LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 48 - Discovery
When Mai Dongzi found the Lingzhi, some netizens went to search for information about the plant on the Star Network.
Previously, when she discovered those three other plants, the viewers in the livestream room had also tried searching on the Star Network, but they found no information about them in the Dragula Star System’s Plant Encyclopedia.
So this time, they searched casually, not expecting to find anything.
To their surprise, they actually did find some information, and the source of the information was none other than the Blue-Black Empire’s Pharmaceutical Guild.
So, the plant Lucy Xi found turned out to be a medicinal plant. But why was there no information on the other three plants, yet there was information on this one?
Since the original host didn’t have relevant memories, Mai Dongzi didn’t know that a few years ago, the Water Blue Planet garrison discovered Lingzhi while hunting high-level mutated beasts in the forest.
The garrison members, intrigued by the Lingzhi’s peculiar appearance, brought it back, and Deputy Officer Chen sent it to the Pharmaceutical Guild.
The Pharmaceutical Guild identified the plant from ancient texts as Lingzhi, which was considered a relatively precious medicinal plant during the ancient Water Blue Planet era.
After analyzing the medicinal properties of Lingzhi, the Pharmaceutical Guild uploaded the information to the Dragula Star System’s Plant Encyclopedia.
While Lingzhi was a valuable medicinal plant in the ancient Water Blue Planet civilization, for humans living in the interstellar era, who have been away from Water Blue Planet for over two thousand years, the active ingredients in Lingzhi are merely auxiliary components in certain potions. Although relatively rare, Lingzhi isn’t considered particularly precious because there are two other plants with similar properties.
The viewers in the livestream room assumed that Mai Dongzi had thoroughly studied the Pharmaceutical Guild’s medicinal plant encyclopedia, which is why she recognized the Lingzhi, and they couldn’t help but praise her scholarly persona again.
If it had been any other medicinal plant, Deputy Officer Chen wouldn’t have recognized it. But Lingzhi was different—he was the one who sent it to the Guild.
So when Deputy Officer Chen received Mai Dongzi’s message, he realized that she had no idea that Lingzhi was already listed in the Pharmaceutical Guild’s encyclopedia.
Lingzhi didn’t contain any energy, so how did she recognize it? Could it be that she had read about it in her family’s collection of books? Deputy Officer Chen wondered.
Mai Dongzi, unaware that she had fallen into a little trap she had inadvertently set for herself due to the information gap, continued walking deeper into the forest.
She headed straight toward the center of the forest. As she advanced, the trees became increasingly thick and dense, and the light gradually dimmed.
In such conditions, apart from the trees, there was little vegetation on the ground.
Because the ground was covered with layers of fallen leaves, Mai Dongzi walked carefully, worried that there might be mutated poisonous insects hidden beneath the leaves.
Not long after Mai Dongzi discovered the Lingzhi, she also found some wood ear mushrooms. The mutated wood ear mushrooms were larger than those from before. Upon approaching, Mai Dongzi confirmed that the wood ears did not contain any energy, but she still picked quite a few, simply because she enjoyed eating them.
After harvesting the large wood ears and leaving the smaller ones behind, Mai Dongzi continued her journey deeper into the forest. She didn’t leave any markers on the wood ears since they were just a food ingredient and not a medicinal plant.
For over an hour afterward, Mai Dongzi found nothing—not only did she fail to discover any new energy plants, but she also didn’t even come across the three types of energy plants she had found previously.
That is until she encountered a Level 4 mutated tiger.
This wasn’t a coincidence; Mai Dongzi had deliberately circled around to face it.
A Level 4 mutated tiger would be difficult to kill with just the dagger she carried, even though she was a Level 5 warrior. However, she had already exposed her mental ability “trump card” by “playing a tune” during her fight, so to speak.
Therefore, when battling the mutated tiger, she used her mental powers to attack its brain, causing the tiger to move sluggishly and react slowly, allowing her to counterattack with ease.
Given the ferocity and large size of the mutated tiger, Mai Dongzi didn’t dare to get close enough to slit its throat. Her strategy was to first injure its limbs, and once it lost its mobility, she would deal a fatal blow to its head.
The Level 4 mutated tiger’s attack power was three times that of a Level 3 mutated leopard. With the assistance of her mental power, it took Mai Dongzi a full twenty minutes of intense fighting to finally bring down the tiger.
When viewers saw that Mai Dongzi had killed a Level 4 mutated tiger in just twenty minutes without suffering any injuries, those who understood her techniques knew she had used mental power to assist her. Those who didn’t understand simply assumed her warrior skills were at a late Level 5.
After all, when humans face off against mutated beasts, if their weapons don’t provide an advantage, they generally need to be at least one level higher to kill the beast so quickly.
As Mai Dongzi stored the tiger’s body in her spatial storage, she noticed faint energy emanating from beneath the fallen leaves disturbed by the tiger’s thrashing.
She walked over to investigate and finally discovered a new type of energy plant.
She didn’t recognize this plant. It wasn’t until she got within one meter of it that her wood-based abilities detected a faint energy fluctuation from the plant.
If it weren’t for her battle with the tiger leading her to this spot, Mai Dongzi wouldn’t have discovered this energy plant so quickly, as her original path wouldn’t have passed through here.
Since she didn’t recognize the energy plant, she decided to dig it up.
The energy-rich part of this plant was also in its thick roots, though the energy concentration was far lower than that of the Gastrodia elata.
After studying it for a while, she couldn’t figure out what kind of plant it was, so she stored the plant, along with the surrounding soil, in her spatial storage, leaving a marker on another nearby energy plant.
This was part of a supplemental agreement she had thought of yesterday, which allowed her to take one specimen of any new type of energy plant she discovered.
This morning, she received a response signed by Prince Arthur, granting her permission, so she was openly and legally collecting the plants.
Finding a new species lifted Mai Dongzi’s spirits, and she carefully searched the surrounding area.
Finding two of these energy plants indicated that the environment here was suitable for their growth.
Sure enough, after a thorough search, Mai Dongzi found quite a few more of the same type of energy plant.
By the time Mai Dongzi was interrupted by an intruder, she had already found twenty-seven of these energy plants.
Mai Dongzi was able to find so many energy plants because, once she had a sample of the plant above ground, she could use her mental power to search for more. Otherwise, if she had relied solely on her eyes and wood-based abilities, she might have found only four or five plants at most.
Since she expanded her mental power to search the surrounding area, she couldn’t ignore it when an adventurer being chased by a mutated giant python entered her mental range.
The mutated python was over ten meters long, with a mouth wide enough to swallow a person whole.
Although the python was only at Level 4, and the adventurer was an early Level 6 warrior, it seemed that the adventurer only had a dagger and couldn’t kill the python. So, the adventurer had no choice but to flee.
However, the python was just as fast as the adventurer, which is why Mai Dongzi saw the scene of the adventurer fleeing in a panic through the forest, with the python gliding smoothly among the trees, relentlessly pursuing him.