Luo Yu and July didn't stay long in the Ancient Grotto this time. Just as expected, after half a day, Luo Yu began feeling unwell—dizzy and light-headed—so they hurried back to the research institute to await their next exploration.
"I still need to keep getting stung and strengthen my physique!"
Over the past two days, he had only placed the Honey-Water Bees with advanced talents—excluding those with enhancement talents—into the breeding hives sponsored by Linyue Pavilion.
As for the ones with enhancement talents, whether ordinary or advanced, Luo Yu hadn't paired them up yet.
After all, mating and breeding drained their energy, leaving them in a weakened state where they couldn't work.
Work first; breed after retirement.
Luo Yu's plan was to use these twenty-odd Honey-Water Bees with enhancement talents to sting him until the treatments lost their effectiveness, and only then let them mate.
Besides, when it was just him and July being stung, twenty-odd bees were more than enough for now. With one of them being a Trainee Beast Master and the other a rookie under level 10, they didn't need to be punctured full of holes just yet.
However, with the new demand for a Honey-Water Bee with the Rock Element Enhancement talent, Luo Yu set aside one bee with an enhancement talent for breeding upon returning this time.
He placed the Honey-Water Bee with the Water Element Enhancement talent and another with the Rock Element Affinity talent into a separate breeding box to see if their offspring's talents could fuse and mutate...
In any case, the biggest benefit of the Water Element Enhancement talent for him and July was merely boosting swimming ability—far less important than the other Honey-Water Bees—so he was fine letting it breed first.
If it really could produce a Honey-Water Bee with the Rock Element Enhancement talent, maybe he could use it to mass-produce avian mutated beasts capable of atavistic evolution.
When that time came, whether Jingyue Island could build its dinosaur theme park... would all hinge on a single bee.
"First medical care, then education, and now the tourism industry has to rely on breeding, too."
"Like I said, breeding really is the primary productive force."
...
"Is this guy... really not afraid of pain?"
Up on the second floor, Yuwan opened a window to let in some fresh air, only to see Luo Yu sitting cross-legged on the ground in the institute's backyard, bare-chested and covered in Honey-Water Bees, their stingers sinking into his flesh!
And by the pond next to him sat a little penguin holding a fishing rod, fishing in the water while also covered in stingers...
With Lin Li's Honey-Water Bee Queen helping manage the bees, they had become far more obedient, actively cooperating in the sting training.
"Strength, Defense, Speed, Endurance, Spirit..." Luo Yu only allowed bees with these five enhancement types to sting him for now.
He hadn't let the bees with the Poison Resistance Enhancement talent sting him or July. Bee venom was still poison, after all; he was afraid that if their poison resistance went up, the bee venom would stop working entirely.
For now, he was testing that on ordinary inkfish.
As for the bees with the Life Enhancement talent, which could promote growth, he naturally reserved those for July so it could level up quickly and strive to hit level 11 as soon as possible.
"Mutated beasts are one thing—they have thick hides—but how on earth can Luo Yu endure that?" Yuwan shook her head by the window.
The pain of dozens of stings a day was certainly not something an ordinary teenager could tolerate.
What she didn't know was that Luo Yu had lived through an apocalypse, enduring the torment of starvation—an agony far more excruciating than mere physical pain.
Compared to prolonged starvation, the fleeting physical pain of a few dozen stings was vastly easier to bear.
"He's a ruthless one, but I won't lose either." Chen Bo glanced over as he walked by. He had also tried the sting training method over the past couple of days, and it was agonizing enough to kill a man; taking eighteen stings in a single day had already pushed his body to its absolute limit.
Seeing Luo Yu push himself so hard, he decided he would try forty-nine stings tomorrow. When it came to grinding, he had never lost to anyone.
...
"Aren't you pushing yourself a bit too hard...?" A moment later, Lin Li had her bee queen disperse the enhancement Honey-Water Bees.
"I'm fine." Luo Yu took the loose lab coat she handed him and slipped it on, chuckling softly. He had to push himself; life seemed stable right now, but there was no telling when disaster might strike.
Take those Calamity Species mutated beasts, for instance. Every time one appeared, it brought disaster in its wake; even the lingering shockwave of one passing by could whip up tsunamis and storms, plunging human settlements into crisis.
Or the Tide Zombie Cataclysm. Jingyue Island had fended it off many times before, and having the Jingyue Giant Croc as a safety net was reassuring, but the excavation of the Ancient Grotto had disrupted the surrounding oceanic magnetic field, making this Tide Zombie Cataclysm eerily unpredictable. Nobody knew whether an even stronger zombie tide would emerge.
And then there were... humans.
In reality, during the Tide Zombie Cataclysm, zombies weren't the greatest threat to every island. The true danger came from pirates.
They would take advantage of an island battling a zombie tide to strike, burning, killing, and looting.
With so many unstable factors, Luo Yu knew that Jingyue Island's current scale was far from eternally secure. He had to acquire the strength to traverse the vast ocean and survive on the open sea as quickly as possible.
Of course, when all was said and done, he simply never wanted to experience starvation again. With enough strength, even if he were adrift at sea, he could hunt marine beasts to keep his belly full.
"What are we eating today?" Luo Yu asked instinctively.
"I developed a new dish today..."
"A new dish?" Luo Yu was taken aback. He had realized by now that when Lin Li cooked standard, mainstream dishes—like Linyue Pavilion's signature recipes—they tasted great. But when it came to newly developed dishes, the results were wildly unpredictable.
"This time, I made honey-glazed garlic-chili crab offal soup..."
"..." Luo Yu's vision darkened. Looking at Lin Li—with her wavy, light-golden hair adorned with small white flowers and bee hairpins—he felt a headache coming on.
How could such a pretty girl create such vicious, dark culinary horrors?
Honey, minced garlic, chili, and offal... Was that a combination that had any right to exist?
He had thought that after transmigrating, he would never have to eat bizarre dishes like cumin-dusted shoe soles or salt-and-pepper leather belts again... yet here they were!
"Could we maybe not keep developing new dishes...?" Luo Yu said. "The classic recipes on the menu are already wonderful."
Lin Li made a troubled face. "But the guardian deity is so picky. It doesn't like eating the same dish twice... and its favorite food is offal..."
"The guardian deity... the Jingyue Giant Croc..." Luo Yu had nearly forgotten. The Jingyue Festival was right around the corner, and gourmet offerings were an indispensable part of the celebration. Lin Li wanted to participate this year.
"Linyue Pavilion's dishes have won the guardian deity's approval many times, right?"
"Then have you ever seen the guardian deity, the Jingyue Giant Croc, in person?" Luo Yu asked.
To be honest, he really wanted to know just how powerful this island's guardian deity was, but unfortunately, the island had never publicly disclosed that information.
During the Jingyue Festival, the guardian deity remained submerged underwater, so ordinary spectators could only see its pair of eyes.
The festival's winners, however, were granted an audience with the guardian deity's true form and received its blessing.
"I have," Lin Li recalled. "When I was fifteen and had just become a Beast Master, I made a dish that satisfied the guardian deity. Because of that, my Honey-Water Bee and I received its blessing!"
"A blessing... Speaking of which, what exactly is the guardian deity's blessing?" Luo Yu asked curiously.
Lin Li said, "Well... it doesn't seem to be fixed. I heard it depends on the guardian deity's mood that day."
"I heard that one year, the guardian deity didn't get any food to its liking and was furious. As a result, it only gave a verbal blessing to a rookie Beast Master who had performed exceptionally well that year."
"It just verbally wished her academic success... and that was it."
Luo Yu: "?"
Holy crap, the guardian deity was that perfunctory?
"Oh, and that rookie Beast Master happened to be Senior Yuwan!"
"Though later on, she didn't manage to get into Canglan Ocean University anyway, so I guess it was a failed blessing."
Luo Yu: "..."
"Of course, during my turn, since the new dish I developed pleased Lord Guardian Deity so much, it was very gentle with me. It even changed the blessing into granting a wish, asking what I wanted."
"What did you say?" Luo Yu asked curiously.
Lin Li glanced at the Honey-Water Bee Queen hovering beside her. "I told the guardian deity that I wanted my Honey-Water Bee to become stronger..."
"Then, it gave me a gleaming ice crystal and had me feed it to the bee."
"Ever since, my Honey-Water Bee's venom mutated..."
"It can freeze an enemy's nerves in an instant, leaving them incapacitated..."
Luo Yu looked at the Honey-Water Bee.
[Species]: Honey-Water Bee (Bee Queen Form)
[Attribute]: Water
[Species Rank]: Lower Common Species
[Life Level]: Level 20
[Species Ability]: Poison Sting, Command
[Individual Talent]: 1. Bee Queen...
2. Wind Element Affinity...
"Is that so...? Then do you know the guardian deity's specific species rank?" Luo Yu asked.
Lin Li's Honey-Water Bee actually had great talents—dual high-grade talents—and its wind-system abilities seemed to have been developed rather than neglected, just like Chen Bo's Thunderbolt Shrimp.
That made sense; if she hadn't discovered its great talent early on, Lin Li wouldn't have contracted it in the first place.
After hearing Lin Li's explanation, Luo Yu felt the Jingyue Giant Croc truly had some real skill. To actually cause a Honey-Water Bee's venom to mutate into an ice-based toxin!
From what he understood, the Jingyue Giant Croc had three attributes: Water, Ice, and Light. But he was especially eager to know its exact species rank.
Luo Yu estimated... Upper Monarch Species?
Or had it already reached... the Abyss rank!
Although the Jingyue Giant Croc was the evolved form of an Upper Common Species White Croc, it hadn't evolved through normal means. Instead, it had encountered the Evolution Sea, soaring to greatness through a miraculous encounter. Because of that, there was only one Jingyue Giant Croc in the entire world.
Maybe it really was Abyss-ranked!
After all, Jingyue Island had developed peacefully for so long; without a formidable backing, that would hardly be possible.
If the Jingyue Giant Croc truly was Abyss-ranked, Luo Yu felt tempted to participate in the Jingyue Festival himself.
Ideally, he could make a wish in person.
"Its rank...?" Lin Li shook her head. "Most people think the guardian deity is an Upper Monarch Species, but I feel it might have already reached the Abyss rank..."
"Why do you ask?" she asked.
"Nothing. If I wish for a basin of the guardian deity's blood, do you think it'd give me some?" Luo Yu licked his lips. One of the conditions for condensing Commander Essence was a basin of Abyss blood...
Lin Li: "???"
"Are you planning to assassinate our guardian deity? If you pull it off, share some with me so Lin Li can make me a bowl of maoxuewang with its blood," Yuwan chimed in as she came out to hang laundry, having overheard their conversation.
Lin Li shrank back in fear. "..."
Why was everyone in this research institute so disrespectful to the guardian deity? She could understand Yuwan, who had been shafted by the guardian deity and was just grumbling, but what was Scholar Luo Yu trying to pull?! She suddenly felt like she had boarded a pirate ship...
Chapter 42