CHAPTER 1332: WEIRD CUSTOM?

Armed with a tender gaze and gentle voice, Yang Qing amicably threatened the lives of the insects around him before moving on to gently call out the dream ambrosia bee with the highest cultivation base(which was at the fourth stage core formation realm), whom he had designated as the temporary leader of the hive until Zhilan fully hatched.

Thankfully, that bee had a name. Though it was a strange one, it was still a name. She was called Lihua Thirty-Seven, the thirty-seven signifying she was the thirty-seventh child of Queen Lihua. The name lacked originality, just like her voice, which was a perfect replica of her mother’s, the queen’s. It made Yang Qing wonder if all the other bees sounded the same, and if Zhilan would end up with that voice too, or if hers would be unique since she was a queen in the making. And if it was unique, would her brood adopt her voice as well? Would she also follow the same naming sense, giving each child her name followed by the order of their birth?

If he was being honest, while such a naming sense made it easier to remember them, especially if the hive grew to have many members, Yang Qing rather hoped that his new queen would adopt a new trend and put more thought into the names she gave her children, if only to save the face of her new landlord.

Through no fault of his own, Yang Qing had vicious, sadistic friends who took great joy in his misfortunes, teasing and mocking him mercilessly at every mishap they could find. He did not want to add more arrows to their quivers, and he had a feeling that a hive filled with members named Zhilan One, Zhilan Two, and so on, would be exactly the kind of arrows those people would jump at.

Taking a quick breath to calm his heart, Yang Qing handed the two saps to Lihua Thirty Seven, then offered her a brief tour of the abode. He introduced her to their new neighbors, mainly the insects that had made a home on the Celestial Linden Tree, before moving on to introduce her to the rest whose homes were outside it.

After the introductions, he left her with a few instructions, such as letting her know that any flower they wanted to use was not off limits. He felt this was necessary, given their non-confrontational and docile natures. Once he felt he had covered everything, he left the rest of the hive’s operations to her and her hive mates, which included the care of Zhilan. He may have the flowers and a higher cultivation base, but when it came to raising queens, they likely knew more about it than he did.

All he did, where Zhilan was concerned, was send a thought welcoming her to his abode and her new home. He also transmitted a picture of how it looked, introduced himself, and ended with a short plea for her to be considerate when naming her children in the future.

Queen Lihua had told him before he left that when it came to dream ambrosia queens, even in larval form, they had the ability to perceive the things around them to a certain degree. This was how, for those queens who chose not to eat larvae with queen potential, they could teach their children everything they knew before banishing them from the hive the moment they hatched.

Their understanding of the world was taught to them during their larval stage. It helped that the larval stage for dream ambrosia queen bees tended to last years, with some even lasting upwards of twenty years, whereas for a normal ambrosia bee it lasted months, or at most two years if it had great potential. The higher the potential, the longer the larval period.

Of course, that time was not set in stone, whether it be for the regular ambrosia bees or the queens. If the environment suited them and they had free access to everything they needed in both quality and quantity, then the larval stage shrank considerably.

In an ideal world, where they could harvest pollen, nectar, sap, and all manner of things freely and without worry of being attacked or exposing their hive’s location, then whether it be the queen’s larva or the regular ones, their larval period would not last more than two years, no matter how high their potential.

But because of the constraints they faced, and their abilities and place in the food chain being what they were, the larval period ended up being longer than it should have been. Access to quality pollen and nectar to make the ’bread’ needed for larval growth was in short supply.

And for dream ambrosia bees, as feeble as their offensive abilities were, they were one of the rare spirit beasts born with a fully developed wisdom pearl. Because of that, they had strict parameters on their diet. When those were not met, the larval period tended to last longer until the threshold of both quality and quantity was reached.

Zhilan had been in her larval period for seventeen years. Given her potential and the quality and quantity of royal jelly being fed to her, her mother estimated she had six or seven more years to go before she hatched. The hive had fallen on lean times, and with how dangerous the Deer Mountain Range had been, he was not too surprised by it.

He also came to understand why some queens chose to eat the larval queen once she hatched. Spending so many resources, which were already in short supply at that, to nurture a single being and then letting them go was a choice too difficult for most to make. It was no different than a sect using a large part of its scarce resources to nurture a guest elder who was not oath-bound to remain in the sect.

Any sect with sense would only do something like that if they had a sure way of guaranteeing a return on what they had spent on that guest elder. For the dream ambrosia bees, that guarantee translated into eating the young queen when she hatched to strengthen themselves.

Luckily Zhilan was spared such a fate, and in terms of her larval period, the six or seven years her mother had estimated were based on the resources she had access to, which were but a drop compared to what Yang Qing could provide. Take just the sap of the green flame tree—how many years would that shave off? What if the sap of the purple lightning bamboo grove was added to the mix? Or the nectar from the thousands of unique flowers that called the celestial linden tree home? Not to mention the thousands upon thousands of other flowers from other plants that could provide nectar and pollen, in part thanks to his aura that favored their growth, and in part thanks to Ma Yuan’s diligent efforts as a herbologist when he introduced even more species to the abode.

Taking all that into account, when would she hatch? Yang Qing wasn’t sure, but he felt anything less than three months was already too long.

Though it’d be safer to have someone from the Beast Tamer Hall check. They’d give a more accurate estimate and maybe even draft a growth plan for her and the hive, thought Yang Qing, as he also made a mental note to visit the library to learn more about them and to see whether that naming sense was a common trait or if Lihua was simply an oddity.

"There’s also Dean Zhu Lao to see while I am there," murmured Yang Qing, the dean flashing in his mind as he was related to the list of things he had on his to-do list once he was back at the Order.

"Wandering Scholar Song Quan," Yang Qing murmured curiously once he was seated at the terrace as he poured himself some tea to go with the osmanthus cake he had taken out.

"Still talking to yourself, I see," came a voice from the direction of the pond.

"Keeps me sane," Yang Qing answered with a laugh as he immediately switched the tea for wine. "Care for some?" he said as he turned to the visitor.

"Do you even need to ask?"