But soon, he realized that a faint connection had begun to form between him and Lan You.
Unlike the earlier sense of unity, which had felt more like a connection to his lost life force, this was a genuine link, similar to the ones he shared with Red Hair, Yellow Ball, or Yangos.
However, this connection felt very rough and met with significant resistance.
Ye Zhongming even sensed that Lan You was developing its own intelligence!
This couldn’t be allowed!
Ye Zhongming knew that if this plant, already formidable by instinct alone, gained independent thought, Cloud Peak’s battle beasts and evolved humans might truly be in danger.
He actively increased his mental energy output, charging against the “obstructions.”
Thanks to the Soul Refining Technique and his previous massive mental energy boosts, the Cloud Peak King’s mental reserves were as vast as an ocean.
He maintained this for over fifteen seconds while being drained and actively expending energy. When only a tenth of his mental energy remained, he clearly felt the obstructions shatter under his assault!
Despite Ye Zhongming’s immense mental reserves, he hadn’t gained full control over Lan You. But their relationship had become very close.
Lan You would generally comply with Ye Zhongming’s words as long as it didn’t involve life-or-death conflicts.
At the same time, Ye Zhongming learned many things.
First, he confirmed that Lan You was not an Earth-native lifeform but originated from a mysterious world full of vibrant colors, just like the light it had emitted earlier.
As a seed, it had arrived on Earth alongside the secret realm keys, landing atop Changbai Mountain, where it took root and sprouted.
Second, it wasn’t inherently a carnivorous plant that fed on the life force of mutated beings. Like Earth’s plants, it relied on absorbing water, sunlight, and nutrients from the soil to grow. The reason it had absorbed Ye Zhongming’s life force and drained the lives of the Rat King couple and their 100,000-strong rat army was because Ye Zhongming had used the Gardener’s Cultivation skill on it.
Abnormally rapid growth required an abnormal price. For ordinary plants, Ye Zhongming only needed to expend mental energy. But Lan You was too special, its life level too high, forcing him to pay with his life force—and even then, he couldn’t break free.
Now that the Cultivation skill had ended, Lan You no longer needed to absorb vast amounts of energy to sustain its growth. It could simply absorb nutrients normally.
Additionally, the multicolored energy it emitted had an incredibly nourishing effect on mutated animals. This was one of its inherent traits. Under normal growth conditions, this energy wasn’t particularly strong—its function was somewhat similar to Bug Emperor Honey, promoting and accelerating the evolution of mutated lifeforms. But it couldn’t instantly grant them the ability to absorb massive energy and evolve immediately. What had happened today was entirely due to special circumstances.
This wasn’t hard to understand. Lan You used this method to attract mutated lifeforms to live and nest near it. Their waste and secretions would enter the soil, becoming fertilizer that, in turn, nourished it. Essentially, this was a small, mutually beneficial ecosystem.
It was only the unusual nature of the energy that made it so astonishing.
Finally, Lan You had bloomed, and it could bear fruit. But it couldn’t reproduce—because there were no others of its kind here, it couldn’t propagate through root matching.
If it couldn’t find others of its kind, it would eventually reach its evolutionary limit and split itself in two. Though this would reduce its power, it would create a new individual, allowing the species to avoid extinction through separate growth and absorption.
Right now, Lan You was still far from reaching its peak state.
These flowers—and the fruit they would eventually bear—were merely signs that Lan You had reached the first major stage of its growth. They didn’t hold much substantive significance.
Of course, this was from Lan You’s perspective. Like the energy it emitted, the flowers and fruit were means to attract mutated lifeforms—just that the flowers and fruit provided higher-tier energy, capable of drawing in more advanced lifeforms to nest nearby.
Having figured all this out, Ye Zhongming lowered his hands, feeling pleased.
He knew that the enormous price he’d paid for this tree had already been worth it.
From now on, Cloud Peak’s human evolved would have the Extreme Light Training Platform and Bug Emperor Honey to boost their strength, while the battle beasts would have Lan You. Cloud Peak’s overall combat power would undoubtedly experience a leap forward, and this would continue indefinitely.
Seeing Ye Zhongming’s hands leave Lan You, everyone sighed in relief. At the same time, the still-conscious high-level battle beasts—those at levels seven and eight—noticed that the energy they could absorb had become faint. They stood up and looked at the white flowers on Lan You’s branches.
“Little Ye, can I eat these flowers?” Yangos, who stood taller than Lan You, looked down at the tiny flowers, drooling.
It could sense that these flowers, minuscule to it, contained energy it desperately craved.
But Yangos wasn’t stupid. It knew this thing wasn’t ordinary. Though it hadn’t witnessed the underground slaughter of the Rat King couple, the dragon instinctively sensed the tree was dangerous and didn’t recklessly approach the flowers.
Moreover, Yangos was well aware of Cloud Peak’s rules. Something this valuable couldn’t be claimed without permission—doing so would invite punishment.
In all of Cloud Peak, only one person had the authority to decide: the king of this place, Ye Zhongming.
At that moment, the Cloud Peak King looked up at Lan You’s canopy, counting the flowers.
After absorbing nearly all of Ye Zhongming’s life force, the life force of 100,000 high-level mutated rats, and the energy of two level-eight lifeforms… it had only produced fifteen flowers?
Even knowing these flowers were precious, Ye Zhongming found it hard to believe that this massive tree, fifteen meters tall with a canopy covering over a thousand square meters, had only bloomed so few.
Was it proportional to its height? Fifteen meters meant fifteen flowers?
After communicating with Lan You, it turned out this was exactly the case. Ye Zhongming could only stare in speechless exasperation.
After some consideration, Ye Zhongming leaped up to Lan You and plucked five of the small white flowers.
Up close, he saw that each flower had only three petals, with no stamens at the center—likely because these flowers couldn’t reproduce. But then, how would the fruit form? Ye Zhongming didn’t understand.
Then again, there were too many inexplicable things in the apocalypse, let alone from an extraterrestrial lifeform like this.
“Little Ye, hurry up and give me two!” Yangos flapped its wings, begging.
Ye Zhongming ignored it.
Five flowers, three petals each—only fifteen petals in total.
Ye Zhongming distributed them among the conscious high-level warbeasts, giving each a single petal. For these creatures, whose bodies were measured in meters, the tiny petals were almost comical as they carefully placed them in their mouths.
But every battle beast that ate a petal immediately felt a surge of tremendous energy enter its body. They quickly lay down to absorb it—even the previously demanding Yangos.
Everyone was amazed by the potency of these petals.
The only pity was that Red Hair and the Undead Dragon-fish showed little interest in the petals. The energy didn’t seem to have much effect on them.
“Little Ye, are they that precious?” Liu Zhenghong looked up at the remaining ten flowers.
Ye Zhongming nodded, also gazing at the flowers. “I suspect that once they bear fruit, the fruit might allow level-six lifeforms to evolve directly. Three might even push a level-seven to evolve. As for whether they can make level-eight evolve, that’s hard to say. After all, reaching level nine isn’t just about energy.”