Affiliated with the Royal Arcane Academy was a magic laboratory called "Natural Source." This laboratory did not use the Chief Arcanist system, but instead operated more like a scientific research institute.
The Natural Source Laboratory focused on developing magic plants and was divided into multiple research groups. Magic beans, magic wheat, magic melons, magic eggplants, magic peppers, magic ginseng, magic lotus roots, magic oranges, magic pears, magic sunflowers, Transforming Trees—every type of magic plant had a corresponding research group dedicated to studying how to cultivate it.
Because different magic plants had different environmental requirements, the Natural Source Laboratory had branch laboratories in many cities across Flame Island, along with specially planned plantations.
Even on Black Horse Island in the Sapphire Grand Duchy, there was a branch laboratory of the Natural Source Laboratory—several types of magic plants had been cultivated there early on.
Yet since magic plant cultivation began, four or five full years had passed without a single fruit being harvested.
Magic plants were trees cultivated through natural magic. Even leguminous magic plants such as magic beans grew into towering trees like fruit trees. This process required ten years before they would begin bearing fruit; after another ten years, the yield of the magic bean trees would gradually increase; only after forty years would they enter their peak fruiting period.
In theory, during its peak fruiting period, a single magic bean tree could produce fifty thousand jin of magic-infused beans each year, and one such tree could live for more than a century.
He did not know whether the Moon Empire had relied on such magic plants for food, but the Sun Empire of Mafa Continent definitely ate food grown from magic plants—the mages of Mafa Continent had likely all developed into Druids, greatly differing from the mages of Legendary