Chapter 90: Chapter 89 Ghost Faced Stone Mushroom l
Translator: 549690339
Lu Xuan didn’t want to rush to the front, instead, he planned to follow the crowd, wait for the Spirit Plant Masters who initially contacted the Dragon Beard Grass to experiment, then he would join in.
During the discussion, Lu Xuan listened to several Spirit Plant Masters discuss various ideas, and accordingly, made some inferences, to his surprise, he got some unexpected gains.
Suddenly, he saw from afar, a dark red, slender, snake-like tendril shot out from a pile of Dragon Beard Grass, attacking a nearby Spirit Plant Master.
With a clanging noise, the slender tendril was blocked by a shield artifact, and a black flying sword circled and cut it into two.
With the Spirit Plant Master prepared, this attack of the mutated Dragon Beard Grass didn’t cause any damage, merely causing a false alarm.
The Spirit Plant Master who was hit stared at the small pile of Dragon Beard Grass at his feet with a changed expression, as if each Dragon Beard Grass could attack suddenly at any moment.
Half an hour passed, and occasionally cultivators were attacked by mutated Dragon Beard Grass, everyone had been cautious and on alert, the attacking capability of the mutated grass had weakened, thus no casualties occurred.
However, many Spirit Plant Masters were still finding it difficult to distinguish between normal and mutated Dragon Beard Grass, and didn’t make any progress.
“I wonder if a method to identify and separate the normal Dragon Beard Grass can be found.”
On a protruding huge rock, Wang Ruohai and Li Jianfeng were standing, hands crossed over their chests, the figures of over ten Spirit Plant Masters were under their watchful eyes.
“Perhaps,” Li Jianfeng softly replied.
“The chances are fairly high, after all, these are the top echelon of the Spirit Plant Masters in Linyang Market, if they can’t figure it out, then really no other method exists.”
“If so many second-level Spirit Plants are wasted, it would be quite a shame.”
Li Jianfeng lightly nodded in agreement.
After waiting for a while longer, seeing no progress, Wang Ruohai, who looked like a refined gentleman, yawned and laughed.
“Jianfeng, you stay here, I will go around to check, maybe I can find a few spiritual medicines. If there are any demon beasts or demon envoys, I’ll deal with them.”
“All these Spirit Plant Masters are at the mid-stage Qi cultivation level, they haven’t experienced any life or death situations, it’s unlikely they can stir up any waves, you alone should suffice.”
After saying that, he rode on a golden flying sword, and left promptly.
By listening to discussions and secretly observing, Lu Xuan finally started to practice, coming to stand in front of three strands of Dragon Beard Grass.
Gathering Dragon Beard Grass isn’t challenging, as long as the Earth Pulling Technique is mastered, harvesting becomes rather easy. All the Spirit Plant Masters present are capable of doing this.
The difficulty lies in how to discern between normal Dragon Beard Grass and the mutated ones, including extracting the unknown substance within the normal Dragon Beard Grass.
If one fails to identify correctly and harvests a mutated Dragon Beard Grass, keeping it together with the normal ones, when an unexpected attack is initiated, it can damage the normal Spirit Plants.
If one cannot extract correctly, the quality of the Dragon Beard Grass will suffer, thus depreciating its value.
He maintained the rotation of his Spiritual Power, his Spiritual Sense spread to its limit as he carefully observed the three strands of Dragon Beard Grass in front of him.
Visually, the three strands of Dragon Beard Grass were hardly different, with subtle size variances at most.
His Spiritual Sense probed inside the Dragon Beard Grass, finding many slender grey tendrils permeating the whole grass.
“Which of these gray tendrils are from the normal and which from the mutated ones?”
Lu Xuan checked the three strands of Dragon Beard Grass with caution, and found no abnormalities.
“I wonder what would change if I harvest them and then replant?”
A thought suddenly popped up in Lu Xuan’s mind. He casted the Earth Pulling Technique, carefully separated the root stalk of the Dragon Beard Grass from the soil, and harvested it.
Then, he planted it back into the crevices.
“Friend Lu, what’s your intention?”
He Ping who was by the side, seeing Lu Xuan’s strange action, couldn’t help but ask.
“I’m just trying to conduct an experiment to validate a conjecture I have in mind.”
Lu Xuan replied, his focus converged on the replanted Dragon-whisker grass.
Indeed, a thought emerged in his mind.
[Dragon-whisker grass, a second-level Spirit Plant, grows in an odd rock environment and can be used to prepare healing elixirs after maturity.]
[During the mutation, the whiskers inside the Spirit Plant are quietly undergoing some kind of change. When stimulated alternately with fire and ice system techniques, the mutated whiskers will show a slight reaction.]
“So it needs to be stimulated by both fire and ice to react… just as expected…”
This realization popped into Lu Xuan’s mind, opening up new paths of understanding. He couldn’t help but marvel in secret.
He plucked the remaining Dragon-whisker grass and replanted it in a crack.
Another thought surfaced.
[Mutated Dragon-whisker grass, a second-level Spirit Plant, has a certain level of aggressiveness, excels at camouflage, and is almost indistinguishable from normal Dragon-whisker grass.]
“I found a mutated one.”
Lu Xuan, holding a silver white short blade, was on guard against a possible attack from the newly planted mutated Dragon-whisker grass.
“It’s camouflaged quite well.”
After waiting for a while, the mutated Dragon-whisker grass showed no reaction and stayed still. It seemed that Lu Xuan was mistaken.
“Then just keep on pretending. I won’t play along.”
Lu Xuan moved to the side, squatting in front of several Dragon-whisker grass, pretending to study them closely.
“So, just by planting a Spirit Plant by hand, I can sense its instant status and detailed information.”
“That makes sense. I merely rented the two previous Spirit Fields in the market. I didn’t own them, so it is understandable that I can sense the status of the Dragon-whisker grass that I planted.”
“But for these Spirit Plants planted halfway, there should be no light cluster rewards, just like the Diseased Spiritual Plant I previously got, and the four Blood Jade Ginseng left for seeding.”
“I must plant the Spiritual Seeds or seedlings by hand, carefully cultivate them, harvest them in time when they mature, then I can get the light cluster reward.”
“However, discovering the secret hidden in this Dragon-whisker grass is pretty good too.”
Sighed Lu Xuan, he did not reveal his discovery to the Wang family cultivators, but went on pretending to perform Spirit Rain Technique, Tree Life Spell, etc., indistinguishable from the other Spirit Plant Masters around.
In the process, if he discovered other species, he would dig them out and casually re-plant them to understand detailed information about the plants. Sadly, he didn’t find any rare Spirit Plants.
“What is this?”
Suddenly, he found a mushroom-shaped stone underneath an odd rock.
The stone was gray and white, hard in texture, the wide surface at the top was full of exotic patterns, combining into what seemed like a strange face, as if it was looking for humans to devour.
“Plant it and see?”
Seeing its resemblance to a mushroom and its quirky appearance, Lu Xuan pondered the idea of planting it.
He deployed the Earth Pulling Technique, the stone buried in the soil silently split, leaving a crack that perfectly accommodated the mushroom stone.
His mind was focused on it and a thought surfaced in his mind.
Lu Xuan suppressed the joy within him and absorbed the thought.
[Ghost Faced Stone Mushroom, a third-grade spiritual plant, which can speed up the practice of certain evil techniques after maturity. It feeds on resentful spirits, currently in a dormant state. It wakes up when fed with an elixir made from crushed and refined resentful spirits..]