ALL NOVEL Chapter 42 - Harvest
Mai Dongzi did not keep any secrets and, after discovering the mutated Gastrodia elata, she dug it up in front of the live broadcast camera. To her surprise, she found eleven pieces of Gastrodia elata in one cluster, each weighing nearly two pounds.
She weighed one piece of Gastrodia elata in her hand. The energy fluctuation in the mutated Gastrodia elata was not as rich as that in Polygonum multiflorum. However, once she held it, she felt a different kind of energy compared to the ginseng and Polygonum multiflorum.
While holding the ginseng, she felt very comfortable, but the Gastrodia elata made her feel a mental uplift. This led Mai Dongzi to speculate, so she used her mental power to take a small portion of the ginseng root and soaked it in a ceramic kettle, while she soaked the Gastrodia elata in a ceramic bowl.
Although she had no intention of hiding these medicinal herbs, she still aimed to benefit herself. When digging up the second Polygonum multiflorum, she came up with a way to avoid drawing attention and collect more herbs.
There was another ginseng 500 meters away. Mai Dongzi attempted to use her mental power to manifest an invisible small shovel to loosen the soil around the ginseng root and then collected both the ginseng and the soil into her space pouch. To avoid detection by satellite surveillance, she left the portion of the ginseng exposed above ground, hoping that the satellites, no matter how advanced, would not notice the changes underground unless specifically focused.
Handling two tasks at once was somewhat taxing, so Mai Dongzi’s movements slowed. Thus, after she used her mental power to dig up the ginseng, she then dug up the Polygonum multiflorum.
Manifesting mental power was very draining, but fortunately, the live camera was focused on the Polygonum multiflorum in her hand, so the audience did not see the sweat forming on her forehead.
With 70% of her mental power exhausted, Mai Dongzi had to stop. She recalled that she had previously placed a piece of ginseng root in the ceramic kettle. Feeling thirsty, she took a sip.
As expected, the water contained ginseng energy. It rapidly replenished 60% of the energy she had used and 40% of her dual abilities. This indicated that mutated ginseng was more suitable for warriors.
Mai Dongzi then thought of the mutated Gastrodia elata and could not resist taking out the ceramic bowl containing it. The energy in Gastonia elata was the opposite of ginseng. 60% of the energy replenished her mental power, 30% supplemented her wood-type ability, and only 10% was absorbed into her meridians to replenish her physical strength.
Though she had suspected this, seeing it confirmed brought both surprise and joy. This allowed her to use these rare herbs more effectively.
The energy contained in these herbs was very pure and easily absorbed, unlike the mixed energy in mutated beast meat, where only two-thirds were useful, requiring a long time to fully absorb the beneficial energy.
Exhausted from using her mental power, Mai Dongzi decided to add more Gastrodia elata, crush it with her mental power, and consume both the Gastrodia elata and the water together.
As soon as the Gastrodia elata water entered her stomach, the rich energy quickly replenished her depleted mental power. In less than two minutes, her mental power was restored to 70%.
With this, Mai Dongzi shifted her focus from ginseng to Gastonia elata. For her, cultivating her mental powers was the priority, followed by her warrior abilities, with wood-type abilities being the least important.
Mutated Gastonia elata was much easier to dig up than ginseng. It wasn’t as “delicate” and didn’t have the dense fine roots that ginseng had. Mai Dongzi only needed to use her mental power to “cut” the connection between the root blocks and the main root, allowing her to collect them directly into her space pouch without having to loosen the surrounding soil.
Moreover, finding a cluster of Gastrodia elata with ten or more pieces was very satisfying.
If there were no Polygonum multiflorum in the area with ginseng, she manually harvested other herbs while secretly using her mental power to dig for ginseng.
Mai Dongzi continued to wander in the nearby forest, busy digging manually and secretly with her mental power until dusk, when she reluctantly returned to her treehouse.
If her predictions were correct, she wouldn’t be able to return to this forest the next day.
Once inside the treehouse, the live broadcast stopped. After eating and drinking, Mai Dongzi began to count her harvest for the day.
Due to concerns about military satellite surveillance, she did not directly take out the harvested herbs but instead counted them within her space pouch using her mental power.
Today, she had collected a total of five mutated ginseng—two large and three small. The last ginseng she dug up weighed close to four pounds and had very rich energy, two to three times more concentrated than the first ginseng she dug.
Mai Dongzi estimated that this mutated ginseng was likely around a thousand years old.
Although the other three ginseng plants appeared to be younger, they were still over a hundred years old.
To test the effect of ginseng in aiding cultivation, she took a thumb-sized root from the youngest ginseng and chewed it slowly.
After fully absorbing its energy, her warrior level increased slightly, and her previously depleted mental power recovered significantly. Her wood-type ability also advanced to the early middle stage of level three.
Mai Dongzi valued the ginseng and Gastonia elata highly, so she had collected seven Polygonum multiflorum plants, all dug by hand, with no hidden intentions. The most concentrated energy among them was only two-thirds as strong as the first ginseng she had dug.
She found that she could only absorb 40% of the energy from the Polygonum multiflorum, with this 40% evenly distributed between her dual abilities and physical strength. Thus, 60% of the energy was wasted, possibly benefiting other types of abilities.
Though Mai Dongzi only visibly collected two Gastonia elata, she secretly gathered eleven, making for a substantial harvest.
While Mai Dongzi was overjoyed with her bountiful harvest, her activities throughout the afternoon had, as expected, drawn the attention of the live-stream audience.
The focus of the audience, as Mai Dongzi had hoped, shifted to Polygonum multiflorum due to her actions. The root blocks of the mutated Polygonum multiflorum weighed over ten pounds, which was very eye-catching. A single mutated Gastonia elata weighed only two to three pounds, and the ginseng was just over two pounds. Given that Mai Dongzi’s visible harvest featured the most Polygonum multiflorum, it was no surprise that the Blue and Black Empire’s people were particularly focused on the mutated Polygonum multiflorum.
If it were over two thousand years ago, the people of Water Blue Star would have been more interested in ginseng. However, with the advancement of interstellar civilization, the untrained audience paid more attention to Gastonia elata, as it involved large clusters, making it more visually striking compared to the single ginseng roots.