Chapter 210: The World Where Food Reigns Supreme [Part 1]
Normally, the places where flora and fauna lived with each other would contain big amounts of hallucinogenic gas or other poisonous gas. This was so that the plants could knock out the animals around them. But in this flora-only forest, the discharge of poisonous gas was fewer than norm. Instead, the poison was stored inside the plant’s body itself.
The plants hid their toxin inside their bodies so that they could release them when they encountered an enemy species. By cutting through the epidermis and injecting their toxin into the other plant’s body, some toxin could liquefy the enemy plant directly and turn them into the plant’s fertilizer.
Some of these trees weren’t entirely stationary. There were plenty of plants that were capable of movement on this planet. Although most of them were far slower than even a tortoise when moving horizontally, they were very special compared to the plants of other planets already.
All sorts of precious medicine could be found inside the bodies of these plants. The substances extracted directly from the plants were relatively active, and the effects were much better than the synthetic product of a machine. Moreover, it also bypassed a certain amount of allergic reaction and rejection. That was why the natural medicinal substances that were extracted directly from plants normally sold for hundreds of times the normal price of the synthesised counterpart.
All of these discoveries pleasantly surprised both Tico and Rikulab. They had easily extracted some hallucinogens and nerve toxins of great purity as well as the bioactivity from several kinds of plants. Tico and Rikulab had been busy ever since they came to this planet; they normally wouldn’t enlist a robot’s aid when they were processing materials. The raw materials of medicines they’d collected from this trip was absolutely worth it as they were all precious natural raw materials, and they’d even found two types of raw materials that could only be found serendipitously. They could literally be sold for the price of a starship in GAL.
There were also a kind of evergreen thicket which leaves and branches contained a chemical substance found in painkillers that Hunters often needed. It could treat wounds, fever caused by infection and so on. However, most synthetic medicine had great side effects, and the patients would enter a period of weakness after the pain was suppressed. However, this natural painkiller they extracted had minimal side effects and great bioactivity. This was the conclusion Tico and Rikulab had drawn based on their own experiences.
To them, this planet was without a doubt a treasure land. Tico and Rikulab had even tagged this planet as their herb garden for likely the next few years of time.
The white rabbit was currently rubbing its cleft lips and chewing at the leaves of some unknown plants. Most animals had a natural instinct about what could be eaten and what couldn’t, and Tico was obviously very confident in the white rabbit’s abilities.
The gray cat and the others had gathered some nuts that were suitable for long term storage, and some other fruits with succulent flesh. They had maintained a constant video connection with Sigma while they were gathering the fruits, so Sigma could see their every move. Sigma would comment at a certain thing from time to time, and an occasional cry of ‘eeyah’ could be heard from the background too.
It was obvious that these animals weren’t afraid of the plants’ poisonous gas or secreted toxin at all. At the very least, these little fellows were still as lively as grigs.
Scarlet Wind grabbed a fruit, sniffed it, and began chowing it down his throat.
“Wah, what’s that?”
Snowball ran over and grabbed a fruit from the tree too. It gave the fruit a bite and found that its taste wasn’t bad, but Snowball’s attention was quickly attracted by another tree.
The tree was shaped like an umbrella, with long, hanging branches that looked like a bell canopy. What attracted Snowball wasn’t the tree’s appearance, but the oval-shaped balls about the size of watermelons hanging from the branches.
Snowball went over to the tree and gave it a sniff. Then, it opened its mouth and bit an opening from the top of the fruit. As bit of juice immediately flowed out of the opening, and after a lick Snowball’s impression of it was that it was very sweet, very tasty and better than the fruit it ate earlier. And so Snowball put its mouth on the fruit and sucked on it the full, oval-shaped fruit until it slowly shriveled over time.
“Hey, what’re you sucking?” The gray cat asked.
Snowball let out some snorts from its nose but didn’t answer. Instead, it grabbed a new oval-shaped fruit and sucked its contents again.
The gray cat jumped up a branch and copied Snowball’s movements, biting an opening from the top of the fruit and licking at the juice that flowed out of it. Dough soon joined the fray, before Scarlet Wind followed suit too.
On the other side of the screen, Sigma felt gloomy as it paced gloomy circles inside its room. A short moment of protests later, Sigma declared, “Bring that tree back home!”
“How do we do that?” The gray cat wiped its face with its paws after it was done licking up all the juice of the fruit. It completely agreed with the sentiment to bring back the plant, but it absolutely couldn’t be bothered to take care of it.
“Bring back some! You simply must bring some trees back home! I’ll make a small garden and plant them here!” Sigma clapped his hands excitedly.
“Eeyah——” The little Lovage jumped on Sigma’s arm in agreement.
One final discussion later, the little fellows cried out in unison, “Cillin——”
Cillin gave himself a moment of silence: such is life!
Cillin went over and took a look at the tree. The juice inside the oval-shaped fruit had a rich content of nutrients, and its plant oil was a very rare nourishment to come by. This juice was something that repelled some of the plants in this area, however.
The oval shaped fruit was the basically the plant’s liquid-filled capsule. It contained a lot of sweet smelling plant oil that disgusted many plants and kept them away. However, the gray cat and humans loved this scent a lot.
After the inspection, Cillin asked Czedow to deal with the plant. He wasn’t counting on these gluttons to do this because they could destroy this entire forest and still not dig out an intact tree. Moreover, there were plenty of other plants that he needed to give the nutrient process.
The plant with oval-shaped liquid-filled capsules were a kind of viviparous plant.
For most plants, the seeds were allowed to grow to maturity before they were expelled from the parent’s body. Then, the seeds would enter a period of hibernation and wait for the right conditions such as suitable temperature, humidity and so on to appear. They would then germinate in the soil and gradually grow into a small plant. However, plants grew up with varying characteristics due to the complexity of their environment. This was so that they could better adapt to the environment and survive. Therefore, some angiosperms had seeds that would not depart its parent’s body immediately after it reached maturity, just like the unborn child of a mammal inside the mother’s body. They would germinate inside the fruit and grow up into a sapling first before they finally left the parent’s body. This was why this type of plant was called a viviparous plant.
The low hanging branches of this plant was like a cover that enveloped its body, and one could find many ‘lanterns’ beneath these branches. These ‘lanterns’ were none other than germinated seeds that had grown into saplings. These seeds experienced almost no hibernation period at all and germinated inside the fruit of their parent almost immediately after they had reached maturity. Their hypocotyls would stretch outside the skin of the fruit and turn into many stick-shaped saplings.
If someone were to cut through the layer outside the ‘lantern’, they would find a growing sapling that hadn’t yet left its parent’s body inside. Therefore, Czedow didn’t need to cut or dig up the entire plant to acquire a sample of the plant. He only needed to collect some ‘lanterns’ to achieve his objective.
There were plenty other plants that Sigma had requested them to bring home besides this one. Sigma wanted to plant them all in his its garden. Cillin had agreed to all of Sigma’s request since it had given them an entire base. There was no reason for Cillin to turn down this tiny request of Sigma’s whatsoever, especially when it was a request that benefited all of them.
Once Cillin had guided Czedow through the process of sampling the plants several times, he left him and went to do something else. While gathering information, Czedow also helped dug out the plants the gray cat and its gang had selected at the same time. He treated them with nutrient fluids and sealed them in special films.
Tico and Rikulab had tagged the species they wanted to be transplanted back home. Czedow would then select and sample the best out of the species a short while later.
Cillin, Tico and Rikulab were currently processing some useful plants on this side when Udoze and Cary walked towards them from the mining spots. Seeing that the trio wasn’t wearing a protective suit, Cary and Udoze took off their own suits too.
Cary inhaled once and sighed, “The air here isn’t bad.”
Udoze looked at the scanner on his wrist and said, “Yeah, the conditions here are much better than over there… Hey Snowball, eat less, will you? You’re going to have a diarrhea!”
Snowball was actually looking more and more like an actual ball right now. It was so fat that Udoze was worried that it would grow obese.
On the other side of the screen, Sigma asked in puzzlement after listening to Udoze’s exclamation, “What’s a diarrhea?”
“Ahem, it means defecating so much that you can’t help yourself,” Udoze explained.
Cillin and Cary looked away and pretended that they didn’t catch anything.