Chapter 69: Chapter 67: The 5 Supreme Butterfly Bloodlines
The Shattered Blade Butterfly was an extremely basic Butterfly Guardian Beast. Although this Gold Attribute Guardian Beast was indeed valiant in battle, capable of inflicting considerable group damage with its Unsheathing Skill, its nature as a melee unit made its wings extremely vulnerable to damage.
Once its wings were damaged, it wasn’t as severe as a severed limb on other Guardian Beasts—an injury to the Origin that is difficult to heal—but it still required several months of recovery. If the wing damage was severe, it wasn’t unheard of for recovery to take a year or two.
During this period, although the Shattered Blade Butterfly could still fight, its combat performance and strength were greatly diminished.
The Blade Butterfly had the same problem. To put it bluntly, the Blade Butterfly was just an extremely enhanced version of the Shattered Blade Butterfly.
However, once a Blade Butterfly evolved into a Blade Princess Butterfly, its value underwent a complete transformation.
The Blade Princess Butterfly was a Guardian Beast that stood among the upper echelons of the Butterfly Guardian Beast hierarchy.
For a Blade Butterfly to evolve into a Blade Princess Butterfly, it required induction using many rare metal materials, as well as a bottle of Blue Edge Potion that severely tested the abilities of a Three-finger Creator.
These rare Metal Spiritual Materials included Mithril, produced by Silver-Eating Insects consuming Silver Ore, and Ten Thousand Blades Tungsten Steel.
The Mithril produced by Silver-Eating Insects could still be bought on the market, but Ten Thousand Blades Tungsten Steel was only found in Second Level or higher Earth Secret Realms, and its yield was extremely low.
An ordinary Three-finger Creator had a very low probability of successfully concocting a Blue Edge Potion. Only a Three-finger High Tier Creator could achieve a fifty percent success rate.
The ingredients for the Blue Edge Potion were even more expensive. Among them was the flower of the Blue Demon Needle Palm, a rare plant-type Guardian Beast that takes over a decade to bloom, and each flower was extremely hard to find.
It could be said that the cost of evolving a Blade Butterfly into a Blade Princess Butterfly far exceeded that of other Extraordinary Tier Butterfly Guardian Beasts.
Among Extraordinary Tier Butterfly Guardian Beasts, if a Blade Princess Butterfly was sold on the open market, its price was often more than fifteen times that of an ordinary Butterfly Guardian Beast, even if its Skills and Exclusive Traits weren’t very good.
From the sound of Zhong Yi’s words, it seemed he planned to eventually replace all of Zhong Ling’s Shattered Blade Butterflies with Blade Princess Butterflies.
At the Extraordinary Tier, the Blade Princess Butterfly was a powerful combatant due to its exceptional regenerative abilities. However, there were other, cheaper Butterfly Guardian Beasts that could match it in terms of power and endurance.
Zhong Yi’s desire to replace all of Zhong Ling’s Shattered Blade Butterflies with Blade Princess Butterflies likely meant he had further plans to upgrade them into Blade Queen Butterflies.
The Blade Queen Butterfly was one of the five supreme Bloodlines among Butterfly Guardian Beasts, with limitless future potential.
According to rumor, one of the Blade Queen Butterfly’s two evolution branches, the Shattered Sky Empress Butterfly, could cleave mountains and tear open the void with a flap of its wings.
With Zhao Kai’s current ability as a Four-finger Peak Creator, evolving a Blade Princess Butterfly into a Blade Queen Butterfly was still achievable.
But evolving a Blade Queen Butterfly into a Shattered Sky Empress Butterfly would be asking too much of him.
"Young Master, you re-earned your Four-finger Creator badge today. Tomorrow, I was thinking of going to the Craftsmen Union to recruit a few one-finger and two-finger Creators."
"With them, we can generate a lot of productivity. That way, many of the Guardian Beasts in the shop can have their Quality improved before being sold."
Zhao Kai spoke with great earnestness. On one hand, he was genuinely considering Zhong Yi’s interests.
On the other, Zhao Kai, who had been a lone wolf his entire life and never even taken on an apprentice, was now thinking of accepting disciples.
Hearing this, Zhong Yi pondered for a moment before replying in a serious tone.
"Uncle Kai, even if you hadn’t brought this up tonight, I was planning to talk to you about recruiting some apprentices."
"However, I don’t want you to recruit apprentices who can leave at any time, but Creators who will serve me permanently."
Ever since coming to this world, Zhong Yi had wanted to build his own faction.
And when building a faction, besides High Tier combat power, the core component was Creators.
In a way, Creators represented productivity and were the economic pillars of a faction.
This was especially true when a faction was in its developmental stage!
’These Craftsman Apprentices that Zhao Kai plans to recruit can also generate productivity, but they can’t be controlled and can leave at any time.’
’Creators who work by my side for a long time will inevitably learn some of my secrets.’
’I can’t rest easy letting them leave. Therefore, the most fundamental condition for recruiting Craftsman Apprentices must be a guarantee that they will serve the faction I’m building, permanently.’
Zhao Kai was slightly stunned by these words, but he quickly understood Zhong Yi’s intentions.
’If anyone else had said this to him, Zhao Kai would have thought them hopelessly naive.’
’But the one who said it was Zhong Yi, and Zhong Yi himself was a Healing-type Celestial Destiny Seeker.’
’Who in the world was more qualified to say such a thing than a Healing-type Celestial Destiny Seeker!?’
"Young Master, I understand what you mean. If we’re looking for Creators who will serve you long-term, we’ll need to understand the apprentices’ intentions and also investigate their backgrounds."
"Controlling Creators is much easier than controlling ordinary Guardian Beast Masters. I previously formed a Contract with a Soul-Sealed Jasmine."
"By weaving my Soul Power with the flowers of the Soul-Sealed Jasmine, I can form a special Soul Seal that the Soul-Sealed Jasmine can control."
"This Soul Seal, which acts on the soul, isn’t as controlling as the Insect Eggs you gave me, Young Master, but a Soul Seal interwoven with my Soul Power is very effective for controlling Creators."
"If I have the Soul-Sealed Jasmine detonate the Soul Seal, my Soul Power will contaminate the controlled Creator’s soul, causing them to lose fine control over their own soul and thus lose their function as a Creator."
"The effects caused by detonating a Soul Seal from a Soul-Sealed Jasmine are not considered soul trauma, and there’s no way to heal it."
"Even those Six-finger Creators use Soul-Sealed Jasmines to control their disciples."
"I don’t think any fool would be willing to betray you at the cost of their identity and Ability as a Creator."
Zhong Yi nodded at his words and said with a smile,
"Brother Zhao, as long as you have a way to control those Low Tier Creators, that’s great. I’ll leave this matter to you. I have full confidence in you."
"Now that I’ve become a Celestial Destiny Seeker, I can choose a residence in the Central District. I plan to close this Guardian Beast Shop on South Cross Street and move the shop to the Central District."
"The residence I’ve been allotted will be perfect as the new location for the Evolution Shop."
"I’ll choose the location for the residence tomorrow. You can just send the apprentices you recruit there directly."
Zhong Yi was someone who strove for stability and hated unexpected accidents.
But he wasn’t going to personally control every single Craftsman Apprentice Zhao Kai recruited. For one, the Soul-Catching Gu Mother couldn’t produce that many Insect Eggs.
Zhong Yi preferred to give the Soul-Catching Gu Mother’s Insect Eggs to people like Zhao Kai, who could create sufficient value.
Secondly, Zhong Yi was well aware that when managing a faction, it was impossible to do everything himself.
Since he already had control over Zhao Kai, he could confidently entrust many matters to him.
When Zhong Ling heard that Zhong Yi planned to close the Evolution Shop, a flash of loneliness and reluctance crossed her face.
But upon hearing that he intended to move the Evolution Shop to the Central District, her small face immediately lit up with excitement and anticipation.
The forlorn look, which hadn’t even been on her face for three seconds, was swept away completely.
As the saying goes, people strive to climb higher, just as water flows to lower ground.
Moving the Guardian Beast Shop from the border of the Upper and Lower City Districts to the Central District had always been the dream of Zhong Yi’s predecessor’s parents, and it was Zhong Ling’s and Zhong Chenghuai’s dream as well.
It was like someone who ran a small grocery store in an old residential complex suddenly moving their shop to a CBD skyscraper in the city center.
No matter how nostalgic that person was, they wouldn’t miss their old grocery store in the staff quarters.
When Zhao Kai heard that Zhong Yi was entrusting him with the entire matter of recruiting Creators, he was deeply grateful for the trust placed in him.
This gave Zhao Kai a brand new goal, aside from improving his own abilities as a Creator.
