establishment cultivators.
“Still, the Blood Armor Bee is no slouch. It serves well as a supplementary combat force alongside the Armorburst Bees, adding diversity to our attacks.”
“Moreover, its greater value lies in its role in the Queen Bee’s evolution. Once the Queen possesses the Blood Armor Bee’s bloodline abilities, her physical constitution will undoubtedly see a massive improvement.”
This held great significance for the future.
Improving the Queen Bee’s foundational qualities not only boosted the swarm’s combat power but also increased their evolutionary potential, especially the success rate when assimilating the bloodline of the Devourer Worm King.
Overall, Qi Ping was very satisfied with the evolutionary results of the color trio: the Medicinal Bee, the Armorburst Bee, and the Blood Armor Bee.
“For the future, my main focus will be on cultivating the Medicinal Bee, Armorburst Bee, Blood Armor Bee, and Venomous Bee. They will serve as the primary bloodlines for absorption and evolution. The Scout Bee and the Equilibrium Bee can be cultivated as supplementary strains.”
This combination should maximize the Queen Bee’s evolutionary potential.
All in all, Qi Ping was very pleased with this round of cultivation, and the entire hive had been particularly excited these past few days.
“But for now, I need to prioritize cultivating the Armorburst Bee. I’ll only cultivate small numbers of Blood Armor Bees, Medicinal Bees, Venomous Bees, and Scout Bees for the time being.”
After Qi Ping’s prolonged use, the spiritual energy within his four Spirit Essence Pillars was running low. He estimated he could at most cultivate two to three hundred Tier 2 bees with the remaining energy.
The spiritual energy provided by the Starlight Spirit Tree (via its spirit-gathering ability) was relatively limited and couldn’t support large-scale bee cultivation or spiritual herb cultivation.
So, once the energy in the four pillars was depleted, Qi Ping would need to either find a cheap but energy-rich material to make spiritual fertilizer as a substitute, or find a micro-spiritual vein essence suitable for an individual cultivator.
Spiritual vein essence was the core of small to medium-sized spirit veins. With it, the earth vein could continuously generate spiritual energy. These essences were typically guarded by major sects using formations.
For instance, the essence of the Cloud Mist Mountain Range’s spirit vein was protected by the Azure Yuan Sect with a Golden Core-tier formation.
However, spiritual vein essences occasionally appeared on the market. Micro-spiritual vein essences corresponded to Qi Refining stage spiritual energy levels, some even as low as mid-Qi Refining.
Cultivating and upgrading a spiritual vein essence was extremely difficult, requiring massive resource investment. This kept the price of micro-essences relatively affordable.
Relatively affordable, but not cheap. Their market value was estimated to be between thirty thousand and two hundred thousand spirit stones.
Given Qi Ping’s current financial situation—selling all the honey accumulated recently, plus the spirit stones he had and the spoils from Foundation Establishment cultivators—he could probably afford the lowest-grade spiritual vein essence.
He hadn’t made up his mind to buy one before because his strength and spirit stones were insufficient, and cultivating the essence was very difficult.
In terms of value, it might not even be as convenient and easy as making spiritual fertilizer.
But Qi Ping suddenly realized that combining his Treant skills, [Tree Spirit Contract] and [Nature’s Sanctuary], might accelerate the growth of a spiritual vein essence.
Right after he finished helping the bees evolve, the large amount of Druidic experience fed back by the evolved swarm was just enough for Qi Ping to accumulate the experience needed to advance to a Level 6 Druid.
Upon advancing to Level 6, he could choose a skill called [Nature’s Sanctuary] on the Treant profession side.
He had already decided to choose this skill, but he hadn’t realized until now that combining [Tree Spirit Contract] and [Nature’s Sanctuary] could actually accelerate the growth of a spiritual vein essence!
