Immortality: Raising an Ant Queen to Cultivate by increasing stat point - Chapter 44
Chapter 44: Chapter 39 Green Demon’s Backup Plan t
Translator: 549690339
This Green Demon Beekeeping Manual is five pages long, with a cover, making seven pages in total.
The cover has almost no graphics or text, just the words “Green Demon Beekeeping Manual.” Its purpose is to protect the content of the five pages inside.
Moreover, this Insect Control Technique was not bound.
But they were pasted onto the book cover, similar to a modern glue binding.
Qin Niu, being a meticulous person, noticed no significant difference in the thickness when he touched the fourth page. The animal skins were already so coarsely made—some thick, some thin, with an uneven surface.
When turning the fourth page, he could feel a slight difference in the texture, feeling it was slightly heavier than the other four pages.
Such a detail would normally go unnoticed by anyone.
Even if someone noticed, they wouldn’t think much of it.
Because Qin Niu had heard stories of the Green Demon, he suspected that the Green Demon might have hidden something more.
The three characters for “kill” on the first page, with their bone-chilling hatred and overwhelming killing intent, also supported the Green Demon’s intense resentment.
It’s very frustrating for ordinary people to have no ability to fight back against the methods of immortals.
Carrying a deep-seated vendetta, he felt it was only just to kill those villagers who had bullied him and his sister, and the soldiers who had killed his sister.
With his great revenge unavenged, facing eradication by the immortals of the Falling Star Sect, no one would be content.
It was only natural for him to leave behind some sort of fallback.
The Green Demon Beekeeping Manual was his labor of love, with his lifetime of beekeeping experience all written within. However, after reading it through, Qin Niu, although greatly enlightened, found only some rather common knowledge and techniques on bee control.
When he purchased this volume of the Insect Control Technique, he had hoped to cultivate bees at the level of the Green Demon Bee through learning from it.
Yet, at the beginning, there was a sentence stating that the successful cultivation of the Green Demon Bee would not be repeated by a second person.
There was no detailed record in the book about the specific process of cultivating the Green Demon Bee.
Qin Niu had long heard that some real cultivation manuals contained secrets within hidden layers.
He vaguely felt that there might be more to the fourth page.
After studying it for a while, it seemed not to be a hidden layer.
Just a complete piece of animal skin.
Nevertheless, Qin Niu did not give up.
“Could there be an issue with the glue at this end?”
With that thought, he began his wasteful endeavor.
The Green Demon Beekeeping Manual, bought for ten taels of silver money, he directly dismantled page by page.
The adhesive, whose material was unknown, resembled raw lacquer but not quite. Since the Green Demon liked beekeeping, it might be possible that he made his own ‘glue’ by mixing honey with other substances.
Whatever it was, it adhered quite firmly, and it took Qin Niu considerable effort to pry them apart.
His main concern was not to tear it.
After all five pages were dismantled, Qin Niu became even more convinced there was a secret to the fourth page through comparison.
He tried to scrape it with his fingernail.
With relentless effort, he indeed pried it open from the middle.
Carefully tearing it apart, a piece of animal skin, thin as a cicada’s wing, fell out. This made Qin Niu excited. Just as he had suspected, there was a hidden secret within.
The thinning of this animal skin had not been easy, leaving only the top layer, which was only the size of a palm.
Thicker in the middle, the edges were ground extremely thin.
Such craftsmanship concealed it well from discovery.
No wonder it felt slightly heavier than the other four pages.
“Hundred Leaf Town, Black Stone Village!”
There were just a few small characters, followed by a map with mountains and roads outlined.
It looked like a map.
Qin Niu mulled it over in secret, wondering what the Green Demon intended by leaving this map. Was the real secret to cultivating Green Demon Bees hidden at the location marked on the map?
One thing was certain, the hidden cliff where Green Demon had once resided had definitely been scoured by others.
Though there were swarms of poison bees, for many experts this was hardly an obstacle.
Not to mention powerful Insect Masters.
For example, Qin Niu’s termites, if cultivated to be even stronger, could deal with ground insects almost effortlessly.
“Where is Hundred Leaf Town’s Black Stone Village? 1 need to ask around for information.”
One thing was certain, the final location on this map must contain something the Green Demon wanted to leave behind. It could be the real Insect Control Technique, or perhaps some other treasure.
He put the map back into the fourth-page interlayer and kept it close to his body.
His gaze turned to the black stink ant, which had already been killed by the termites, its body being dismembered and only a small part of the carcass remained.
Qin Niu fed them the bear meat he had brought.
He felt that eating bear meat should be somewhat beneficial for them. Although new powerful termites had not yet evolved, the Ant Queen had already developed the talent to breed offspring with strength attributes.
However, the probability was somewhat low, only 1%.
It might take one hundred eggs to possibly produce a termite with strength attributes.
On the other hand, the probability of producing poisonous ants was much higher, at 3%.
But he felt their venom was still very weak, providing little help in combat.
Powerful venom should be potent enough to seal the throat upon contact with blood, or rapidly paralyze an enemy upon injection, rendering them unable to fight and easy to slaughter.
Many insects have this ability, like spiders.
Their venom can paralyze prey.
A victim bitten by a spider won’t die immediately, but will experience such weakness that it can hardly move. Additionally, spider venom has a special effect of ‘preserving freshness.’
Spiders like to suck the fluids from their prey’s body, and they generally don’t consume the prey’s shell.
This requires that the prey, once trapped in the web, remains alive.
If it dies, the blood coagulates, making it difficult for spiders to suck fluids from the body. Furthermore, they prefer not to eat dead prey.
So, after being injected with spider venom, the prey may seem dead, but in reality, is just powerless and immobile.
If the prey is large and the spider can’t consume it in one meal, then the prey really suffers.
It’s as cruel as humans eating monkey brains or slicing flesh from a living donkey.
After being preyed upon once, a ‘preservative film’ forms over the wound from the spider’s saliva, sealing the wound.
The prey remains in a semi-dead state.
Waiting for the spider to suck on it the next ton.
Until it has drained all the fluids from its body.
According to Insect Masters who specialize in this area, spiders’ venom ■preservative’ effect lasts about seven days for common wild spiders that haven’t been cultivated.
If it’s a spider that has been cultivated and evolved, the ‘preservation’ time might last even longer.
Qin Niu felt it was necessary to enhance the toxicity of the termite’s venom.
After all, there was a huge nest of stink ants nearby, and today’s battle was just the beginning.
With the Ant Queen’s egg-laying skills being rather weak, striving to improve their combat abilities was the right way to go.
The Green Demon mentioned in the bee-rearing manual that the juices of many plants could also enhance a bee colony’s defense, venom potency, and flight speed.
He listed several plants’ juices, such as the juice of a lacquer tree that could strengthen the bees’ venom and the robustness of their wings. But the amount fed had to be controlled; too much would lead to the death of the colony.
There was also a colorful mushroom mentioned repeatedly by Green Demon, saying that crushed and mixed with honey to feed the bees, it led to their evolution of various special abilities.
An audacious thought emerged in Qin Niu’s mind, what would happen if he used the blood of the Ancient Banyan Tree to feed the termites?
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left, as he had used a third of the Ancient Banyan Tree Blood to nourish his blade yesterday.
Whether it was nourishing the blade or cultivating termites, both were long-term processes.
Wanting to see significant results after just one or two feedings was almost impossible..
