Mutated Plants and Shocked Mage Apprentices

After Ajaf left, a mage apprentice called Roger started to mumble as he hastened the ripening of the seed, "Ah. I thought he was someone formidable after creating such a big hoo-ha! I didn't expect it would be like this. He's really treating us like lowly farmers?"

Another mage apprentice grumbled too, "Isn't that so? And he even makes us sign a confidentiality contract over that! It's simply ridiculous. If it were me, I wouldn't even want to speak about it!"

"Lower your voices, guys. We'll get into trouble if he hears us!" their team leader lectured them in a hushed voice.

"I know, I know!" Roger answered casually but he looked even more unhappy.

At this moment, besides Roger, most of the wood-spirit mage apprentices also had pent-up frustration.

On one hand, they were spurred by Aileen getting the Purple Snow Wood Magic Wand.

On the other hand, that magical experiment had also made them feel under-utilized, more like humiliated!

One had to know that accelerating the growth of plants was simply the basics of wood-spirit magic. It didn't have any other meaning aside from speeding up the plant's growth.

Its greatest value was to use it to cultivate those magical plants that had a very long growth cycle; that, and control plants to fight by using some combination magic.

Then Ajaf had merely asked them to accelerate the growth of crops. So, what was the difference between them and those lowly farmers?

What kind of nonsensical magic experiment is this?

That group of mage apprentices were angry but they didn't dare to voice it out. However, Aileen looked very excited as she followed Yu Sheng'an.

"My lord, are you trying to select the best plant through accelerated growth?" Aileen asked with excitement.

If one would ask her what was the greatest result she had obtained from her study of crops in the past few years, that would have to be the "Best Theory" she had discovered.

That was a rationale she had come up with after thinking long and hard.

She believed plants were just like humans, with differences in their character, including good and bad features.

Just like the children of mages were naturally more talented than the peasants'.

One had to admit that bloodline advantages did exist.

Hence, selecting seeds that grew the best and cultivating them for generations would definitely ensure that they would have the crops with the highest yields.

"You could say that. However, this is called directed cultivation."

"Directed cultivation?"

Aileen's entire body shook. That term had almost described her biggest research result to a tee!

At that moment, she began to look at Yu Sheng'an with brightened eyes.

She was finally sure she had met a real academic!

"I can see that you've also spent quite some time on doing research. So, how about your results?" Yu Sheng'an asked as he patrolled the underground laboratory

"Very bad. I've done selection rounds for a very long time and was only able to raise the output per hectare by 10% at a maximum. However, those advantages disappear after breeding the offspring of those seeds for another two or three times."

Aileen's expression became sullen. The disappearance of those advantages meant that every generation of seeds had to be carefully selected. This would increase costs by a large margin, rendering it impossible to become widespread.

"This is very normal. Every plant has dominant and recessive genes. The plants that you have developed via directed cultivation in the laboratory have only reflected the dominant gene, but this doesn't mean that the recessive genes have disappeared. After two or three generations of free pollination of those plants, the attained characteristics would naturally be lost," said Yu Sheng'an with a casual tone.

Aileen's expression became perplexed.

Yu Sheng'an's words reminded her of the first time that she had come in contact with magic—Ignorance, profundity and awe!

However, the way Yu Sheng'an talked logically and smoothly about the plants made her realize he had already done extremely deep research on the plants.

Right at this time, a mage apprentice exclaimed, "My heavens. Why does the Ghost Hand Gourd look like this?"

Before Aileen could look over, shouts of exclamation began to sprout from all corners of the laboratory.

"Quick, look at it. The black grain I had accelerated has a white liquid oozing out of it!"

"M-M-Mine too!"

"Ah—My long beans. They're so long!"

The mage apprentices were going crazy! All of them began to scream and shout!

They were quite familiar with common plants, given their wood-spirit magic experience.

Everyones' plant acceleration progress was still rather normal at first, but things started to get abnormal as they grew.

It was fine for some leaves to begin growing spirally, but they actually started to ooze sap?

The scarier thing was, as the plants began to blossom and bear fruit, the final products left them so shocked that they almost bit their tongues.

The Ghost Hand Gourd became a conjoined gourd—

The long beans became longer than a human—

The black grain began to discharge a white liquid—

Almost all the common plants had a terrifying mutation!

Even Roger—who was full of complaints earlier—was unable to utter a single word of complaint anymore.

He stared at the plants in front of him with dilated pupils. That magical experiment had far exceeded the limits of his imagination.

He wasn't scared by the plants' mutation. They had cultivated even weirder plants before during their wood-spirit magic practices.

The truly scary part was… They didn't interfere with those crops at all!

They had simply accelerated their growth.

Still, such a terrifying change had taken place?!

How could they not be terrified?

Could it be that there was something wrong with the seeds?

But, they had checked the seeds before they began their cultivation. They were normal crops' seeds, quite normal in fact.

Fear stems from the unknown.

At this moment, all the mage apprentices looked at Yu Sheng'an at the same time.

They realized that they had underestimated that mysterious existence.

The existence that had been able to make Dandell the Magical Deity antagonize a whole bunch of mage instructors and send them over to help with the experiment was indeed not ordinary!

One had to know that those plants had already become twisted.

This meant that they were almost going to get into the deities' domains!

"Silence! There's no need to panic. Have you forgotten what I said? Take notes of all you have seen, observed and felt. The rest has nothing to do with you," Yu Sheng'an lectured.

"Yes!"

Murmurs of acknowledgement sounded in the laboratory. It wasn't that they were disrespecting Yu Sheng'an; it was all due to their shock.

Aileen even stared at Ajaf in disbelief as her pupils quivered and her hands trembled.

The scene in front of her had negated the "directed cultivation" she had believed in.

This meant that Mister Ajaf had most probably discovered a whole new research direction.

She could see from those twisted and mutated plants that he was challenging the power of the deities as he tried to create new species!

At the same time, Dorothy could also see that Yu Sheng'an was putting the power of the deities into question.

She was after all the granddaughter of Dorman, Son of the Forest. She naturally knew what was going on.

Her grandfather had never told her about Ajaf's identity.

She had been trying to guess and speculate, but she had never expected Ajaf to be that scary.

A seemingly harmless magical experiment had completely subverted their imagination in regards to what they knew about plants.

Is he a deity?

Was this the real reason why he was able to get all the wood-spirit mage apprentices in Felix?

Dorothy stared at the plants that had become twisted without any magical interference with a numb scalp. Her puppy love, Delçois' indifference, Grandpa's laments; all of it was forgotten.

She realized she was witnessing history in the making.

Everything she was experiencing was negligible in front of history!

That magical experiment had finally ended in a series of exclamations.

All the mage apprentices had written their observation reports and left the laboratory one by one.

They were no longer disdainful when they walked past Yu Sheng'an.

On the contrary, all of them began to feel intense shame and shock!

Ajaf was a real academic, and one whose wood-spirit magic's accomplishments were far beyond their imagination.

He deserved to be respected!

Dorothy rushed home after leaving the Forest of Magic. She panted as she opened her grandfather's study's door. Her grandfather stared at her with a shocked gaze as she shouted, "Grandpa…!"

She couldn't voice out the rest of the words.

The confidentiality contract had bound her subjective consciousness.

Her mind would go completely blank as soon as she wanted to spill the secrets. She didn't know what to say.

She hemmed and hawed for quite a while before she suddenly had an idea. She shouted nonsensically in a harsh tone, "Grandpa, you have to take part in Ajaf's magical experiment! Otherwise, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life! Believe me. You'll know. I-I-I can't say anything. I'm under a contract. You must take part! You must!"