Chapter 181: Egg

WHOOSH…

Just as he was deep in thought, a dark shadow the size of a baby’s fist suddenly darted out of the Spiritual Mist, shooting straight toward his face.

However, just as it leaped into midair, two dark shadows swooped down one after the other and slammed directly into it.

BAM!

The dark shadow smashed heavily onto the ridge of the field. Li Changsheng looked down. The thing that had attacked him was a pale-yellow locust. The aura it emitted marked it as a Middle-Grade Spirit Insect.

Just as it fluttered its wings to take flight, Big Bro and Little Bro had already dive-bombed it. With mandibles like venomous snake fangs, they clamped down on its head and tail, then gave a vicious tug, tearing it cleanly in half.

He wondered, “Could it be a plague of locusts?”

Watching Big Bro and Little Bro devour the locust, this thought couldn’t help but pop into Li Changsheng’s mind, and it only grew stronger by the second.

Once the insect swarm finished clearing the Spirit Field, Li Changsheng couldn’t wait to step inside. He didn’t rush to infuse life vitality into the Spiritual Vortex, but instead walked over to the Spirit Medicine to inspect it carefully.

With a sweep of his sleeve, the Spiritual Mist shrouding the Cold Flame Flower slowly dispersed.

At this moment, the Cold Flame Flower was about an inch tall, sporting two leaves that resembled ice crystals. Within a one-meter radius around it, a shallow layer of gleaming white frost had condensed.

On the frost lay several thumb-sized locusts, frozen to death.

Li Changsheng frowned as he inspected the Cold Flame Flower. After finding it unharmed, he stood up and walked over to another. It wasn’t until he checked the fifth Cold Flame Flower that he noticed even more frozen locusts on its frost.

Furthermore, this Cold Flame Flower’s leaves had obvious bite marks. When he parted the leaves, he discovered a dense layer of insect eggs covering their undersides. The eggs were similar in color to the Cold Flame Flower’s leaves and emitted absolutely no aura. Had he not inspected them so meticulously, he definitely would have missed them.

Li Changsheng was startled. He thought, “These eggs have actually adapted to the cold air emitted by the Cold Flame Flower…”

Even though the Cold Flame Flower was just a seedling, the frigid air it exuded was no simple matter. It wasn’t just cold; it contained a sinister, freezing poison that even he couldn’t touch for long. Yet, these eggs had adapted to it. More accurately, they were feeding on the Cold Flame Flower’s vitality and sinister cold air!

He thought, “What bizarre locusts…”

Suppressing his astonishment, Li Changsheng thought for a moment before taking out an empty jade box. He found a random wooden stick and carefully nudged the eggs off the leaves and into the box.

After he finished removing all the eggs, he noticed that a layer of frost quickly formed on their surfaces. As the frost condensed, the vitality contained within them rapidly drained away.

In just a short while, the eggs turned into tiny ice crystals, completely devoid of life.

Li Changsheng frowned. He reached out, picked one up, and held it under the sun to examine it.

The ice crystal was clear and translucent, faintly glowing with a hint of blue. If he hadn’t personally peeled the eggs off the Cold Flame Flower, he would have assumed it was just an ordinary shard of ice.

Before long, the dozens of ice crystals melted into a small puddle of water.

He thought, “How strange…”

Li Changsheng shook his head and stood up to check the remaining two Cold Flame Flowers. There were also a few frozen locust corpses on the frost surrounding these two, but their leaves were intact and there were no eggs.

After finishing his inspection, Li Changsheng walked over to the Spirit Medicine Narcissus Spring. It resembled a pool of clean, clear spring water. There wasn’t a single weed in it, let alone any locusts.

Li Changsheng recalled what Lan Cai Shen had said: the water flowing from the Narcissus Spring was as heavy as iron, and its medicinal properties were contained within the stone. With these two layers of protection, it seemed these bizarre locusts could do nothing to it.

Immediately after, he walked over to the Spiritual Vortex, pressed his palm against the Spirit Field, and channeled life vitality to pour it inside.

Two hours later.

Having finished infusing the life vitality, Li Changsheng still felt uneasy. Acting as a Spirit Binder, he commanded the insect swarm to sweep through the Spirit Field one more time. Only after confirming there were no more locusts did he mount Xiaohua and leave.

He didn’t return home; instead, he steered Xiaohua toward the Tier Two Low-grade Spirit Field at the summit.

At the summit’s Spirit Field, Xu Li was the only one present. Spotting Li Changsheng approaching on Xiaohua, he quickly stepped out of the field, cupped his hands, and called out, “Your subordinate greets the Lord Steward.”

Li Changsheng dismounted and gave a slight nod. “Has anything unusual happened in the Spirit Field?” he asked. After a pause, he added, “Such as bugs? Anything resembling a locust?”

Xu Li thought for a moment upon hearing this, then suddenly froze and replied, “To answer you, my lord, while tending to the Spirit Medicine these past few days, I did indeed notice some bugs resembling locusts.

“Seeing as they were merely unranked bugs tainted with a tiny bit of Spiritual Qi, is there something wrong with them?”

As he spoke, Xu Li’s expression turned somewhat anxious.

Li Changsheng didn’t hide anything. He recounted his discovery of the locusts in the Spirit Field, especially the Middle-Grade Spirit Insect and the eggs on the Cold Flame Flower.

After he finished, ignoring the shocked Xu Li, he looked toward the Spirit Field and shifted his thoughts.

BUZZ…

The insect swarm rushed down and flooded into the Spirit Field. In the blink of an eye, an insect flew out of the field, dragging a thumb-sized locust behind it. Soon after, the swarm could be seen dragging out one locust after another.

In just one acre of Spirit Field, there were actually dozens of locusts, two of which had even reached a ranked grade.

This completely terrified Xu Li, who was standing nearby. The insect swarm had flown directly into his Spirit Field. Disregarding his fear of the swarm, he strode in and began inspecting the plants one by one.

He wasn’t stupid. With so many bugs, mostly adults, it didn’t take much thought to realize that there would likely be parasitic eggs.

Sure enough, while examining a Water Spirit Flower, he found its leaves covered in a dense layer of eggs underneath. This turned his already sallow face even greener. After circulating the Sharp Gold Technique to eradicate the eggs, he quickly began checking the other Spirit Medicine.

Once the insect swarm had cleared the first acre of Spirit Field, Li Changsheng acted as a Spirit Binder, directing the swarm to fly into the second plot.

As the swarm cleared the Spirit Fields plot by plot, he discovered that the Spirit Field tended by Hao Yuegui only had a dozen or so locusts. Xu Li’s field was slightly worse. Yan Shaoyuan’s Spirit Field had the most locusts. This was especially true for the Water Spirit Flowers he planted, which not only reeked of a foul stench but also contained mostly small-sized locusts.

And speaking purely in terms of the Spirit Fields themselves, the field cultivating the Spirit Medicine Golden Embryo Grass had the most bugs, followed by the one with Water Spirit Flowers, while the one with Concentration Flowers had the fewest.

By mid-afternoon.

BUZZ…

As the last acre of Spirit Field was purged of bugs, the insect swarm slowly flew out of the field and converged beside him.

Li Changsheng swept his gaze over the summit’s Spirit Fields, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

For his own three acres of Concentration Flowers, he cleared out snakes and beasts every three days, whereas the mid- and high-grade Spirit Fields were cleared once every half-month. He remembered that during his last sweep of the Spirit Fields, he hadn’t found a single locust. It had only been half a month since then, yet locusts had suddenly appeared without any warning.

Feeling somewhat vigilant, Li Changsheng pondered for a moment before mounting Xiaohua and steering it down the mountain.

If locusts had appeared at the summit, which had the Ten Thousand Serpent Lake acting as a natural barrier, one could only imagine the state of the Spirit Fields outside the lake—there were likely even more.

But why hadn’t Steward Ma or the others come to warn them?