Chapter 417 - 413: Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse

Chapter 417: Chapter 413: Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse

Cao Cao scratched its head, completely perplexed. "This is strange. The Hundred Herbs Rejuvenating Ointment we left Duoduo shouldn’t have been enough for all these bees to evolve. And there’s no way Duoduo would be that generous. Weird... How did it pull this off?"

"We’ll find out when we see it," Gu Nuan Nuan said. In truth, she was quite curious herself.

A moment later, Duoduo appeared before them. They immediately noticed its transformation. Not only had it grown a full size larger, but it also looked imposing and was clearly not to be trifled with.

"Master..."

Seeing Gu Nuan Nuan meant more Hundred Herbs Rejuvenating Ointment. The last batch was almost gone, and Duoduo could practically see endless jars of new ointment waving at it. It grew incredibly excited, its eyes sparkling. It broke into a huge, fawning smile and eagerly tried to butter up Gu Nuan Nuan. "Master, I’ve gathered lots and lots of honey and honeycombs for you!"

"Oh? That’s great. But first, tell me what’s going on here." Gu Nuan Nuan gestured at their surroundings.

"Master, don’t worry! Even if you attack them, they would never dare to sting you." Duoduo thought this was what worried Gu Nuan Nuan and hastily gave its assurance.

"You mean these bees of yours aren’t aggressive?" Gu Nuan Nuan asked, surprised.

"Of course not! They’re plenty aggressive. As long as no one bothers them, it’s fine. But if someone provokes them, they definitely won’t let it go. There aren’t any animals around here that dare to mess with us anymore," Duoduo said, extremely proud. "They don’t attack you because you’re my master. They’ve known that since birth. Go on, try it if you don’t believe me."

’Try?’

Of course she was going to give it a try.

Gu Nuan Nuan didn’t have anything suitable on hand. The ever-observant Cao Cao quickly fetched a long vine from nearby, even thoughtfully cleaning the end for her to hold. Gu Nuan Nuan nodded in approval, took the smooth end of the vine, and whipped it toward the swarm. She didn’t dare use any real strength, of course; a large number of the bees wouldn’t have survived it. But even without much force, the bees were clearly stung by the light blow and scattered in alarm. Just as Duoduo had said, not a single one even attempted to sting her.

"How did you manage this with all these bees?" Cao Cao chimed in. "I remember the Hundred Herbs Rejuvenating Ointment we left you wasn’t nearly enough to accomplish this."

"Hehe, I didn’t do a thing. They’re just born that way. These are just the ordinary worker bees with no real combat strength. They’re only responsible for gathering nectar and making honey, so I haven’t fed a single one of them any Hundred Herbs Rejuvenating Ointment. I only picked out the truly strong ones with powerful combat abilities and fed the ointment to them," Duoduo said, smugly showing off its achievements to Gu Nuan Nuan and Cao Cao. "Master, did you know? We now have five hundred eighty-six evolved Spirit Bees, and another one thousand three hundred twelve are on the verge of evolving. As long as we have enough Hundred Herbs Rejuvenating Ointment, they’ll become Spirit Bees soon too."

"That’s very good. We came this time to give you more Hundred Herbs Rejuvenating Ointment." Gu Nuan Nuan nodded. She glanced at the so-called "ordinary" bees and asked, "And how many of these are there?"

"Master, what you see isn’t even all of them. There are about two million, two hundred thousand in total. There could have been even more, but their lifespans have more than doubled. I was afraid that would be too many, so I brought the numbers under control."

’Over two million? That reproductive rate is...’

Gu Nuan was left a little speechless. "With so many bees, do they have enough flowers to gather nectar from?"

"You don’t have to worry about that, Master. This mountain forest is huge. My worker bees might not be strong individually, but they have excellent stamina and fly much faster than before, so they can travel farther. And look, Master! If you hadn’t come back soon, this storage bag you left me would’ve been completely full." Duoduo flew close to Gu Nuan Nuan, thrusting the storage bag hanging from its neck toward her with an expression that begged for praise.

"Very nice." Gu Nuan Nuan took the storage bag and glanced inside. It was indeed nearly full, and the quality of the honey and honeycombs looked even better than before. She dipped a finger into the honey and tasted it. Very satisfied, she patted Duoduo’s head in praise.

Duoduo’s face immediately flushed red, and it couldn’t suppress a look of smug satisfaction.

Upon entering the Medicine Garden, even though Gu Nuan Nuan had mentally prepared herself, she was still taken aback by the enormous beehives hanging from every single longan tree.

She then saw what Duoduo had described as the more formidable Spirit Bees, each one as plump as Duoduo itself used to be. "I guess I’ll have to rename my Medicine Garden to the ’Bee Garden’ now," Gu Nuan Nuan couldn’t help but laugh resignedly. Duoduo also started giggling, "Hehe."

"Do you mean to say your Spirit Bees just sit around and don’t make honey?" Cao Cao suddenly asked.

"Huh?" Duoduo froze for a moment. "Don’t they need to focus on their Cultivation to become stronger?"

"Honey made by Spirit Bees is of an even higher quality," Cao Cao said, casually giving Duoduo a disdainful look. "Don’t put the cart before the horse."

Duoduo was speechless. Its blank, dazed expression made Gu Nuan Nuan burst out laughing with a PFFT.

"From now on, you don’t need to use Hundred Herbs Rejuvenating Ointment to deliberately increase the strength of the bees that have already become Spirit Bees. Their main job is to make honey. Even counting the ones that haven’t evolved yet, your number of Spirit Bees is still too small. You should know that no matter how strong a single Spirit Bee is, its power is limited. After all, besides stinging, what other fancy attack methods do you have? After a Spirit Bee stings someone, it might not die and can recover to be as good as new after some rest, but in that moment, it will still lose its ability to fight..."

Cao Cao shot Duoduo a scornful look and lectured it, "The advantage of you bees lies in swarming. Your true strength comes from the size of your swarm. What you’re doing is the very definition of putting the cart before the horse. You need to focus on turning more bees into Spirit Bees. And remember one more thing: their attack power is just a bonus. Making honey is their primary duty."

Duoduo’s face turned beet red, this time purely from shame. It mumbled meekly and looked at Gu Nuan Nuan with a dejected expression, terrified that she was angry.

"It’s okay, it’s okay. If you make a mistake, you just fix it. Everyone gets fixated on the wrong thing sometimes," Gu Nuan Nuan said, sensing Duoduo’s turbulent emotions and comforting it gently.

"Thank you, Master," Duoduo said, deeply moved.

Gu Nuan Nuan patted its head, then glanced over at the smug-looking Cao Cao and couldn’t help but shake her head and laugh.