Chapter 199 - 125: Seeds of the Future and the Growing Yilu

Chapter 199: Chapter 125: Seeds of the Future and the Growing Yilu

"Boss, the temperature here isn’t right. The upper layer is three degrees higher than the lower layer. The runes curl upwards as they grow, snapping the moment they reach the third layer."

Chen Shang activated his Eye of Truth and leaned closer to peer through the observation window. Inside the growth chamber, a Doll Seed was sprouting. A tender shoot poked through the seed coat, its surface dotted with pale blue runic lights. It was Ben Bo’Erba’s "Underwater Breathing" rune taking shape.

The runic lights extended along the shoot’s fibrous structure, spreading out like blood vessels. However, upon reaching the third layer, the lights began to distort. The straight lines warped into wavy ones before snapping entirely. The shoot withered—a defective product.

Expressionless, Chen Shang pressed the eject button. The defective seed slid out of the bottom of the chamber and into the recycling bin.

"What’s causing the temperature difference?" he asked. He had already spotted the problem, but he wanted to train Yilu.

As expected, Yilu didn’t disappoint him. It leaped onto the connecting pipe between the mixing chamber and the growth chamber, pointing at the joint. "The nutrients are hot when they enter from here, but the heat can’t dissipate once it reaches the growth chamber. All the heat builds up in the upper layer," it explained.

Chen Shang stared at the joint and nodded. The opening was circular, its diameter as wide as the pipe itself. The nutrients gushed out of the mixing chamber and sprayed directly into the upper area of the growth chamber, barely reaching the lower section. This was one of the design flaws. Without the Eye of Truth, such minute details were easy to overlook.

"How do you think we should fix this?" Chen Shang already had an answer in mind, but he still looked to Yilu.

Yilu grew a little nervous. "Boss, I’m afraid I might break it."

"Don’t be afraid. You’re in charge of this thing now. If it breaks, we’ll just build another one!" Chen Shang encouraged it to be bold.

The brave Yilu sprang into action a second later. It cut off the power to the device, used the Power of Wood Spirit to fetch a Rune Carving Knife from the tool rack, and began modifying the joint. It reshaped the circular opening into a fan shape pointing downward. This would allow the nutrients to spray into the lower layer first before naturally rising and diffusing. With this change, the temperature difference between the layers could be kept under one degree.

After carving the final rune, it looked at Chen Shang nervously. "Boss, is this right?"

Chen Shang just smiled without saying a word. He reconnected the power, took a new Doll Seed from the raw material silo, placed it into the growth chamber, and pressed the start button.

The mixing chamber began preparing the nutrient matrix: water, Magic Crystal Powder, plant growth hormones... Various raw materials were mixed proportionally and sent through the pipe into the growth chamber. Catalyzed by energy and time, the seed rapidly sprouted. The tender shoot emerged, and runic lights materialized.

This time, the lights did not distort. They spread from the first layer all the way to the fifth, their lines perfectly straight and their nodes distinct. The curing chamber activated. A pale gold curing ray shone onto the shoot, solidifying the runic lights. They shifted from blue to dark blue, embedding themselves firmly into the fibrous structure.

The inspection platform flashed a green light—it was a Good Quality product. This single modification would boost the success rate by at least five percent.

"Hooray, hooray! That’s exactly how to fix it." Yilu jumped down from the pipe, landing on the workbench, and waved at the other two Wood Spirits. The two immediately ducked into the raw material silo to begin inspecting the quality of the next batch of seeds.

"Are there any other problems?" Chen Shang asked.

Yilu tilted its head in thought, the tender sprout on top of its head spinning in circles. "The encoding density of the growth blueprint is too high. When the seed is growing runes, it sometimes fails to process the subsequent instructions."

Chen Shang cast Yilu a surprised glance. This little guy truly had impressive talent. After all, without the observational prowess of the Eye of Truth, it had discovered this issue relying solely on its Wood Spirit racial aptitude and hard work. However, even Chen Shang himself had no solution to the problem Yilu brought up, and it was only going to get worse. In the future, the complexity of runes for other Mythical Species would be vastly higher than those for Ben Bo’Erba.

"Do you have a solution?" Chen Shang looked at Yilu, probing for an answer.

To his surprise, Yilu nodded. "Boss, this machine needs someone to help it remember. When we Wood Spirits cultivate crops, we use our own Spiritual Power to soothe the seeds so they can grow in peace.

"If there’s a stable Spiritual Force Field inside the growth chamber to accompany the seed throughout its entire growth cycle, it won’t forget the instructions."

Chen Shang remained silent for a few seconds. Yilu meant that they could utilize the Wood Spirits’ collective cultivation abilities to assist the machine in production. This approach would indeed save him a great deal of time and energy, but it would require a large number of Wood Spirits to learn the corresponding runes and participate in the process. That was a tall order for the Wood Spirits.

He glanced out the window at the small garden. Over five thousand Wood Spirits currently lived there, farming, building wooden cabins, and cultivating crops... Their Spiritual Power fluctuations merged together, blanketing the entire garden like an invisible net.

"How many Wood Spirits do you think will be needed?" he asked Yilu.

Yilu thought for a moment before holding up five fingers. "The production of each Ben Bo’Erba requires fifty of us working in shifts, rotating every hourglass. Their task will be to maintain a stable Spiritual Force Field inside the growth chamber, soothe the seed, and assist in the rune’s formation."

"I’ll leave you to arrange it then. What is the Wood Spirits’ attitude toward learning runes?"

Yilu raised its head earnestly. "Boss, we’ve signed a Contract. The Wood Spirits help you keep the devices running, and you provide food and protection."

"We did sign a Contract, but putting effort into learning is entirely different from slacking off."

However, Yilu replied, "Boss, there isn’t a single species whose survival doesn’t come with a price.

"In the Endless Star Sea, there are many kind, diligent, and hardworking species that quietly fade away in forgotten corners just because of bad luck.

"Therefore, the Wood Spirits are very grateful for the chance of survival you’ve provided, and we are more than happy to study hard in order to expand the boundaries of our own survival."