Chapter 17

After redoing acupuncture for Guan Yuanfeng and giving him medicine, Guan Yuanfeng bid farewell and returned to his room.

Zhou Yun went up to the rooftop, first checking on the emerald knife eel.

The recent heatwave seemed to have made the electric eel uncomfortable. It only came out late at night, swimming slowly. Zhou Yun noticed that it had grown significantly, now over 1.5 meters long. The patterns on its round body were also much more vivid than before.

He thought for a moment, then caught a few live eels from a nearby aquarium and tossed them into the water pool with the electric eel.

As soon as the eels hit the water, they started swimming wildly. The electric eel seemed to sense it and leisurely swam over. In the dark night, Zhou Yun clearly saw a faint blue lightning bolt crackling across the water’s surface.

Several of the eels were quickly stunned, flipping onto their backs in the water.

—–

In the past, the electric eel’s lightning had been invisible. Now, its power had clearly increased. It seemed that it had developed a lightning ability core inside it, becoming a mutated electric eel.

Zhou Yun felt relieved, sprinkling some fish food and shrimp into the pool. He then glanced at the aquarium on the other side. Mutated animals were not easy to identify, but most of them would grow larger and become unusually aggressive in a short time. He would need to observe them for a few more days.

He walked into the livestock room, where the air conditioning was on, making it pleasantly cool. Comet had turned over and walked over to look at him. Zhou Yun patted its head. “Why aren’t you with your owner?”

Comet licked his palm, and Zhou Yun muttered, “You’re unlucky, just like your owner.”

In his previous life, Comet had died early, likely without awakening any abilities in the red mist. It had truly been unfortunate.

He remembered how Guan Yuanfeng had cut off its dying head, its eyes glaring red.

Zhou Yun checked on the chickens, ducks, sheep, rabbits, pigs, and other animals that had fallen asleep. As expected, there were no visible mutations yet. He would have to keep a close eye on them. But based on his previous experiences, the chance of mutation was very low for domesticated animals, with wild animals having a higher chance of mutation.

He patted Comet’s head and said, “It depends on your luck. If any of the mutated animals have ability cores, I’ll try transplanting them for you—I’ll find a chance to test your affinity for abilities.”

Comet clearly didn’t understand what he said, but could sense his kindness and responded with a couple of soft whimpers.

He walked out to check on his vegetable garden.

Guan Yuanfeng had indeed taken great care of the rooftop garden and the livestock. Despite the scorching heat, the vegetable leaves were a bit wilted but not dead. As the night cooled, the plants slowly spread out their leaves, looking fresh and hydrated.

He didn’t pay much attention to the vegetables, fruits, and flowers he had planted but went straight to the other side of the rooftop to check on his precious medicinal seedlings. Indeed, he saw faint silver veins on the leaves of the older plants, which had been of high quality before. These plants had mutated!

The roots of mutated plants would also develop wood-based ability cores, and silver veins would appear on the leaves. The stronger the ability core, the more distinct the silver veins would be.

Zhou Yun felt a surge of joy. It turned out that planting a large variety of medicinal seedlings before the red mist descended had been a great advantage!

Especially the large patch of purslane, its leaves a vibrant green with silver streaks, stems bright red, and flowers a delicate yellow. It was lush and flourishing. Purslane covered all five elements and was a key material for ability testing in the future. Now that it had mutated, it would be even more sensitive and accurate!

Zhou Yun’s heart raced with excitement as he carefully examined the plants. He counted them and found that twenty-three of his medicinal seedlings had mutated!

Most of the plants are medicinal herbs like ginseng, lingzhi, tianqi, and he shou wu, which have old tubers.

Based on the previous classification samples, the newly planted seedlings have hardly undergone any transformation.

However, the older plants, as well as those grown from old seeds, have become noticeably sturdier, with fine, glossy veins on their roots, especially the old ginseng plants, whose veins are very distinct.

At this point, the crystal nuclei are still small and require his supernatural powers to slowly nourish and activate them. These valuable mutated medicinal plants would be extremely costly to obtain in the future!

These supernatural medicinal plants have much higher efficacy than ordinary medicinal herbs.

For instance, supernatural ginseng already has the ability to revive the dead and replenish vital energy, but after acquiring supernatural powers, it has great use in emergency treatment for critically ill patients in the apocalypse.

A benefit of supernatural plants is that those nearby will gradually absorb the supernatural nuclei, slowly transforming into supernatural plants themselves.

Zhou Yun extended his fingers and gently tapped each medicinal herb. The supernatural power, which he had mastered in his past life, quickly flowed from his dantian and activated at his fingertips, infusing each plant with energy. Just a drop of wood-type energy made the leaves of the plants tremble, and the leaves became incredibly shiny, dark green, and thick, as if they had instantly absorbed energy.

He then turned around and went to the glasshouse to check on the cacti, where the harvest was even greater!

Fortunately, after the rain stopped, he had turned on the new ventilation system for the glass greenhouse, and sure enough, the red mist had affected them.

Cacti are generally easy to grow, mostly cultivated from long-lived tubers. When he bought them, he specifically requested the tubers from older cacti, the older and bigger, the better, and the mutations were indeed plentiful!

Especially the varieties he had high hopes for, like the Liangtianchi, Saguaro, Dragon’s Tongue, Teddy Dog Cactus, and Aloe Vera, all of which had deep green fleshy stems with clear silver veins, showing obvious mutations!

Zhou Yun’s heart was elated as he counted the plants. There were over fifty mutated succulent plants! Just like in his previous life’s research results, the older and more resilient the plants, the more likely they were to mutate and produce crystal nuclei.

And mutated cacti, when their tubers are cut and carefully cultivated, could give rise to numerous mutated plants!

What could be more joyous than this? It’s known that cacti don’t grow in the deserts of China.

In his past life, they had to pay a huge price to obtain mutated cactus specimens, and by then, wild mutated cacti had become more difficult to harvest due to constant upgrades.

Zhou Yun patiently used his supernatural powers to infuse energy into all the mutated plants one by one.

His energy was gradually depleting, but he didn’t stop. After resting and adjusting his breath, he continued to squeeze out more energy.

After checking on the medicinal herbs and cacti, he returned to his rooftop and inspected the vegetables and fruits. As expected, not many had mutated, except for a giant pumpkin.

This was also good news, as this pumpkin was originally a giant variety, and with mutation, it would grow even larger. In the apocalypse, finding food of such size would be difficult, and the seeds would be extremely valuable.

He had been growing this pumpkin for several years, and once the situation stabilized, he planned to transplant it to a more open area in the community so it could produce more mutated pumpkins.

He then went to check on the strawberries and blueberries on the shelf. They had already borne abundant fruit, but they weren’t fully ripe yet.

He gently touched the plump berries with his fingers and infused a bit of his supernatural energy. The berries began to shine and quickly ripen, emitting an alluring fruity fragrance.

Tomorrow’s breakfast would have mutated berries, which would be beneficial.

His supernatural energy was nearly exhausted, so he went to the door and reached for the sky vine, pouring all his remaining energy into it.

The vine eagerly absorbed his energy, and the bright red flower clusters opened all their petals, glowing brilliantly. New vines suddenly burst out, spreading in all directions, and new buds began to appear. The leaves became denser, and the silver veins on the deep green leaves shimmered like moonlight, almost trembling as if they were alive.

Zhou Yun’s wrist was wrapped in the vine’s tendrils, which greedily and gently embraced him, as if wanting to extract more.

Zhou Yun was slightly surprised and slowly stroked the vine, “It really has mutated. No wonder it survived until the end in my past life…”

If it were his previous life, most people, upon discovering a supernatural plant, would immediately extract the wood-type energy crystal from its roots. In his previous life, wood-type practitioners would collect these to absorb them and enhance their abilities.

However, they didn’t realize that training supernatural powers was more about usage—repeated and massive use, precisely controlling the power, and exhausting the crystal energy repeatedly in order to continually enhance the core energy and rapidly increase one’s abilities.

What was special about wood-type practitioners was that they could stimulate plant growth, repeatedly and massively using their supernatural powers on different plant varieties to quickly increase their supernatural abilities.

Of course, he eventually reached the highest level of wood-type ability, but he speculated that it was due to his dual water-wood powers, allowing him to control plants, though he hadn’t seen other wood-type practitioners master this skill.

Zhou Yun gently touched the flower clusters, “I’ll find a new place for you to grow. This building’s reinforcement… I’ll leave it to you. I’ll come back tomorrow to give you more energy.”

The vine trembled as if responding to him. Its tendrils slowly loosened, reluctantly climbing back onto the roof.

The feeling of exhausting energy wasn’t pleasant, especially after just awakening his supernatural powers.

Zhou Yun slowly went downstairs to his room, sat cross-legged to rest and recover his energy, and once again drew out thin strands of energy, circulating it around, feeling a slight recovery.

He looked down at the lotus flower by the window. It had been picked earlier for the lotus seeds, and now only a few leaves and a half-open bud remained.

On its disc-shaped leaves, there were faint silver veins, very subtle.

Zhou Yun directed some of the energy he had just regained back to the lotus leaf. The lotus leaf slowly unfurled, seemingly glowing a little, though the effect was not obvious.

Zhou Yun knew that the lotus leaf likely required a large amount of core energy, which was why the changes were not apparent. It was unlike the Clematis flower, whose thin vines would grow and spread vigorously with just a small amount of energy, flourishing quickly.

Some mutated plants required a great deal of core energy to grow, but once the core had fully developed, they would become incredibly powerful.

It was like those mutated ginseng and other medicinal herbs, which needed a lot of energy to stimulate their growth.

Exhausted from using up all his energy, Zhou Yun lay down to sleep, yet he felt a sense of joy and satisfaction.

Though the feeling of being drained was uncomfortable, his past life training had made him quite resilient. His mind quickly and thoroughly planned how to manage those mutated plants.