The longhorn beetle, its rear end tightly joined to the female Blackgold Moth's, clung fiercely to her as its abdomen gently pulsed.
In his earlier experiments, whenever a female Blackgold Moth mated with an ordinary male insect, the male was almost always sucked dry, and she would not lay any eggs.
But now, this purple longhorn beetle was digging its barbed feet into the female Blackgold Moth's body, its sharp mandibles poised to gnaw through her thorax.
How could he let that happen?
Frowning, Lin Ke tried to separate them, but they were locked together too tightly to pry apart.
And the Blackgold Moth was a Spirit Insect!
Besides, most longhorn beetles were not carnivorous, nor did their males eat the females during mating, so Lin Ke had no idea why this one was behaving that way.
Then it occurred to him that this strange behavior between the beetle and the Blackgold Moth might mean they were about to mate!
So he narrowed his eyes and waited, watching the two remain locked together.
"Crunch, crunch..."
The rear ends of the purple longhorn beetle and the Blackgold Moth pulsed slowly and rhythmically.
The beetle slowly ate away at the Blackgold Moth's thorax and head, bit by bit. Its unhurried chewing actually gave Lin Ke the impression of earnest concentration.
The longhorn beetle was earnestly eating the Blackgold Moth it was mating with!
Was this mating?
Wasn't that something only mantises, spiders, and the like did?
Just as Lin Ke thought this Blackgold Moth was going to go to waste, another change occurred.
The Blackgold Moth suddenly shuddered. Her wings had already fallen off after her thorax was devoured, and only half of her compound-eyed head remained.
With that shudder, her abdomen abruptly contracted, and the beetle vanished with a pop, dissolving like dust.
Left with only the framework of her thorax... half a head, and an intact abdomen, the Blackgold Moth wriggled her abdomen against the ground and slowly laid a pale purple egg.
"It actually worked?" Lin Ke was stunned.
The next moment, Lin Can did not even direct the Stinger Hawk Moth. Instead, she pulled her lower body straight out of the soil and rapidly crawled over on her hands, bit straight through the egg, and swallowed it.
Lin Ke did not stop her. After all, he intended to feed this thing to Lin Can so she could hatch it.
Lin Can had inherited some memories from Lin Ke's spiritual power and bloodline, so after sensing what was inside her belly for a while, she announced in a clear voice:
"Daddy! This is an Amethyst Longhorn Beetle! It's a Spirit Insect too!"
"An Amethyst Longhorn Beetle?" Lin Ke nodded slightly. "Do you have enough energy right now?"
Lin Can shook her head vigorously, then pointed at the Insect-Rearing Jar beside her. "Once I eat all these, I can hatch one Amethyst Longhorn Beetle!"
"It takes that much energy..." Helpless, Lin Ke continued having the Blackgold Moths mate with these insects, leaving all the dead ones for Lin Can to eat.
But the remaining insects were not so lucky. Every last one died.
After all that mating, the results proved that producing the Stinger Hawk Moth and the Amethyst Longhorn Beetle had been extraordinary strokes of luck.
Afterward, his few male Blackgold Moths died from exhausting their semen, while the females fared little better. Their mating passages sealed shut, leaving them unable to mate.
By this point, he had used up all the insects in three Insect-Rearing Jars and five Insect-Feeding Boxes.
He had also used six Blackgold Moths, yet in the end, he had only created two varieties of Spirit Insect: the Blackgold Moth and the Amethyst Longhorn Beetle.
However, Lin Ke did not immediately have Lin Can produce an Amethyst Longhorn Beetle. Instead, he created another twenty Blackgold Moths.
Since the Amethyst Longhorn Beetle needed so much flesh to hatch, it was probably considerably stronger than the Blackgold Moth.
But he had already arranged to sell Stinger Hawk Moths to Zong Ya, so he would meet that order first and earn some Spirit Stones before doing anything else.
Thus, Lin Ke took the newly produced Stinger Hawk Moths to Zong Ya and received 4,560 Spirit Stones in exchange.
He then bought Mountain-Moving and Sea-Overturning for eight hundred Spirit Stones, the Dragonfly Dash Art for four hundred, and the Moisture-and-Egg Transformation Method for seven hundred.
He had 2,600 Spirit Stones left.
Two thousand six hundred!
That was a fortune!
He had to admit that, no matter which world one lived in, successful research and development was enormously profitable.
But research often cost even more money, and the success rate was low.
It was just that developing the Stinger Hawk Moth had cost almost nothing, so Lin Ke's returns were unimaginably generous.
Generous as they were, though, he would not squander them.
Good steel had to be used for the blade's edge. He had very little room for error right now, so he could not throw this money around recklessly. He needed to budget carefully.
Thus, out of necessity, he bought another special Spirit Artifact made from a Golden-Wing Envoy's nest-a beehive. It was called the Golden-Wing Nest and was specifically designed to hold insects.
Otherwise, if someone with ulterior motives noticed him constantly taking Spirit Insects in and out of his head, it would cause no small amount of trouble.
Over the next few days, he settled into a routine of cultivating, practicing spells, checking the Blackgold Silkworms' silk production, and catching insects to feed Lin Can.
Meanwhile, he continued keeping records on the Blackgold Silkworms.
When the Blackgold Silkworms were first moved to Golden Silkworm Peak, their output had been relatively low for two days.
But after that period passed?
It soared!
"More than one tael..."
Lin Ke hefted the silk in his hand, unable to help marveling.
Compared with before, the Blackgold Silkworms' output had increased by nearly thirty percent!
Sure enough, his guess had been right.
By drawing on the experience of the men and women farming in Green Mulberry Garden to improve the Blackgold Silkworms' production environment, he had allowed them to live more comfortably and then spin silk.
This warm, comfortable environment had even caused some fifth-instar larvae to form cocoons quickly.
Silkworms currently went through several stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult.
The larval stage was when they were little white silkworms.
Blackgold Silkworms differed somewhat from the silkworms of his previous life. At the fifth instar, they stopped eating and drinking, simply waiting to spin cocoons and pupate.
Thus, thirty fifth-instar Blackgold Silkworms had grown rapidly over the past few days, then spun cocoons and entered the next stage of their lives.
Once they emerged from their cocoons, they would become Blackgold Moths.
And besides the changes in the Blackgold Silkworms, the mulberry trees had also changed for the better.
"Immortal Lin, those horse mulberry trees are growing better." Fang Tong stood beside Lin Ke, holding two tender green mulberry leaves, one large and one small. "Look, this horse mulberry leaf is one I begged from outside, and this one grew here recently."
Fang Tong spoke with a Cloud Frontier accent. "Horse mulberry tree" was the local term for a mulberry tree, and "begged" meant the same thing as "picked."
"Oh? Such a big difference?" Lin Ke handed the Blackgold Silkworm silk to Fang Tong for safekeeping, then took the two leaves and examined them closely.
Both were newly grown tender leaves, but the mulberry leaf from Golden Silkworm Peak was clearly one or two centimeters wider than those from the surrounding mountains. Their thicknesses also differed as distinctly as cardstock and A4 paper.
The changes in the new mulberry leaves were enough to show that the combined effects of burning the mountain and the Earth Cicada Warm-Sand Formation had positively influenced their growth and development.
"But, Immortal Lin, that silkworm sand you mentioned..." Fang Tong scratched his head sheepishly. "Can people really eat that stuff? Isn't it just insect... insect shit...?"
"It's only natural that you don't believe it." Lin Ke smiled at his words. "But the Blackgold Silkworms' silkworm sand truly is a medicinal ingredient."
"Just collect it for now. I'll have a use for it later."
Before you continue