Chapter 50: 50: The Giant Blue Honey
Inside the courtyard of the small two-story villa of Huating Fisheries Company, a bald man and his several subordinates stood in a row, each with a bruised nose and a swollen face. The bald man had it the worst, his head still wrapped in a bandage.
That day they were chased by hornets until they were scared out of their wits, and in the end, with no other choice, they all jumped into the lake to escape the calamity.
Even though they reacted fairly quickly and saved their own lives, they still suffered a great loss. The one who was most severely injured nearly died in the lake and was sent straight to the hospital for emergency care, barely hanging onto life.
On the way to the hospital, the bald man began to convulse in the ambulance and even lost control of his bladder and bowels.
According to the emergency doctor, they were lucky; being targeted by such a large swarm of hornets in the wild and still managing to save their lives was quite fortunate.
But saving their lives came at a cost. Mr. Zhou of the Huating Fisheries Company ended up paying over twenty thousand yuan in medical expenses for them at the hospital.
"Mr. Zhou, it's definitely that kid who sabotaged us! Once I've recovered, I'll take a few brothers and teach him a lesson!" the bald man said indignantly.
Zhou Jin, the boss of the fisheries company, was an old gangster. Back in the day, he had quite the reputation among the hooligans of Yangchuan City, until he was sentenced to twenty years for causing a fatal injury.
After his release, he realized the world had changed, that money is what truly matters now, and that just fighting and killing would eventually lead to obsolescence, so he gathered a group of brothers released from jail, contracted a section of the Huating Lake Reservoir in the east, and started a fish farming venture.
While it's true that plain fighting and killing were already outdated, his underlings were a group of fierce and ferocious cohorts. They dominated the fish market, and combined with the genuinely delicious fish raised in Huating Lake, they became very popular. In just a few years, Zhou Jin had already secured a large share of Yangchuan's fish market.
Hearing the bald man's complaint, Zhou Jin slightly frowned, "It's your own stupidity. You didn't know to avoid it when you saw the hornets coming; you deserved to be stung! Why didn't the hornets sting him?!"
The bald man huffed and did not speak. Strictly speaking, it seemed the incident couldn't really be blamed on that kid.
But no matter what, if it weren't for that kid's meddling, how would he have ended up stung so badly by the hornets!
Just thinking about how he lost control of his bladder and bowels in the ambulance, and how his brothers still teased him about it, the bald man couldn't help but seethe with anger!
"The two dogs are also missing; could they have been taken away by that kid?" said another gangster.
"If they're gone, they're gone, just buy two more!"
Zhou Jin waved his hand impatiently, interrupting the gangsters' complaints, his face darkening as he said seriously, "Let's put the hornet issue aside for now. Next month we are releasing the fry; I want all of you to focus and be vigilant! If anything goes wrong with the fish pond, I'll skin you alive!"
With a gangster history deeper than anyone present, and being their senior boss, Zhou Jin's stern look made all the underlings, including the bald man, dare not utter another word.
...
As Suming just entered the gate of the water pavilion, he smelled a faint sweet aroma wafting through the room.
A few cats, having a day off from work, idled at home. Right now, they were forming a small circle on the ground, looking up at the ceiling beam with eager eyes.
Wang Cai and Defu were also looking up, barking incessantly at the ceiling beam.
It was Er Gouzi's small nest on top of the ceiling beam; somehow he had offended this group of cats and dogs.
Buzz buzz buzz...
A swarm of bees, carrying a fist-sized mini beehive, flew down from the beam, slowly descending in front of Suming, with Er Gouzi following behind, circling the beehive in a frenzy.
The scent was coming from the beehive.
"Honey?"
Suming reached out and took the beehive, only to see that it was covered with tightly-packed small holes, with a layer of pale golden, sticky substance on it.
Honey doesn't actually have much of a scent before it is processed, but the honey in this small beehive emitted an incredibly sweet, heartwarming fragrance.
Er Gouzi loved honey the most. He circled the beehive eagerly, yet he didn't dare to snatch the food from Suming's hand, buzzing anxiously.
"Big brother, you're a hornet, not a fly. Can't you have some dignity? Stop buzzing all the time!" Suming glared at Er Gouzi, but still scooped out a little bit of honey with his pinky and stretched it towards him.
Er Gouzi swooped over to Suming's honey-covered finger in a flash, opened his mouth, and devoured the honey voraciously while fluttering his wings at the same time.
Suming watched with repulsion. The way this creature ate from his finger was just like a fly sitting on dung!
"Come on, what's seen must be shared!" Suming scooped out some honey from the beehive again and smeared a bit onto the mouths of the cats and wolf-dog brothers, causing the several pets to zealously lick their lips.
Wang Cai and Defu's saliva even dripped from the corners of their mouths to the ground, and these silly creatures actually bent down to lick the saliva that was flavored with honey.
"Is it really that delicious?"
Suming was slightly stunned. To his knowledge, the taste of unprocessed wild honey was quite plain and nothing to rave about. Some people even thought it had a weird taste.
Could there be something unusual about this honey?
He decided to try some himself.
Indeed, the taste was good, sweet, and deliciously fragrant, somewhat like a syrup.
Not only that, but after the honey entered his mouth, his spiritual power started to recover rapidly!
"Holy smokes, this is like the legendary 'Elixir'!"
Fearing he might be mistaken, Suming tried a little more honey, and his spiritual power indeed soared swiftly!
Based on this rate, a fist-sized beehive of honey would be enough to replenish his current spiritual power seven or eight times over!
This was definitely great news. With this treasure, he wouldn't need to wait each day for his spiritual power to recover slowly. If he ran out of spiritual power, eating some honey would replenish it!
This way, not only could he accelerate the progress of the work, but it would also benefit other aspects significantly. For example, if he carried some honey with him wherever he went in the future, he could sustain 'combat' for extended periods.
Amidst his excitement, Suming bought several well-known honey products from the local store and conducted experiments with each one.
In the end, he discovered that only the honey produced by the bees he had saved could enhance spiritual power, while other honey had no such effect, and in terms of taste, seemed to be inferior to the wild honey made by his bee colony.
Suming pondered for a moment. First, there was the Monkey Wine that could increase the upper limit of spiritual power, and now, the honey that could accelerate the recovery of spiritual power... There was no doubt that this was because the bees had come into contact with spiritual power and undergone some changes.
"Let's go and check on that group of bees on the back mountain!"