After their laughter subsided, everyone gathered around the beehive Fang Qianyuan had thrown away again.
Li Yan prodded it with her sword, looking puzzled, but Fang Qianyuan picked it up without a care. "Don't worry. There aren't any venomous bees left inside. Even if there were, they wouldn't be a problem."
Wen Qingfei asked curiously, "Are these venomous bees the source of One Nest of Bees' spirit creatures?"
"That's right. They all used venomous bees as their spirit creatures," Fang Qianyuan said. "I wondered before how they could have so many spirit creatures to use. Now I understand. Their bandit chief had a lucky encounter and picked up a magic treasure somewhere."
He examined it for a while, then added, "This queen bee is no ordinary spirit creature. It seems to contain quite a lot of heaven and earth essence."
"Brother Fang, do you mean..." Wen Qingfei's expression shifted, and she said in surprise, "The Lifeform Manifestation Art?"
Fang Qianyuan nodded. "Exactly. It's the product of someone's lifeform manifestation!"
The Lifeform Manifestation Art was a method high-ranking Spirit Tamers used to create armies of spirit creatures. No wonder it needed a specialized grotto-heaven treasure to house it!
Fang Qianyuan could now tell that this Blackwood Beehive was a grotto-heaven treasure similar to the Moon-Reflecting Wolf Fang Chain. It was simply smaller, and the spirit creature it could hold was restricted to a queen bee.
Someone had sealed the queen bee inside and used it as a breeding tool to produce an endless stream of swarms.
The ingenious part was that the queen bee itself was a manifested spirit creature containing vast amounts of heaven and earth essence, yet the swarms it produced were ordinary spirit creatures containing only a Spirit Tamer's spirit essence. They could therefore be taken into a