Chapter 891: Recovery
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Han Sen went to the river himself every day, mostly in the pursuit of wild geno plants.
Han Sen managed to collect quite a few at first, but after a few days of successful collection, the amount he was able to find each day was dwindling. Han Sen rode Golden Growler for about a dozen miles in either direction along the river, but it was all to little avail.
Fewer and fewer were there to be found.
In forty miles of travel, Han Sen was able to find forty-one geno plants in total. Aside from the purple vine that was watched over by the toad, the others were normal plants. Altogether, he was able to earn forty waterdrops.
Han Sen was unable to formulate a plan in which he might grab the watervine, without attracting the notice of the toad. Every time he passed the vine by, the toad was there. It sometimes hopped around, which was a little frightening.
The toad's body was coarse and rough, and it was colored yellow. It looked far bigger after it emerged from the water, about the size of a football.
Han Sen once saw the toad's warts unfold to ooze out poisonous blood. Then, the toad let it all seep into the watervine's roots.
A few days later, Han Sen noticed that the watervine had grown a few purple flowers.
That meant it had a chance to bear geno fruit, and it wasn't a normal geno plant.
"I don't know how long it'll take for it to grow fruit, though. Or how much longer it'd take for the fruit to mature, after that. Hopefully, whenever that occurs, I'll already be recovered," Han Sen thought to himself.
Ever since Han Sen demonstrated his ability to use river water to revive and maintain the health of the tree, Chu Ming had treated him completely differently. He listened to whatever Han Sen told him.
After the first sudden flourishing, Han Sen did not dare provide a whole waterdrop to the tree again, though. It was too much.
When it was given a whole droplet, it had grown over the course of a single night as much as one would expect after several months of arduous care. It was suspicious, and if he did it again, the questions he'd receive would never end.
Taking into account the size of the first waterdrop, Han Sen was able to gauge how much life he wanted to give the tree, and split up all the other waterdrops into the size he calculated to be ideal. And when he was ready to give the waterdrop to the tree, he mixed the waterdrop with the rest of the water in the bucket. While not as startling like the first night, the tree grew healthy at a quick and steady rate.
After a few days of caring for the tree, Han Sen was able to determine the exact size of waterdrop the tree would need to grow.
With his educated guesses, Han Sen was able to determine that one drop from the original three waterdrops was the equivalent of one whole year of lifeforce generation.
If the Dragon-Blood Tree absorbed one drop, it'd quickly exhibit a year's worth of development.
The size of the waterdrops Han Sen had personally collected were all different. The life they would provide might be a month, or several. He did not know.
He later learnt that the differing sizes were determined by how long the plants he collected had been growing. The size of their waterdrops reflected their age, not their lifeforce. Plants, however, were cyclical in nature, and there was a limit to how much energy they could generate.
The Ink-Sword Tree, which took three years to grow fruit, it could only provide three waterdrops. Even if it grew for another ten years, it'd only provide three waterdrops.
The waterdrops were created by the black crystal, and they provided concentrated energies. The age of the plants did not factor into their purity.
But if the plants had only just started to grow, and hadn't yet reached maturity, absorbing their energies would not provide half as many waterdrops.
As educated and well thought-out as these theories were, they were still just guesses, and not scientific facts. Still, evidence seemed to support his idea, so it was likely Han Sen was correct.
It made Han Sen happy to know that there was no level difference between the waterdrops.
Even the waterdrops from normal plants were still able to bring a mutant geno tree back to life.
It was a scary power, and Han Sen could absorb life energy to quickly grow mutant geno plants that might have ordinarily taken a hundred years to grow naturally. With this method, he could even grow a sacred-blood geno plant that might traditionally take thousands of years to grow.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Han Sen believed it to be cheating, and his body trembled at the thought.
He firmly believed he couldn't allow anyone else to find out about what he had learnt. If his ability was discovered by others, it was likely even King-class spirits would seek Han Sen out to make him their gardener.
The waterdrops seemed able to be used on pet and mount beast souls, too. Meowth and Golden Growler had consumed a small amount of the waterdrops, and now they seemed to have changed. They couldn't drink much at a time, so Han Sen could not gauge its true effectiveness on them, though.
The devil-ant king beast soul could not consume or absorb the waterdrop, unfortunately. Han Sen did not know why.
He thought about trying to use a waterdrop on himself, to see if it could help, but ultimately decided not to.
This was because after touching the waterdrop with his finger, his finger grew older. He didn't dare consume one after this.
Half a month had passed and still, his finger had not recovered. Without a detailed inspection, its aged appearance was not obvious, but when you looked closely, you could see the wrinkles with ease.
Carefully, Han Sen measured the right portion of a waterdrop he could give the tree, to control its growth.
Qu Lanxi and Chu Ming constantly wondered how it seemed to be doing so well. On occasion, they followed Han Sen out towards the river and watched him in secret. But all they could see was Han Sen fetching a bucket of water from the river as he had told them he did; there was nothing suspicious for them to see.
Han Sen did not do anything else except pour the water on the tree's roots, in their eyes.
Even on the odd instance that Han Sen instructed Chu Ming to fetch the water, it grew well.
It wasn't long before they gave up their investigation, however. They couldn't think of or catch an ulterior reason for the tree's growth, so they dropped it.
But of course, the existence of the tree was kept a secret from the wider world. The tree did not belong to them exactly, and if the spirit found out there was a mutant tree growing in their backyard, the spirit could very well take it away.
It was either that or they'd be instructed to keep growing the tree while the spirit and his fellow felons would only come by for the harvest.
So, they did their best to keep the tree's existence a secret, without the need for Han Sen to tell them to.
Another month passed, and Han Sen was far healthier now. He could cast dongxuan aura and his holy light to further heal himself. A few days after this, he was in tip-top condition.
"It's time to kill that copper toad!" Han Sen was very excited at the prospect of killing it.