Chapter 66: Harvest Season

Chapter 66: The Season of Abundance

Items like Wildflower Honey and Amber Nectar seem highly effective and practical, but since they aren’t plants, Sheng Qingquan doesn’t pay much attention to them.

Especially something like Amber Nectar, which he can’t use right away. He just glanced at it and carefully stored it back in the box.

As for the Wildflower Honey, Sheng Qingquan drank it straight.

The sweet honey didn’t need to be mixed with water. Eating it straight wasn’t too sweet. It was smooth, not sticky, and the sweetness was refreshing.

A single serving of honey came in a thumb-sized bottle. One bottle was a single serving.

After drinking the honey, Sheng Qingquan was pleasantly surprised by the taste. Most importantly, the effects kicked in right away. As soon as it hit his tongue, he felt a cool sensation spreading through his body.

Only then did Sheng Qingquan realize his body had been slightly parched.

The dryness just wasn’t very obvious.

Young men naturally run hot. Plus, even though summer was over, the autumn heat was still intense. With the heat, it was easy to overlook any discomfort.

You’d often see people on the street eating ice cream and popsicles, and cold drink shops were booming.

Sheng Qingquan didn’t think much of it.

Especially since his poor sleep habits, like staying up late, naturally made him more prone to internal heat, so he didn’t consider anything else.

A bit of dryness and heat were normal.

But now, Sheng Qingquan felt like his body was a bottle with faint cracks. If you weren’t paying attention, the cracks were too small to notice.

But just because you didn’t notice them didn’t mean they weren’t there. Even if the bottle wasn’t leaking, the cracks made it feel rough.

Only now, after the honey fixed those cracks, did Sheng Qingquan realize he’d been feeling off.

Thinking of this, after finishing the honey, Sheng Qingquan took out a medical scanner and used it on himself for a check-up.

“Scanning…”

“Scan complete.”

“Master is in excellent health, no issues detected.”

Previous check-ups had always yielded the same result, so he had never realized anything was wrong. He always thought his body was in great shape.

But today was different. After drinking the honey, he probably really was in great shape.

Unlike previous scans that ended with just a remote scan, this time, Sheng Qingquan thought about it and chose a deeper level of detection.

He placed his finger on the scanner’s blood collection needle for a prick, collected the blood, then plucked a hair and cut a small piece of nail to put inside.

“Sampling complete.”

“Testing…”

“Test complete.”

“After consuming the gene solution to improve genes, some issues caused by the solution’s overly intense effects and the body’s inability to fully absorb the benefits have been perfectly addressed. Physical constitution has further improved. With the current constitution, the master has reached the minimum standard for consuming advanced gene solutions and can start preparing to purchase them.”

"Too weak to handle the boost?"

Sheng Qingquan was stunned.

"I remember the cat said the gene serum it gave me was pretty mild. When I took it, it didn’t hurt at all. I just remember falling asleep."

However, Sheng Qingquan quickly realized what had happened.

What he felt earlier was just cracks forming, not real splits.

In other words, compared to the perks of genetic evolution, these cracks were no big deal—they didn’t mess with his life. The cat probably thought it wasn’t even worth mentioning, since it likely seemed like common knowledge to them and they hadn’t remembered to bring it up.

If he didn’t evolve further, the cracks wouldn’t matter at all. And in the cat’s eyes, Sheng Qingquan staying on Tianlan Star would naturally mean no chance for further evolution.

The serum it gave him was mild enough for a human body to handle; otherwise, what would’ve appeared in Sheng Qingquan’s body by now wouldn’t be cracks—it’d be fissures.

The cat was so generous, it even offered to take Sheng Qingquan to more advanced parts of space and give him his own planet.

Back then, the cat didn’t give him a stronger nutrient solution, partly because the good stuff was rare and hard to get.

The real reason was that the stronger solution would’ve been too much for Sheng Qingquan.

Thinking back to what the cat had told him, Sheng Qingquan couldn’t help but wonder: "Maybe Cat Star doesn’t have any special meds to fix or even ease the side effects of the gene serum?"

Sheng Qingquan stared at the empty bottle in his hand, lost in thought.

"Wildflower Honey is great for Tianlan Star, but out in the stars, it might not be such a big deal."

"From the behavior of the pixies, it seems that in their eyes, Wildflower Honey is valuable but not particularly rare. Otherwise, they wouldn't have traded it so easily."

"In critical situations, Tianlan Star could potentially act as a middleman, profiting from the trade. But not now; we must first meet the needs of Tianlan Star. Or perhaps later, when we need interstellar assistance, we could use Wildflower Honey to entice their help?"

Sheng Qingquan suddenly thought of many uses, each feasible but with its own drawbacks.

However, he couldn't think of solutions to these drawbacks at the moment.

"Oh well, I'll just make a note of this. I'm just an ordinary person; these problems should be left to the professional high-IQ talents in official circles to worry about. They must think more thoroughly than I do."

With this thought, Sheng Qingquan cheerfully dismissed those plans.

Apart from Wildflower Honey, the other edible items, although very effective, didn't bring as much benefit to Sheng Qingquan in terms of enhancement or utility.

There are also plant parts such as the Memory Leaf and grass fruit.

Although not seeds—even though the grass fruit is a fruit, it's seedless—Sheng Qingquan still plans to try them.

Sheng Qingquan took the leaf out of the box. The Memory Leaf is just a thin, small piece, the size of a piece of chewing gum, entirely orange-yellow. At first glance, it looks like a gold leaf cast from gold.

It doesn’t seem edible at all; it looks more like a finely crafted piece of art.

Sheng Qingquan tried to use his plant manipulation power to touch this leaf, wanting to see if he could make the leaf take root and grow in a new environment or form. Or perhaps, similar to how he previously incorporated the mushroom spore, he could integrate the leaf into his body.

This way, he might not have to depend on the pixies in the future and could continuously produce Memory Leaves.

But unfortunately, perhaps because of the differences between worlds, there was some kind of compatibility issue?

Under Sheng Qingquan's efforts, the leaf neither grew into a seedling nor was successfully bonded by him. Instead, it visibly became smaller and thinner in his palm.

It felt as though he wasn’t holding a leaf, but a sliver of ice.

The thin ice melted away gradually under his body heat, vanishing completely. As time passed, the Memory Leaf also became smaller and smaller, eventually disappearing entirely.

At the same time, Sheng Qingquan did not feel that he had successfully bonded with it, but he noticed that his spirits were lifted, and his mind became noticeably clearer.

His already sharp memory seemed to have improved further. Even memories from before he was three years old came flooding back.

He had 'consumed' the Memory Leaf in an unconventional way.

Yet, despite all his efforts, he felt the effect was no different from simply eating it.

Undeterred, Sheng Qingquan tried again with the grass fruit.

Yet, he did not gain the ability to manipulate the grass fruit. He couldn’t coax the grass fruit to sprout, grow into a tree, or bear fruit. The cycle of life was unattainable.

But as Sheng Qingquan raised his hand, he could feel it was there, yet it was invisible to his eyes.

Not just his hand—when he looked down, he couldn't even see his feet. He directly saw the floor.

When he looked into the mirror, the face he knew so well was nowhere to be seen.

After consuming the entire grass fruit—skin and all—the effect was no different from eating just its flesh.

He had become invisible.

However, absorbing it this way seems to have nullified the explosive effect of the fruit peel? It’s a shame he was prepared to use the mech to promptly transfer and neutralize any unexpected issues.

As Sheng Qingquan pondered whether normal consumption might still be more efficient, ten minutes passed, and he was surprised to find that his invisibility effect was still active.

According to the instructions on the note attached to the grass fruit, eating the fruit flesh should only grant invisibility for up to ten minutes.

Now, well past that time, he hadn’t returned to visibility.

The moment the thought of returning to visibility crossed his mind, the invisibility effect on Sheng Qingquan suddenly dissipated, and his reflection reappeared in the mirror.

Sheng Qingquan immediately realized something.

Unlike directly eating the fruit, which granted a brief, passive invisibility, he seemed to be able to control the invisibility effect.

A moment later, Sheng Qingquan’s figure vanished from the mirror again.

Then reappeared.

Indeed, he could control it!

Sheng Qingquan’s eyes lit up.

Playing with it for a while, his mind remained clear, and his memory didn’t deteriorate over time as described in the instructions for the memory leaf, eventually returning to its original state.

His memory was still exceptionally sharp.

So, after absorbing these plant components with his plant abilities, although he couldn’t manipulate them as freely as he could with mushroom spores, as if taming a loyal companion, he wasn’t without gains.

He successfully acquired a permanent skill from these plant parts.

Isn't this much better than the fleeting effects you get from eating the leaf fruit?!

Now, Sheng Qingquan's earlier disappointment vanished. Even though there were no other plant parts in the small box, he was still excitedly examining it over and over.

What made Sheng Qingquan even more delighted was that the peripheral gifts had arrived.

Today was truly a day of continuous harvests.

Autumn really is the season of plenty!

A palm-sized book popped out of the novel and floated over to Sheng Qingquan.

"Did... did it just produce a small book?"

"I had no idea it could produce offspring!"

Though he thought so, Sheng Qingquan knew in his heart that, although it was a peripheral, this book probably had no 'blood relation' to the novel itself.

Rather, considering the size of the pixies, without them growing larger, such a small book might already be a substantial volume.

The small book was only the size of a palm, not a bound book, but a folding style like ancient memorials.

When he opened it, he saw it was packed with pictures and text.

Sheng Qingquan flipped it open and took a peek.

Then closed it.

Opened it again.

After a while, closed it again.

After doing this a few times, Sheng Qingquan had to admit it wasn't his eyes deceiving him—he really couldn't make sense of it.

"Every word on it looks like some kind of divine script."

"After over a decade of studying, I'm still clueless!" This feeling frustrated Sheng Qingquan, so he tried using a translator, but it didn't help. Because the translator was for real-time translation, not for written translation.

If the pixies were talking here, even if the language wasn't in its database, after listening for a bit and gathering enough samples, it could roughly figure out what they were saying.

But this was written text.

The translator was utterly stumped.

Luckily, there were more pictures than words.

The other pictures were beyond Sheng Qingquan's comprehension. But the intricate pattern on the last fold of the page looked oddly familiar.

He'd seen it just recently in the capital.

This pattern was exactly the same as the one on the teleportation array plate given to Tianlan Star by the pixies' family.

When he compared it carefully with the patterns on the earlier pages.

Though he still couldn't make sense of it, Sheng Qingquan's sharp memory let him spot that all these patterns matched the final teleportation array when he looked closely.

In short, this was probably a guide on how to draw a teleportation array.

The book breaks down the transportation array into individual components, explaining each part in meticulous detail.

In the end, these components are reassembled to present the complete form for everyone to see.

If you follow along and learn, you’ve got a good shot at mastering it!

Although Sheng Qingquan couldn't understand it, it didn't mean that there were no experts on Tianlan Star in this field. Thinking of this, Sheng Qingquan quickly stored the small book safely and, along with the idea that Wildflower Honey might neutralize the volatility of the gene solution, sent it all to the chief leader.

Let the higher-ups deal with the headaches.

With nothing on his mind, Sheng Qingquan finally managed to relax for a few days.

But Sheng Qingquan didn't stay happy for long.

Shan Keyu successfully overcame her emotional struggles, and before returning to school, she made a point of pulling out two kites from home to give to Sheng Qingquan.

Rediscovering the joy of flying kites, Sheng Qingquan happily accepted the gift.

After flying them a few times, one morning, still half-asleep, Sheng Qingquan felt as if someone was pushing him.

“There are no pets at home.”

“Who could be pushing then?”

Bleary-eyed, Sheng Qingquan opened his eyes to find the novel desperately nudging his arm, trying to rouse him.

From the cover, it was obviously a new novel.

!!!

No time to gripe about the novel ruining his peaceful sleep, Sheng Qingquan snapped awake in an instant.