Chapter 149: Chapter 149 Planting for Me, I for the Planting
 

Theoretically speaking, a Puppet Talisman is for controlling puppets.

And the majority of puppets are made of wood and iron.

Therefore, a Puppet Talisman can completely control wooden items.

And the Blood Orange Tree is also a plant.

Thus, it is entirely possible that with the help of a Plant Autonomy Talisman, it can achieve autonomy!

An autonomous Blood Orange Tree should grow faster, taller, and stronger than other Blood Orange Trees!

Other trees are thin and fragile, whereas the autonomous tree is all muscle!

To verify this idea, Jiang Cheng urgently purchased two seeds, a bag of planting soil, and two flower pots.

The two seeds Jiang Cheng bought were named “Half-day Bamboo” and “Gold-Iron Wood”.

True to its name, Half-day Bamboo is a variety of rapid-growth seed, which grows extremely quickly. It can poke out of the soil in half a day, and in another half, it can grow to half an adult’s height.

Is it the plant equivalent of “This TM is an eight-year-old”?

Gold-Iron Wood, by comparison, is on the other end of the spectrum. Gold-Iron Wood grows extremely slowly, but its advantage is that it’s very solid and the wood hard as iron.

If the Plant Autonomy Talisman could transfer the rapid growth characteristics of the Half-day Bamboo to the Gold-Iron Wood, then such growth rate should also be transferrable to the Blood Orange Tree!

After buying the Half-day Bamboo and Gold-Iron Wood, Jiang Cheng immediately started his experiment.

As the Smart Puppet Talisman and the accompanying Translation Talisman were Jiang Cheng’s early summer projects, and given that he had input several top-notch martial arts secrets thereafter, he had a deep understanding of the Intelligent Puppet Talisman and its Translation Talisman.

With a minor modification to the Intelligent Puppet Talisman and optimization of the Translation Talisman’s information gathering, to allow it to capture the state of plant growth, the Intelligent Puppet Talisman could fully assume the role of “assisting plant self-regulation”!

Jiang Cheng planted both the Half-day Bamboo and the Gold-Iron Wood seeds in the flower pots and then attached the Translation Talisman to the Half-day Bamboo’s pot to collect its growth state.

Half a day later, as expected, a vibrant green bamboo sprout grew in the Half-day Bamboo pot!

Without any delay, Jiang Cheng directly attached the Intelligent Puppet Talisman, which had gathered the Half-day Bamboo’s growth information, onto the motionless Gold-Iron Wood pot next to it.

But half a day later, there was no movement at all in the Gold-Iron Wood pot.

“Why isn’t it growing? Could it be a failure?” Jiang Cheng pondered.

Since planting requires abundant sunlight, both pots were placed on Liu Qing’s balcony.

They were essentially under Liu Qing’s watchful eye as they grew.

“Jiang Cheng.”

Liu Qing squatted next to the Gold-Iron Wood pot and pointed at the center of the pot.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s trying hard,” Liu Qing said.

Trying hard?

Jiang Cheng also squatted down and looked at the center of the pot.

After thinking, Jiang Cheng used his hands to clear away the soil covering the Gold-Iron Wood seed.

He saw a seed that had germinated.

However, judging by the state of this seed, it would probably take several days to break through the soil.

“Could it be that this Gold-Iron Wood is already growing fast enough, but due to the different species, it cannot break through the soil in half a day like bamboo?”

Jiang Cheng felt his conjecture was very likely.

Because the essence of autonomy is self-regulation, not imitation.

The Gold-Iron Wood, even if autonomous, cannot transform itself into Half-day Bamboo that shoots up in half a day, and grows to the size of a small bamboo in a day!

The Plant Autonomy Talisman is an Autonomy Talisman, not a transformation talisman.

As long as this Gold-Iron Wood grows faster than other Gold-Iron Wood, his experiment should be considered a success.

Without any hesitation, Jiang Cheng immediately went to a nearby library and researched information on Gold-Iron Wood.

After Gold-Iron Wood seeds are sown in the soil, under suitable climate and soil conditions, they usually take about half a month to germinate and roughly one month to break through the soil.

Jiang Cheng recalled the germinated Gold-Iron Wood seed he saw and compared it with pictures in books.

Based on the state of the germinated Gold-Iron Wood seed, his Plant Autonomy Talisman could accelerate the growth of Gold-Iron Wood by 5 to 10 times.

“`

If a Blood Orange Tree typically requires one year from planting to bear fruit, then with the use of a Plant Autonomy Talisman during its first six months of growth, the period could be shortened by at least 5 to 10 times.

That is to say, the fruiting time could be reduced from one year to seven months.

This represents a reduction of approximately forty percent in growth time!

However, considering the use of talismans on the tree similar to applying pesticides, it would increase the cost of the Blood Orange Fruit.

So, if the Autonomy Talisman only shortens the growth period by four months, the cost savings from using the talisman may not be lower than not using it at all.

Such an outcome would be putting the cart before the horse.

Jiang Cheng initially wanted to use the talisman to reduce costs, but as a result, the costs have escalated instead.

That won’t do, no, the Autonomy Talisman must be further optimized!

Five to ten times is definitely not the limit of the Autonomy Talisman!

If the growth period can be accelerated, then the flowering period should be too, as well as the fruiting period.

And since Half-day Bamboo is not the fastest growing plant, if the information from even faster-growing plants can be gathered, couldn’t the five to ten times be increased to ten to twenty times?

Jiang Cheng pondered, and it seemed entirely possible.

Compared to those monsters that take tens of thousands of years to reach the Mahayana Realm, Liu Qing reached it in just two thousand years.

If Liu Qing could shorten the cultivation time by more than a dozen times, there should be no problem doing the same with plants.

That shouldn’t be too much to ask, right?

Jiang Cheng thought.

So, the problem now before Jiang Cheng was how to obtain a vast amount of plant information, so that the Autonomy Talisman could draw on the strengths of various plants, converging them on the Blood Orange Tree.

Jiang Cheng recalled what Shen Menghan had said.

“Lotus University has a Spiritual Planting Department, right? Usually, there would be a Spirit Plant Garden. Otherwise, how would they experiment and complete their assignments?”

Jiang Cheng took out a Communication Talisman and contacted his “little padded coat.”

“Hello? Yue…”

The next morning, Jiang Cheng, Yue Linger, and a female cultivator from the Spiritual Planting Department arrived together at the Lotus University Spirit Plant Garden.

Since it was a garden shared by the entire department, the Lotus University Spirit Plant Garden covered a vast area of several hundred acres.

The garden contained plots of various soil types, to mimic the growth soils of different spirit plants.

There were also facilities such as plastic greenhouses to alter temperature and humidity, simulating the growth environments of different climate spirit plants.

One could only say that Lotus University indeed targeted immortals, at least in terms of hardware facilities, they were fully equipped.

“Junior brother, you may observe these plants, but do not touch them. Better yet, don’t touch any of them at all. Moreover, that area over there…”

Jiang Cheng followed the pointing direction of the Spiritual Planting Department senior sister.

It was an area separated from the rest of the Spirit Plant Garden by a transparent glass wall.

The variety of plants within were growing quite lushly.

“That area is a special plot solely for our department head’s use. Normally, no one is allowed to approach it. It’s best for you to stay away from there,” the senior sister from the Spiritual Planting Department said.

Jiang Cheng always liked to abide by the rules; since the senior sister said not to go there, he would certainly co-operate with her.

“Don’t worry, we won’t go there.”

“Good, then you can look around here. I’ll be going now. Remember, don’t touch any of these spirit plants.”

“No problem. Yue, let us begin sampling,” Jiang Cheng said to Yue Linger.

The two of them, holding several Translation Talismans and Autonomy Talismans, began collecting samples from the plants they had previously taken an interest in.

Since sampling was a lengthy process, taking at least half a day or more, Jiang Cheng and Yue Linger did not continue to stay in the Spirit Plant Garden after setting up the talismans; they could just come back the next day to retrieve the talismans.

As night fell, the vast Spirit Plant Garden quieted down.

However, within the silent glass wall, there was a sound of plants being dug out of the soil.

An unremarkable Foxtail Grass pulled itself out of the ground.