Mortal Seeking Immortal

According to the jade slips of experience in controlling insects given by Yayu, as well as the records of jade slips about various spiritual insects in the library, poisonous insects such as centipedes will not cocoon and transform again from the moment they hatch from eggs until they die.

Ye Zhou murmured to himself: "If that's the case, then what's the matter with the centipede I raised? Could it be that something unusual has occurred?"

Ye Zhou carefully recalled the manual of controlling insects and found that the spiritual insects he raised were the same except that they ate a little better than other spiritual insects.

"Could it be that they ate too much thousand-year spiritual plants? Did the centipede develop a second time?"

However, this was just Ye Zhou's guess. After all, throughout the ages, even the big-name cultivators in the world of immortal cultivation did not feed their spiritual insects with thousand-year spiritual plants every day. Ye Zhou was the only one in the world of immortal cultivation.

Ye Zhou set up a simple formation in the small compartment of the centipede. Once the eggs transformed by the centipede move abnormally, the formation will transmit spiritual power fluctuations and notify Ye Zhou immediately.

Ye Zhou continued to check other spiritual insects and found that the shield of a small compartment not far from the centipede was also broken. The spiritual insects raised in the compartment had disappeared without a trace.

Ye Zhou remembered that the spiritual insect raised in this small compartment was called Jade Ice Silkworm. Jade Ice Silkworm is a kind of spiritual insect that lives in the coldest ice pool deep in the iceberg.

The breeding method of Jade Ice Silkworm is extremely strict. It must be provided with a cold residence and fed with ice lotus that only grows on icebergs to be successfully bred.

After the Jade Ice Silkworm is successfully bred, it is not like other spiritual insects that are more or less helpful to the insect-controlling monks. Jade Ice Silkworm has no use except for being able to spit out weak cold air.

Moreover, the cold air exhaled by the Jade Ice Silkworm cannot even freeze some slightly stronger spiritual insects, let alone how much harm it can cause to humans, so no insect-controlling monk in the world has the leisure to raise such a delicate Jade Ice Silkworm.

Ye Zhou originally raised the Jade Ice Silkworm just out of curiosity. He happened to see the Jade Ice Silkworm eggs and ice lotus seeds being auctioned at the auction house, so he took them back to raise.

In order to provide the Jade Ice Silkworm with a cold residence, Ye Zhou also specially used spirit stones to exchange some cold jade that can emit cold air from the steward in the sect to build a residence for it.

At the beginning, Ye Zhou took back a total of ten Jade Ice Silkworm eggs. He only hatched one to observe and study, and the rest of the eggs are still stored in the storage bag and have not been used.

Ye Zhou had already observed the Jade Ice Silkworm and satisfied his curiosity. Although this Jade Ice Silkworm was a dispensable thing for Ye Zhou, it suddenly disappeared now, and Ye Zhou could not ignore it.

Ye Zhou immediately released his spiritual sense to scan the entire insect breeding room, but he did not find any trace of the Jade Ice Silkworm.

This insect breeding room is separated from other stone rooms in Ye Zhou's cave by a formation, and the Jade Ice Silkworm can never break into other stone rooms through the formation.

"So what is going on?"

Now the centipede has undergone a cocoon transformation for unknown reasons, and the Jade Ice Silkworm has disappeared, which really puzzled Ye Zhou.

"The centipede cocoons and the Jade Ice Silkworm disappear. Is there a connection between the two?"

Ye Zhou suddenly realized: "Could it be that the centipede swallowed the Jade Ice Silkworm, so it transformed?"

The more Ye Zhou thought about it, the more possible it was, but Ye Zhou had never seen such a change in the insect control jade slip.

Throughout the ages, many insect control monks have had their spiritual insects swallow other spiritual insects, but they have never heard of any spiritual insects that have undergone changes due to swallowing other spiritual insects, so Ye Zhou did not think about it in this direction at first.

If the conclusion Ye Zhou came to was true, it would be enough to overturn the current knowledge of insect control in the world of immortal cultivation and open up another new way of controlling insects, that is, to let the spirit insects mutate by devouring other spirit insects and generate another new spirit insect.

Thinking of this, Ye Zhou couldn't help but get excited.

Now Ye Zhou was thinking about a new question, "Under what conditions will a spirit insect mutate after swallowing another spirit insect?"

Ye Zhou didn't believe that ordinary swallowing could produce mutations. There must be something different before the centipede swallowed the jade ice silkworm. If Ye Zhou wanted to open up this new way of controlling insects, he had to figure out this problem.

Ye Zhou suppressed his excitement and continued to check the next spirit insects. He found that the other spirit insects he raised in the insect breeding room were all staying in their respective small compartments because of the intact shields, and no similar mutations occurred.

Walking to the end of the insect breeding room, Ye Zhou pushed open a small stone door with a formation on the wall at the end of the insect breeding room.

After the stone door was opened, the moment the breath inside the stone door leaked out, the spirit insects in all the small compartments in the insect breeding room were lying on the ground in the compartments and trembling in fear, as if they felt the breath of a deadly natural enemy.

Even some eggs that were about to break out of their shells began to tremble slightly. This fear was engraved in the spirit insects' bones and flowed in their blood.

Seeing this, Ye Zhou raised a helpless smile at the corner of his mouth, shook his head and quickly entered the stone door, and then closed the stone door.

When the stone door closed, the breath from the stone door disappeared, and all kinds of spirit insects in the insect breeding room began to move on their own, some sleeping and some chewing pills.

The stone door was like a small insect breeding room. In the center of the insect breeding room was a jade table with a groove. The groove was filled with some green and viscous liquid that exuded a strong spiritual aura. In the center of this liquid, a spirit beetle that seemed to be in deep sleep floated quietly.

Four years ago, the spirit beetle raised by Ye Zhou entered a deep sleep for unknown reasons. Ye Zhou later learned from the insect-controlling jade slip given by Ya Yu that after the spirit beetle has long ingested spiritual plants or elixirs containing a large amount of spiritual power, it will not eat or drink until it enters a metamorphosis state. After the spirit beetle completes the metamorphosis and breaks out of the shell, its strength will be greatly improved.

However, the metamorphosis period of spirit beetles varies. Because the spirit beetle raised by Ye Zhou has ingested too much spiritual power, Ye Zhou speculates that the metamorphosis period is at least 100 years. Ye Zhou naturally cannot wait for the spirit beetle to metamorphose for 100 years, so he has searched for various methods, but none of them can speed up the metamorphosis of the spirit beetle.

Later, Ye Zhou won a mysterious jade slip that detailed the ancient spirit insects at an auction. From it, he learned a method to speed up the metamorphosis of spirit beetles, which is to use several high-year spirit plants to refine a spiritual liquid, and immerse the whole body of the spirit beetle in the metamorphosis period in this spiritual liquid to speed up the metamorphosis of the spirit beetle.

Fortunately, Ye Zhou had these high-year spiritual plants on hand, so he followed the method described in the jade slip and successfully refined the spiritual liquid. He put the spiritual beetle into the spiritual liquid in an attempt to speed up the transformation of the spiritual beetle.

What Ye Zhou didn't expect was that after four years, the spiritual beetle placed in the spiritual liquid was still sleeping without any signs of waking up, but Ye Zhou sensed that the breath of the spiritual beetle was constantly increasing.

Now the breath of this spiritual beetle has even surpassed the hill!