Banbu was cautious, carefully cutting all the muscles around the seven-inch position of the Crimson Rattler before daring to flap its wings and fly away boldly.

Crouching carefully at a distance, Banbu waited patiently until it was sure the snake was truly dead before approaching to continue cutting the corpse.

Cutting up the snake meat and carrying it back to the nest for storage, Banbu made two trips back and forth. Realizing the crisis was not yet resolved, it temporarily set aside the task to busy itself with finding the scent glands of the Refined Chrysanthemum Elephant and rearranging the defensive perimeter against odors.

Food wasn't the primary concern; it was the crucially ripening seeds of the Life-Force Grass.

The aura emitted when the Life-Force Fruit was about to ripen was particularly intense, releasing a uniquely enticing aroma.

Banbu wasn't sure if the stench of the Refined Chrysanthemum Elephant could mask the aroma of the Life-Force Fruit, but it was better to try than to sit idly by.

If the Stone-Striped Cat could be attracted, then it was highly likely that other large animals could be lured by the scent as well. Next time, it might not be so lucky to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

After setting up the defense perimeter, Banbu harvested the four mature seeds produced by the Life-Force Grass and temporarily stored them in the warehouse.

Only then did it proceed to cut up and transport the carcass of the Crimson Rattler back and forth.

The scent of blood attracted two colonies of Big-Head Harvest Ants nearby. They abandoned their work of harvesting Life-Force Grass seeds in the fields and lined up in long rows, tirelessly cutting and transporting the meat.

Big-Head Harvest Ants also enjoyed eating meat. The protein-rich diet could accelerate the queen's egg-laying and the growth of the ant colony's larvae, making the newly born worker ants stronger.

Banbu didn't drive them away. Such a large Crimson Rattler, with a Stone-Striped Cat hidden inside its belly, was simply too much food to consume, and the dry storage room couldn't accommodate so much.

Besides cutting meat, transporting, and air-drying, another task emerged: digging into the rocks to expand the dry storage room. After reaching Level 4, with a slightly increased body size and appetite, Banbu planned to take this opportunity to store more food for the winter, ensuring it wouldn't have to worry about food for a long time to come.

Once the Life-Force Fruit detached from the mother plant, if not properly preserved, the internal life force would gradually dissipate. Life-Force Grass seeds, protected by a shell, would last much longer than the soft-skinned and juicy raspberry fruits. It was difficult to determine exactly how long they could be preserved.

Busy until noon, Banbu finally rested, having eaten and drunk its fill, and took out a seed to try swallowing.

The Life-Force Grass seed indeed enhanced cellular activity, but it had significant differences compared to the raspberry fruits it had tried before. While raspberry fruits enhanced cell vitality, Life-Force Grass seeds had this effect as well, but they also had an additional enhancement effect on cell proliferation rate, albeit faint, which Banbu couldn't discern specifically.

It took about half a day for Banbu to digest one seed, during which it had to eat multiple times to replenish nutrients and energy.

It could swallow two seeds a day; any more and the body would have difficulty bearing it, with diminishing effects and potential damage to the cells.

...

On the second day after killing the Crimson Rattler, the Life-Force Grass seeds condensed by the Life-Force Grass began to mature rapidly, with 11 seeds ripening at once. Judging from the trend, all seeds would likely be mature in another two days.

Banbu couldn't eat so many in a short time, so it followed the example of the Big-Head Harvest Ants. Every morning, when the dew dried under the sun, it would take out the mature seeds for drying in the sun. In the late afternoon, it would bring them back into the nest for storage.

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After repeated drying for two to three days, they would be completely dried.

Only dried seeds could be stored for a longer time.

...

It seemed that the scent of the Refined Chrysanthemum Elephant had worked well, and all Life-Force Grass seeds matured and were harvested and dried successfully.

Banbu and the Big-Head Harvest Ants also successfully cut the bodies of the Crimson Rattler and the Stone-Striped Cat into two sets of bones, emptying all edible meat. During this process, they weren't harassed by any large predatory animals.

With a warehouse full of dried meat and Life-Force Grass seeds that could significantly enhance cellular activity, Banbu could probably pass this winter comfortably.

Adding to this stroke of luck was the ripe raspberries on the mountains, the legacy of the Red Cockroach Tribe warrior who once sheltered Banbu.

The journey was long and dangerous, not easy to make round trip, so Banbu planned to temporarily reside in the mountains, consume all the raspberries on site, and then return.

To be on the safe side, before leaving, it blocked the passage with mud and sealed the nest entrance with stones to prevent it from being discovered and occupied by other insects or burrowing animals like snakes and rodents.

Life-Force Grass, after the seeds mature and are harvested, begins to yellow. It's the natural growth cycle of Life-Force Grass: thriving in spring and summer, harvesting in autumn and dying in winter. Banbu had no way to change this.

Life-Force Grass, absorbing life force for growth and genetic evolution, is stronger than ordinary Life-Force Grass. Banbu could only hope that its rhizomes could survive the winter and sprout again next spring.

Thinking of wasting a chance to nurture Life-Force Grass seeds, only harvesting 32 seeds, Banbu couldn't help but feel regretful.

To prevent this tragedy from happening again, Banbu's purpose for this trip was also to collect as many plant seeds as possible in the mountains for future evolution.

Stockpiling, for use in future evolutions.

...

From being just an ordinary cockroach when it left, Banbu was now a Level 4 junior warrior, and a sense of pride washed over it, akin to returning home in glory.

As a Level 4 junior warrior, with considerable combat power, Banbu no longer feared small animals like snakes, rats, or birds. It chose to set off in the evening, fearing it might attract large animals, especially aerial predators, so it dared not fly conspicuously, but instead ran close to the ground.

By dawn, the rolling mountains appeared in view, and problems arose one after another: Banbu had forgotten to carefully identify the terrain when it left. Half a year had passed, and some details were now fuzzy; it couldn't remember exactly which mountain peak it was.

It was troublesome. The mountains weren't high, but they were long and undulating, with no end in sight left or right.

"One, two, three, four, five... The general direction shouldn't be wrong. It must be one of these five mountain peaks. I'll just search around nearby," Banbu muttered to itself, proceeding up the mountain more cautiously.

On the mountains, the coverage of the Side Pine exceeded

30%. Each Side Pine seed contained several usable pine nuts, making it the best choice for nurturing Life-Force Grass.

Apart from the Side Pine, Banbu found three other plants that were in season and edible: raspberries, prickly pears, and mountain persimmons.

Raspberries and Side Pines were must-have choices for nurturing Life-Force Grass.

The seeds of mountain persimmons were excessively large, impossible to fit in the seed capsule. Banbu felt helpless about this.

The seeds of prickly pears were slightly larger, and Banbu estimated that when it advanced to Level 7 or 8, and the seed capsules grew with its body size, they should be able to contain the seeds. However, prickly pears were bushes with limited development prospects, and their fruits were sour and of poor taste, so they were not a good choice and could only serve as a backup when no other options were available.

In the ancestral memories, there were descriptions of over ten thousand edible plants on the entire planet, with the Flying Fire Cockroach Tribe ruling over a territory with over a thousand species. However, aside from the most common thirty or so species, the rest were rare and hard to find, requiring one's own adventure to locate them.

Banbu wandered around the mountains, pondering and deliberating. It found that good tree species were rare and uncommon, while the most common ones were not very good. Therefore, it decided to collect more Side Pine seeds. If that wasn't possible, then it would nurture more Side Pine Life-Force Grass.

Among the various plants in the mountains, Side Pines accounted for the largest number, directly proving the robust survival ability of this tree species. Planting it was easy, as it could survive without much effort or care.

Banbu also encountered a puzzling problem: despite half a year passing since it left, the number of cockroaches that lost their shelter in the mountains didn't seem to decrease. As dawn approached, one could still see cockroaches of all sizes crawling around.

In contrast, predatory animals like snakes and rodents were nowhere to be seen.

"Could it be..." Banbu suddenly thought of two possible explanations.

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