Purple Jade Bees

After giving the surrounding peaks a quick, rough tidy, Yellow Dragon returned to the courtyard.

He took a small tree from the Mysterious Yellow World Pearl. It stood only a few feet tall, with natural silver Dao patterns on its lush green leaves.

It had grown from a branch Yellow Dragon had taken from the Enlightenment Tea Tree. He had planted it in Nine Heavens Breathing Soil, regularly nourished it with the Sweet Dew Technique, and added a little merit. Only then had it grown into a lower-grade acquired Enlightenment Tea Tree.

As for the Enlightenment Tea Tree Green Dragon had given him, it had already taken root inside the Mysterious Yellow World Pearl. Removing it rashly would destabilize the world within the pearl and hinder its growth.

Next, Yellow Dragon took several clumps of soil from the Mysterious Yellow World Pearl. The Nine Heavens Breathing Soil had transformed the earth around it into Breathing Soil. He planted the tea sapling and soil together in the center of the courtyard. As soon as he finished, its branches and leaves stirred without wind, making a faint, pleasing rustle that drew the mind toward the Dao.

He looked over his modest cave abode. Small as it was, it had everything it needed. The Spirit Field brimmed with life, white light shimmered over the lotus pond, crimson mist rose from the jujube grove, and Dao Music sounded again and again from the tea tree. All of it made the abode seem more extraordinary.

With everything done, Yellow Dragon took out a meditation cushion and sat beside the tea sapling. He closed his eyes. The voice expounding the Great Dao of heaven and earth in the Yuanshi Golden Canon echoed through his mind, intertwining with the tea tree's rustle and faintly resonating with the fluctuations of the Dao's laws. His understanding of the canon deepened.

In the days that followed, Yellow Dragon rose with the sun to open Spirit Fields and tend the Immortal Herbs and Medicines in the Five Elements Grotto-Heaven. At sunset, he returned to contemplate the Yuanshi Golden Canon beneath the Enlightenment Tea Tree.

One day, while searching the mountains around the Five Elements Grotto-Heaven for rare flowers and plants, Yellow Dragon heard a dense, loud buzzing. At the same time, a sweet scent of nectar drifted to him on the wind. After searching back and forth, he found a cave half a man's height in a cliff behind one of the peaks.

Purple bees the size of human heads flew in and out, ceaselessly busy.

Yellow Dragon separated a wisp of his Primordial Spirit and attached it to one of the bees. It entered the cave and passed through a long tunnel, revealing a vast cavern to him.

A thick layer of beeswax, smooth and warm-looking as yellow jade, coated the stone walls. Built upon it was a huge honeycomb dozens of meters high. Its intricately formed hexagonal cells held spirit honey, thick as amber and glowing with a rainbow sheen.

Deep within the honeycomb, the enormous central chamber resembled a natural Palace of purple jade. A queen bee the size of an adult lay there languidly, her body clear as crystal. Gentle purple light flowed beneath her shell, as though she had been carved from the finest purple jade.

Her compound eyes held the faint, somewhat bewildered Spirit Light of newly awakened intelligence. The aura around her was weak but pure, showing that she had only just begun to cultivate and barely crossed the threshold of sentience.

The worker bees surrounding her were as large as adult heads, their shells a soft violet. Each beat of their wings sent out a slight but distinct ripple of spiritual energy, leaving faint purple traces in the dim hive.

"Purple spirit bees? Such a rare breed!" A flicker of delight passed through Yellow Dragon's mind as he watched from hiding. His Five Elements Grotto-Heaven had felt too quiet, with no living creatures to handle its little chores. This newly awakened colony was just what he needed.

In a flash, Yellow Dragon appeared beside the Purple Jade Bee queen without a sound, like a ghost. A faint, intrigued smile crossed his face as he studied this newborn spirit.

"BUZZ—!!!"

Yellow Dragon's sudden appearance struck the peaceful hive like a boulder crashing into a still lake. The entire colony erupted!

Countless Purple Jade Bees shrieked in fear and fury, their cries deafening. At their queen's command, they surged toward the intruder like a purple tide, heedless of death.

The venomous stingers at their tails glinted with a cold purple light. All pointed at Yellow Dragon as the bees lunged, their approach slicing through the air!

A cloying, dangerous scent of Purple Jade Bee venom spread through the air.

Yellow Dragon did not even lift an eyelid. At a mere thought, the vast aura of a Mystic Immortal spread silently from him, like an unseen current in the depths of the sea.

The bees that came within ten feet of him struck an invisible barrier, unbreakable and everywhere at once. The force of their charge vanished instantly.

A dense series of muffled thuds followed. The bees at the front dropped to the ground like dumplings into a pot. Their wings beat furiously but could not stir the slightest breeze. They could only twitch on the ground, pinned motionless by the invisible pressure.

Yellow Dragon looked into the central chamber. The newly awakened Purple Jade Bee queen had already been crushed by the overwhelming pressure. Her crystalline body pressed against the wall as she trembled, able to make only faint, frantic buzzing cries. Her compound eyes were filled with fear and a desperate wish to live.

Yellow Dragon's divine sense pierced the queen's fragile spiritual defenses and branded his will clearly upon her soul. "My cave abode lacks a spirit creature to handle its chores. Will you come with me, or... will you come with me?" His voice was calm, but its authority left no room for refusal.

"Buzz... great immortal... buzz... spare me... buzz... I'll... I'll go... buzz..." The queen's thoughts came in fragments, full of panic. She could barely form a complete thought, but her submission was unmistakable.

Yellow Dragon shook his head slightly, a little helpless in the face of her newly awakened mind. He drew back his aura, and the invisible pressure binding the colony disappeared.

The fallen workers seemed to have been granted a reprieve. They dared not move against him again, huddling in a corner of the hive and buzzing low.

He extended a slender finger, and a point of pure, warm golden light flared at its tip. It was not flame. It held the profound power to awaken minds and grant sentience to living beings—the purest power of enlightenment.

Yellow Dragon touched his finger forward. The golden light settled gently on the cool, crystalline shell atop the queen's head, like a falling dewdrop.

"BUZZ—!" The queen shuddered violently, as though a thunderclap from the creation of the world had exploded in her sea of consciousness.

The faint, bewildered Spirit Light in her eyes flared like a fire fed with fuel, growing bright and alert in an instant.

Countless mysterious golden runes flowed from Yellow Dragon's fingertip. They raced across the queen's purple-jade body like living things, weaving together before engraving themselves deep within her head and merging with the very source of her soul.

A moment later, the golden light faded. The Purple Jade Bee queen swayed her sensitive antennae. When her compound eyes turned toward Yellow Dragon, fear had given way to a strange dependence and reverence.

"From now on, your name is Ziling."

She spoke timidly, but far more clearly than before. "Ziling greets her mas... master."

Yellow Dragon nodded. His gaze swept over the vast honeycomb and the still-shaken colony. He instructed the queen below him, "Call all your subjects back. I'll take you to a new home."