Ant Lord in the Star Realm-Chapter 478 - 458: Forest Symbiont

Xianglan Mountain Ant Nest, Royal Family.

Dragon Cypress woke from slumber and quickly completed molting.

The new carapace hardened.

8th Age Period Mountain Lord.

Spiritual power swept across, examining itself.

The body had grown thinner once again, the membranous wings had changed considerably, now as long as the abdomen and tail, more slender when unfolded, but the wing veins were stronger and the wing membrane tougher.

A transformation towards Bee Clan wings.

Dragon Cypress tried flapping twice; the current wing structure supported higher-frequency vibrations, making flight more agile.

—The training of the Linnan Divine Tree proved notably effective!

Dragon Cypress praised inwardly, reached for a jar of Ant Honey placed on the Throne, opened it, dipped tentacles in and slowly licked while eating, all the while pondering in silence.

Everything was going smoothly.

Dragon Cypress lightly waved a claw, sending out a strand of Primordial Energy imbued with strong Life Qi machine.

Successfully comprehended the Lightspeed Healing ability!

At the same time, there was an intense, strange and marvelous insight—surely long-awaited—bestowed by the Divine-Grade Thousand-Layer Fruit: Forest Symbiont.

Dragon Cypress set aside the Ant Honey, leaped off the Throne, hurried to the cave entrance, and slapped open the blocking door panel with a claw.

"Great King?"

Spiked Cypress guarding the entrance jumped in shock.

"I’m going to test a new ability."

Dragon Cypress didn’t look back and ran out of the Ant Nest straight away.

The Forest Symbiont ability required eating green plants to activate.

Dragon Cypress spotted a clump of Molan Grass planted by the entrance, sliced off an Orchid Leaf with a claw, chewed and swallowed it.

A flash of inspiration in the mind; Wood Primordial Energy activated, wrapping around the swallowed leaf.

The Orchid Leaf quickly dissolved and was absorbed.

Dark green vein-like patterns appeared on the back of the thoracic armor.

Dragon Cypress understood.

Unfortunately, it was night now and couldn’t test it.

Kept slicing and swallowing.

Deep green stripes spread along the carapace, covering the whole body.

Kept eating,

The wing veins also turned green.

Eat more,

The vein-like deep green stripes began to expand, forming patches of green spots.

"Great King..."

Spiked Cypress stood to the side, watching in stupefaction, hesitating to speak. Eventually, unable to hold back, warned:

"Great King, be careful! If the Second King comes back and sees its Molan Grass at the entrance missing, it’ll get angry again."

"Afraid of it?"

Dragon Cypress paused, thought for a moment, then felt there was some sense in it, gaze shifting to the not-distant Dragon Cypress Life Seed.

The branches and leaves of Life Seed Plants definitely couldn’t be picked lightly.

Dragon Cypress leaped down, landing in the forest below, slashing some ordinary Dragon Cypress branches and quickly eating them.

The green patches on the carapace kept expanding, creating obvious color contrast.

The veins and green patches formed from eating the Molan Leaf were dark, deep green.

Green spots from eating Dragon Cypress leaves were lush, vibrant green.

—Do they sync with the leaf color?

Dragon Cypress immediately thought of the several Red Maples with bright red leaves planted in North Mountain.

Flapping wings, flew over the ridge, descended under the tree, looked up, picked a red leaf and swallowed it.

As expected, the new patterns on the carapace turned red.

Dragon Cypress understood the basic principle of the ’Forest Symbiont’ ability: [Disassembling plant leaves into tiny, active micro-particles, then reorganizing them on the surface of its carapace, making them part of itself]

A flood of plant names surfaced in Dragon Cypress’s mind: Blue Ice Cypress, Azure Tree, Golden Leaf Metasequoia, Golden Leaf Locust, Red Leaf Plum...

When Dragon Cypress and Ink Orchid traveled the continent, whenever they found interesting or rare plants, they’d collect samples and bring them back to Xianglan Mountain for Azure or Fragrant Cypress to plant.

Azure’s Water System Primordial Energy Field could shelter most plants and help them survive environmental factors.

Xianglan Mountain was the core plant base of Ant Kingdom, gathering all manner of seeds.

Spiked Cypress caught up, watching curiously, and enthusiastically suggested, "Great King, try Golden Leaf Locust! The gold looks nice!"

"Gold is just so-so. Blue is pretty." Dragon Cypress preferred blue, so took off, glided close to the ground, and quickly found the woods with Blue Ice Cypress planted...

...

After a whole night’s tossing,

Dragon Cypress had transformed into a gorgeously multicolored ant, adorned in black, green, red, frosty blue, golden yellow, and purplish red.

Dawn broke, the first light emerging.

Dragon Cypress lay quietly atop a giant boulder high on the mountain, back to the sun.

A gentle warmth seeped through the carapace, deep into the body, transforming into physical strength.

Dragon Cypress spread its membranous wings.

With their large surface area, the wings absorbed sunlight even better, gathering dense energy through the wing veins and channeling it back into the body.

The exhausted physical strength from Age Period Evolution was gradually recovering.

Preliminary testing was effective.

And the effect was ideal.

With ample sunlight, as long as one stayed still, the energy gained was more than enough to maintain survival, with surplus too.

And these were just common plants.

What if replaced by a Divine-Given Seed with higher sunlight absorption and utilization efficiency?

The strength of the ’Jungle Symbiosis’ ability largely depended on the strength of eaten plants.

The more evolved, the higher the efficiency of solar absorption and utilization...

Eclipsing King-Level—leaves of the Divine Tree...

...

Dragon Cypress lay on the mountaintop for half a day; the novelty wore off, and it began to get down to real work.

Spiked Cypress went into the forest to hunt fresh food, ate and drank its fill, then began producing [Producer·Symbiote] Ant Eggs.

The Dominating Throne carried Black Cory and set out for Molan Mountain.

"Dragon Cypress?"

Ink Orchid, flying fast to greet them, hovered in mid-air, circled once, landed on the Throne, and stared hard at Dragon Cypress’s carapace.

"Is that the Thousand-Layer Fruit’s ability effect?"

"Of course."

"How did you do it?"

"Eat leaves of all sorts of colors, you get a dazzling array of colors."

"Oh!"

Ink Orchid got it at once.

"When will the second Divine-Grade Thousand-Layer Fruit be ready?"

"Doesn’t Orchid Mantis have a carapace that can change color at will?"

"It’s not the same! That only changes with the surroundings."

"Hey, Ink Orchid, hold on! Won’t your ability conflict with ’Forest Symbiont’?"

"I don’t think so? Maybe they’ll complement each other and blend in even better with the jungle."

"That’s possible too! We’ll only know after eating it. Next year let Chinese Clematis ask Seven-Leaf Lord."

"I want red! Or purplish red."

"Red Maple and Red Leaf Plum."

"Oh! By the way, Dragon Cypress, can you pass the Forest Symbiont ability on to the Green Soldiers and Green Ants?"

"It’s just started; I’ll cultivate some miniature Green Ants first. We’ll know in a month."

Dragon Cypress steered the Dominating Throne, landed beneath the Leigangli Tree, and after greeting, explained in detail the new abilities gained through awakening.

Black Cory went to the Molan Mountain sub-nest to mobilize and prepare the ant colony.

Dragon Cypress then proceeded southeast, stopping on a hillside 1,500 meters from Leigangli.

A 150-meter-radius stretch of fertile cultivated earth.

In the center, Dragon Cypress dug a shallow pit with its front claw, buried the nurtured Two Kings Ink Orchid Divine-Given Seed, and covered it with soil.

Black Cory directed Specialized Blue Soldiers to fetch water for irrigation.

Half a day later, the seed sprouted.

After a day, the leaf bud broke ground.

After half a month, the mother plant was a bit over two meters tall, beginning to accumulate energy.

Another five days later, the mother plant’s pseudobulb sprouted, but only five in total, basically ruling out the possibility of being Divine Grade.

At the same time, the first batch of three miniature Green Ants completed feather transformation, two green rings on their tails, preliminarily confirming they’d inherited the ’Forest Symbiont’ ability.

Each was just over a centimeter; tiny but not dull-witted. Under Dragon Cypress’s repeated guidance, they ate grass blades and their carapaces turned green on their surface.

Three miniature Green Ants were assigned to bask quietly in a sunny spot, staying as still as possible.

Continuous observation,

For three days without eating, they remained vigorous.

Water consumption increased markedly.

Sunlight, air, and water—the three big elements—forged energy for survival and some nutrients for growth.

Waited two days.

The second batch of ant eggs produced three miniature Green Soldiers, who also feather transformed and hatched.

They, too, inherited Dragon Cypress’s Forest Symbiont ability.

Continuous observation,

Green Soldiers and Green Ants hardly consumed any food when not working, and could even store some energy and nutrients by basking in sunlight.

With the Jungle Symbiosis ability inherited, the number of Green Soldiers and Green Ants was almost no longer limited by food.

Specialized, large, medium, small, and miniature types could all be raised in large numbers.

Specialized Green Ants took precedence, assigning 100 per Divine-Given Seed, and 30 per Common Life Seed.

Specialized Green Soldiers could wait—wait for the Wormwood Spider King’s Divine-Grade Green Bean.

After all, for combat ants, if Green Soldiers could inherit the Bean Vine Entanglement ability, that would be perfect.

...

Black Cory stayed at Molan Mountain, tending the Two Kings Ink Orchid Divine-Given Seed.

The Dominating Throne carried Ink Orchid and headed for Huagi Mountain.