Celestial Beast Taming

Fu Hongning said this mutated Devouring Ant Queen was sent over by a small merchant guild.

A small merchant guild wouldn’t have the resources to cultivate an Ant Swarm.

Every Ant Swarm acts according to the individual will of its Ant Queen.

When Ant Swarms built around different Ant Queens encounter each other, war breaks out immediately.

Cultivating multiple Ant Swarms requires a huge amount of territory, manpower, and resources.

If a small merchant guild can’t even afford to cultivate an Ant Swarm, it’s even more unlikely they would specially cultivate a Devouring Ant Queen.

Therefore, this mutated Devouring Ant Queen must have appeared by chance.

Zhong Yi immediately used All Things Exploration to inspect the mutated Devouring Ant Queen that had so intrigued the Soul-Controlling Flower.

[Guardian Beast Name]: Fertility Ant Queen

[Guardian Beast Species]: Ant-Eating Insect Species/Ant-devouring Ants

[Guardian Beast Level]: Mortal Beast Level (1/10)

[Guardian Beast Type]: Mysterious Element

[Guardian Beast Quality]: None

Skills:

[All Things Ant-Turn]: It lacks the ability to reproduce on its own. After devouring other Creatures, it can refine and modify their genes. Without changing the genetic level of the devoured creature, it combines its own genes with the creature’s to birth an Ant Successor. The strength of the resulting Ant Successor is dependent on the target’s strength before being devoured and is unrelated to its own strength.

Only after inspecting it did Zhong Yi realize the Devouring Ant Queen had mutated into a creature called the Fertility Ant Queen.

Although Zhong Yi had compiled all the data for the entire game, his brain wasn’t a hard drive.

It was impossible for him to have memorized the data of every Guardian Beast he had ever written.

A Devouring Ant Queen’s Basic Skills couldn’t have been that impressive, or else Zhong Yi would have had a stronger impression of it.

It seemed no player in the game had ever raised a Devouring Ant Queen to a high Level either.

The more Zhong Yi pondered the Fertility Ant Queen’s Basic Skill, All Things Ant-Turn, the more shocked he became.

The Fertility Ant Queen was unlike common ant queens, such as the Devouring Ant Queen, which all possess powerful reproductive abilities and can create vast Ant Swarms by laying eggs.

The Fertility Ant Queen had lost the ability to hatch an Ant Swarm by laying eggs on its own. However, this didn’t mean it couldn’t build its own Ant Swarm.

The Fertility Ant Queen’s method of building an Ant Swarm was by devouring other Creatures to obtain their genes.

It used the genes of other lifeforms as a base, combined them with its own Ant Race genes, and transformed the devoured creatures into members of the Ant Race through a process of rebirth.

Moreover, the transformed Ant Race members possessed the same strength the target had before being devoured.

This Ability was tantamount to changing the target’s species, allowing it to continue existing in the world in a new form.

Through his inspection, Zhong Yi learned that there was a strict requirement for the Fertility Ant Queen to birth an Ant Successor via All Things Ant-Turn.

Namely, the target had to remain alive during the devouring process; it could not die.

Otherwise, even if an Ant Successor was birthed, it would not be able to hatch properly.

If the devoured target was physically incomplete, the strength of the resulting Ant Successor would decrease proportionally to the extent of the damage.

’However, in my opinion, these aren’t significant drawbacks.’

’If you could just take the corpse of a powerful expert, feed it to the Fertility Ant Queen, and have it hatch another expert of the same caliber, then this thing would be even more powerful than an Order Beast wielding Rule Authority!’

’In fact, even with all these restrictions, the Fertility Ant Queen is like an Order Beast that possesses a special Rule of procreation.’

Seeing that Zhong Yi’s gaze remained fixed on the mutated Devouring Ant Queen, Fu Hongning continued his introduction.

"Sir, the Devouring Ant Queen’s Basic Skill is called Devouring Transformation. It allows it to implant the genes of a devoured target into its own Ant Successor."

"It sounds like a very powerful Skill, but in reality, the genes the Devouring Ant Queen devours have very little effect on the Ant Successor."

"Those small-bodied Ant Successors have reasonably sharp teeth, but their Elemental Resistance is extremely poor."

"When faced with a Guardian Beast that can manipulate Elements in battle, they don’t even have a chance to fight back."

At this point, Fu Hongning lowered his voice.

"Sir, I heard that before this mutated Devouring Ant Queen was sent here, it had been refusing to eat for nearly half a year."

"Unlike a normal Ant Queen, it doesn’t seem interested in flesh and blood. It hasn’t even laid a single viable egg."

"This mutated Devouring Ant Queen most likely has some sort of defect. Not only are the eggs it lays unable to hatch, but they also rot after a short time."

"An Ant Queen that can’t form an Ant Swarm through reproduction... I don’t think there’s any point in raising it."

"You see, for an Exotic Beast like this that can produce a whole colony, no one has bought it even at the buyout price of 17 million. Most likely, others have heard the rumors too."

Hearing this, Zhong Yi didn’t say much. He simply reached out and tore off the Fertility Ant Queen’s tag.

’Thank goodness those rumors got out!’ he thought with relief. ’Otherwise, I might have missed my chance with this Fertility Ant Queen!’

"An Ant Queen whose body size doubled after mutation is certainly rare. I’m planning to buy it and have the Creators under me study it."

From his newfound understanding of the Fertility Ant Queen’s Basic Skill, All Things Ant-Turn, Zhong Yi knew it could only produce an Ant Successor by eating live food.

Naturally, the Fertility Ant Queen wouldn’t be interested in being fed the corpses of other creatures.

It would only occasionally eat a corpse just to stay alive.

’No wonder this Fertility Ant Queen looks so sickly and can’t even be bothered to move.’

’It must have been suffering ever since it mutated.’

Zhong Yi tore off the mutated Devouring Ant Queen’s tag, preparing to purchase it at the buyout price.

Fu Hongning just figured Zhong Yi was being rich and whimsical.