The insects in the jade bucket had successfully built their nest. It did not look very large, roughly the size of a soybean. As the flute music continued, a swarm of even tinier larvae suddenly burst out of the soybean-sized mass. They reproduced just like the Earth Immortal Trees, and their numbers were by no means small each time.
I did not want the immortal trees to propagate here without end. More than thirty trees were enough, so I withdrew the jade bucket and prepared to place the insects inside it in the Hidden-Heaven-and-Earth Realm, where I could seal them away and raise them for future emergencies.
While Xue Qingcheng urged the immortal trees to mature, I was also able to examine them closely. These tree roots, which scurried everywhere like octopuses, had indeed begun showing signs of bearing fruit. Although they still looked very tender, the possibility was already there. That meant they should bear fruit before long.
Each Earth Immortal Tree was now more than twenty meters tall, its roots snarled together in a tangled mass. Before long, they forced the water level upward. The Hidden-Water Realm was vast, but it was not boundless, so the rising water was inevitable. The roots of the Earth Immortal Trees would never stop growing at the water's surface, so they now looked like enormous vines spread across the bottom of the water.
This place had originally been only knee-deep. Now, more than thirty Earth Immortal Trees had raised the water level considerably. Once they bore fruit and reached the same scale as the one in the Celestial City, the water would probably have to rise above my knees.
After several days and who knew how many medicinal supplements, with Xue Qingcheng and me even taking turns playing the flute, every Earth