Spirit Plant Hybridization

Looking at the two neat rows of standard pits carved out by the "Sea Calming Bead Brand Excavator" before her,

Su Miao planted her hands on her chubby waist, and a surge of lofty ambition rose within her.

Land—check!

Water—plenty!

Tools—handy!

Next came the most important part.

—Seeds and seedlings!

She immediately began her Seed-Seeking Adventure across Mount Fangzhang.

This time, her targets were no longer those glittering but useless stones,

but every Spirit Planting she could see that bore fruit or bloomed with flowers!

Thanks to the Prehistoric World knowledge that Heavenly Dao had forcibly crammed into her before—though she understood it all in a muddled way—

and the Pure World White Lotus Origin's innate affinity for Spirit Planting, she could vaguely sense which plants contained relatively gentle Spiritual Qi,

and which were more violent and best left alone.

She carefully avoided plants that looked dangerous at a glance and gave off fierce auras,

instead targeting those that looked harmless, had pretty fruit, and bore bright flowers.

She used the Sea Calming Bead to smash open hard fruit shells and collect the plump Seeds inside;

carefully scraped pollen from flowers and wrapped it in broad leaves;

found offshoot root sprouts and carefully separated them with the bead's tip;

she even snapped off small branches from flexible Spirit Planting shrubs that looked easy to break...

Very quickly,

the edge of her Experimental Field was piled high with all sorts of experimental materials.

There were Cinnabar Fruit Seeds as red as rubies,

unknown berry pits glowing with blue light,

Calming Dao Pattern Grass seedlings that exuded a tranquil aura,

branches bearing large red flowers that she had forcibly snapped from that Mutant Lush Shrub,

and even several things resembling Spirit Root Tubers that she had dug out from deep underground with great effort.

With the preparations complete, Su Miao looked at the motley pile of materials and found herself troubled.

"Should I plant them all?"

She tilted her little head.

"But... doesn't that seem kind of boring...?"

If farming just meant burying Seeds in the ground,

watering them, then waiting...

then it was no different from an agriculture channel. She might as well pick them herself—there were plenty all over the island anyway.

"No, no."

She shook her head.

"That's way too boring! I need to be innovative!"

Innovative?

How was she supposed to innovate?

The limited biological knowledge in her memory began to stir.

It seemed... different plants could... be grafted together?

Attach one plant's branch to another plant?

They could also be hybridized, maybe?

Mix together the pollen of two different flowers?

Though she knew absolutely nothing about the principles or methods,

once the thought of innovation took root, it swiftly sprouted and grew!

Her goal was also very clear.

Not to improve her cultivation, nor to refine immortal pills, but simply for—

"Fun," "pretty," and "tasty"!

She got to work at once!

Little Su Miao, whose ability to act was off the charts, immediately got started!

She first picked up the shrub branch with big red flowers and a rather sturdy Sprout growing from some unknown kind of Spirit Root Tuber.

"Hmm... red with green looks pretty!"

She made her judgment according to her own aesthetic standards.

She viciously drilled a hole into the Sprout's main stem, then roughly shoved the Red Flower branch inside. She smeared the joint with some mud she had casually mixed together from Spiritual Soil and Three Lights Divine Water, then tightly bound it with flexible grass leaves.

"Success! Experiment Number One: Red Flower Green Stem Tree!"

Satisfied, she clapped her hands and planted it in the first pit.

Next, she set her sights on the Cinnabar Fruit and that blue fluorescent berry.

"Red and blue... would they turn purple if mixed together? Would they taste even better?"

She let her imagination run wild.

She collected pollen from the Cinnabar Fruit and Blue Berry,

then mixed them together at random without caring about proportions.

Then she found a flowering shrub that bore sour Little Yellow Fruit and carefully smeared the mixed pollen onto its pistils.

"Experiment Number Two: Dream Purple Fruit!"

She hung a nameplate on the shrub destined for a troubled fate, the words scratched onto it with a branch.

Then she took an interest in Rainbow Haze Flower and Calming Dao Pattern Grass. Eating this flower made people burp, and the breath they expelled would carry rainbow-like colors.

"Calming grass settles the mind, Rainbow Haze Flower makes you burp. If I mix them together... will they make quiet rainbow-colored burps?"

She thought the idea was brilliant!

So she once again brought out her hole-drilling technique,

trying to graft the Rainbow Haze Flower's tiny roots onto the roots of the Calming Dao Pattern Grass.

The process was unbearable to watch, and she nearly tormented both Spiritual Grass to death.

She also tried injecting Night Glow Grass juice into an especially sweet melon and fruit, hoping to grow sweet melons that glowed at night;

she soaked the Seeds of a pungent, spicy Spiritual Pepper together with Cinnabar Fruit Seeds, hoping to balance them into sweet-and-spicy fruit;

very soon, she had turned the entire Experimental Field into a complete mess,

filling it with bizarre combinations that defied the growth patterns of Prehistoric World Spirit Planting.

She was completely winging it, and her methods were outrageously crude.

Still, she relied on the Sea Calming Bead for digging pits and drilling holes, and the Water Control Banner for precise watering—she was getting better and better at those.

Along with Mount Fangzhang's incredibly dense Innate Spiritual Energy and the top-grade Spiritual Soil beneath her feet,

they forcibly kept those poor Spirit Planting alive.

In the darkness, the will of the Primordial Heavenly Dao was stirred once more.

When it sensed the vital auras of those naturally born Spirit Planting on Mount Fangzhang being recklessly altered and forcibly pieced together,

the Rules across the entire region seemed to freeze for an instant.

[...What... is this?]

Heavenly Dao's gaze fell upon the area Su Miao had named the Experimental Field,

watching the Spirit Planting that had been drilled open, stuffed with branches, smeared with mud, and bound with grass; the pollen that had been haphazardly hybridized; the melons and fruit injected with foreign juices...

Even Heavenly Dao, emotionless and without desire,

seemed to experience an incredibly faint ripple of speechlessness within its vast will.

Nonsense!

Utter nonsense!

The Spirit Roots of the Prehistoric World were born from the intertwining of the Laws of Heaven and Earth and the Yin-Yang and Five Elements. Each had its own form and nature—how could they be carelessly pieced together like this?

This was not creation. It was destruction!

It nearly sent down a small Heavenly Thunder as a warning, or directly mobilized the Rules to restore the area to its original state.

But... just as its will was about to act, it stopped.

Because it discovered that although the little brat's methods were crude and absurd, and her ideas bizarre,

the Spirit Planting she had tortured were all on their last legs, their auras chaotic, but... they were indeed still stubbornly alive.

And under Mount Fangzhang's uniquely blessed environment, along with the occasional precise nourishment of Three Lights Divine Water,

they seemed... to be undergoing extremely slow yet undeniably real... mutations in a direction it could not fully deduce?

Every new, twisted, bizarre combination that appeared

was like a tiny stone cast into the River of Destiny of the Prehistoric World,

small though it was, it truly sent out new and unforeseen ripples.

These mutants... regardless of whether they ultimately succeeded or failed, survived or perished,

the process and result of their very "birth" seemed to be ever so faintly...

completing a certain possibility within the Prehistoric World's "creation"?

Heavenly Dao was impartial. It regarded all living things as straw dogs, and all living things as nourishment.

Anything beneficial to the evolution of Heaven and Earth had reason to exist, no matter what form it took.

Besides, no matter how absurd these things were, they were confined to one corner of Mount Fangzhang and could not harm the entire Prehistoric World.

And this Little Ancestor... seemed to be having fun. For the moment, she had no time to cause even greater destruction.

So be it.

Let her do as she pleased.

The will of Heavenly Dao slowly withdrew and no longer intervened, only splitting off an extremely tiny sliver of attention.

Like setting up a backdoor logging program, it silently marked and observed the subsequent changes of every strange combination within that Experimental Field.

Perhaps these seemingly nonsensical actions would one day offer some... unexpected opportunities for the evolution of the Prehistoric World?

It even had a faint premonition that this little brat's reckless tinkering might truly produce something strange and unusual...

Meanwhile, Su Miao, completely unaware that she had just wandered around Ghost Gate Pass,

looked at her chaotic yet "vibrant" Experimental Field,

planted her hands on her chubby waist, and proudly let out a "hmph."

"Once my super fruit grows, I'm going to give my future Master the shock of his life!"

She declared it to the air, as though she could already see the future scene of bountiful fruit.

Though at the moment, she herself had no idea who her Master was,

or when he would come to take her away.