The negotiation table.

There was an intense atmosphere in the room as they exchanged negotiation requests.

Part of the negotiation involved mutual testing between the two parties as they sat at the negotiation table.

Compared to the humans who had vast knowledge, Zhu Ling was still a newbie, but he was aware of the human habit of beating around the bush.

Zhu Ling smiled with satisfaction at the hint of consternation that “naturally flowed” from Su Mo’s face. He internally rejoiced that he had pulled off a comeback.

At the same time, he had fear in his heart.

An ordinary human being who was a nobody in the Heavenly Court and seemed to pose no threat had such competence.

If the person who came today had been the king of humans, Su Mo then the agreement would be more difficult to settle. He would be at an immeasurable disadvantage in negotiations with Su Mo.

“Are you not willing to join me?”

“Of course, I’m overjoyed! It’s an honor to be invited by Lord Zhu Ling.” Su Mo stood up with an awkward expression while those behind him, including Sun Di, tried to suppress their laughter and wore expressions like they were constipated.

Su Mo was thrilled in his heart. He quickly changed the subject and followed Zhu Ling.

Sometimes things go more successfully when you are not eager and trying hard.

The most important task for the team was to gain useful information and convince a joint attack on the dwarves’ Black Rock Base Camp.

It was unexpected that they could achieve their tasks quickly before really getting started. Everything had gone unbelievably smooth.

Zhu Ling stepped out of the room ahead of everyone, and Zhu Xia, who waited outside, quickly greeted them passionately.

“Huh? My lord, is the discussion over?”

Zhu Ling snorted and waved his branches.

“No, I will take the guests to appreciate the treasures of the ents. You can arrange for the chefs to prepare lunch, and I’ll show the guests around!”

Zhu Ling would be embarrassed if others found out he had been on the losing end during the whole negotiation. He was relieved after seeing Zhu Xia following his orders and left.

Afterward, he walked past the small hut and began to head further inside Thousand Trees King City with a group of five.

Unlike the walls outside, you could see vines spreading everywhere from the ground, gently swaying their tendrils.

Seeing the group approach, the vines affectionately touched Zhu Ling and dispersed as if they were soldiers given an order to make way for everyone to pass.

“This is the first line of defense of our city, the guard vines. Its existence protects us against enemies sneaking into the city while we’re asleep at night.

“The growth rate of these vines is also very impressive. We have cultivated three varieties at present. In addition to the guard vines, we have numbing vines and healing vines.

“Although the numbing vines do not have strong attack powers, even a powerful enemy that gets entangled will have a hard time with it. The healing vine can be crushed and applied to wounds to heal them.”

Zhu Ling puffed his chest proudly and began to introduce the sales method of the vines scattered everywhere like a salesperson.

“Currently, there are no restrictions on sales of the finished product to the public, but the breeding method of these vines is kept a secret for the time being. We’re willing to sell all three types at favorable prices if the Heavenly Court needs them.

“One heavenly fruit in exchange for 50 square meters of guard vines, or 30 meters of numbing vines and 5 square meters of healing vines!”

The exchange terms that Zhu Ling had proposed were not too high.

‘It only cost 50 ml of psychic energy water to create one piece of heavenly fruit. We would only need one day’s worth of water from the well to exchange enough vines to upgrade the basin’s defenses.’

“Hmm? What if I was able to purchase it and create more varieties?” Su Mo asked curiously after giving it a thought.

“Ha!! Don’t even think about it. Our vines are not ordinary plants like the ones you humans are familiar with. How would you create new varieties without even knowing the breeding method? Besides, I’ve heard of the hybridization methods used by humans, and it may have a certain effect on plants without souls, but it is useless to us!

“Do you have any idea what flows through our branches? Do you know where the soul of our kind is stored? Do you know much it would cost to cultivate a new plant? Do you know…”

“Does that include Lord Zhu Ling’s Golden Thread Spirea?”

“Uh…”

Zhu Ling finally found an opportunity to belittle them, criticize the human’s plant mutation techniques, and show his superiority as a plant of higher intelligence.

His expression suddenly dimmed, and he choked on his unfinished words in the next second after hearing Su Mo’s words.

“Don’t worry, Lord Zhu Ling. It’s just a routine inquiry that our Lord asked of us. Who knows whether things will work out or not? It’s because we’ve never been in contact with such magical plants!”

After suddenly being unnecessarily comforted, Zhu Ling opened his mouth but could not say anything when he saw Su Mo lower his head and curiously touch the vines on the ground.

The ents of ancient times did indeed love peace.

However, that was a slogan that they started claiming after taking over a whole planet.

Before they dominated the planet, the ents fought bloody battles and used force to gain dominance over other powerful plants.

This was evident because they chose to root their territory in the New World.

They did not have modest ambitions, and their goal was nothing less than the other foreign races in the New World.

Unfortunately, this was the reason for their awkward situation.

They could no longer use force to overpower and suppress the current neighboring races. They knew they had to start using their brains, which made them increasingly helpless.

The ancient ents’ various characteristics did not give them the advantage like the dwarfs, who relied on their numbers to expand their territory.

They did not have the agility of the Demon clan either, who could sneak into different tribes to acquire information and resources for their territory.

They were also incapable of arrogantly starting a war against other territories like the Light Empire.

The ents’ combat power was extraordinary but only when compared to other plants.

Their simple and ordinary physical attacks, such as smashing, throwing, and slapping, were ineffective against foreign races that they had never encountered before.

In addition, they were tall and became easy targets for enemies.

Even their defenses were slightly similar to humans, and once their last defense line was “broken”, they could only wait for death.

Zhu Ling had wanted to improve this more than once and had clear plans during his two months in the New World.

He planned to lay low in their early stages to quickly absorb the skills of other races and use them on their primary combat tool, the companion plants.

The moment they cultivated a bunch of companion plants that have adapted to the current environment, they would reveal their fangs and unleash aggressive attacks on the other races.

Ideas were often beautiful until reality slap[ed them in the face.

The ents had done their best and even absorbed other races, including humans, into their territory to research ways to improve.

Even so, the mutation and improvement of the companion plants were really poor.

‘Perhaps…’

Zhu Ling thought to himself as he continued to walk forward without noticing that his hostility toward them had slowly disappeared.

His tone softened as he looked at the five people following him with curious expressions.

After a while, they passed through a door made of vines.

“My honored guests, you are about to enter our massive plantation. Please do not disappear from my field of vision after entering to avoid any misunderstanding.

“Also, I’ll inform you which plants can be touched and which can’t be touched to avoid any accidents,” Zhu Ling explained.

He waved his branches, greeted the two ents guarding the door, and motioned for them to step back. Then, he walked inside before everyone.

At first glance, the ents’ plantation looked slightly similar to the artificial greenhouses on Earth. Once inside the plantation, Zhu Ling did not care to hide information and pointed at the yellowish film in the sky, introducing it to the group.

“The film may look like a mature plant, but it’s actually formed by the spores secreted by a plant and bonded together.

“Its role is very simple. It adjusts the temperature and humidity in the plantation to prevent the plants inside from being affected by extreme weather.”

“Oh? This thing can maintain the temperature in such a large area?” Su Mo took two steps forward.

“I understand your doubts. According to the humans’ temperature measurement of -30 degrees, it can provide a certain degree of thermal insulation to keep the temperature above 0 degrees. Anything below that temperature, and it would only be able to rise about 10 degrees at most to maintain the heat inside.

“This thing is not valuable. We can give it to you for free if you need it to protect agricultural lands, and you’ll just have to pay for the manufacturing process.”

Su Mo was taken aback by Zhu Ling’s noticeable change in attitude. He showed a friendly smile and lowered his head to observe the other interesting plants.

The sudden change in Zhu Ling’s attitude was both expected and unexpected at the same time.

Su Mo had already completely grasped the current constraints of the ents and what Zhu Ling needed after the attribute analysis on him.

Compared to the companion mutant plants, the heavenly fruit was nothing as they desperately needed to turn their situation around.

After all, the former could be applied to the entire ent race while the latter could only be used for high-end combat power. Zhu Ling was smart in weighing out the importance of both items.

Su Mo never expected Zhu Ling to understand quickly and lower himself to them.

He did not even hesitate to show the urgency of the ents’ current situation.

‘The ents must have worked very hard during this period but had minimal results. They’re obviously worried,” Su Mo concluded.

He glanced at Zhu Ling, who was chatting not far away, and the thought suddenly surfaced in his mind.

Tiem passed quickly during the visit.

The plantation was filled with many plants, but practical ones were very few since the ancient ents never thought that one day they’d be doing business with other races.

Su Mo sifted through a few plants and remembered three important plants on the way back with Zhu Ling.

The first one was the land flower that they saw before, which could upgrade the fertility of the land.

It would significantly reduce the workload of the villagers to tend the lands and make planting crops much easier if they could grow these plants in large areas of the basin.

At the same time, it could expand their agriculture fields.

The second was a flower that could speed up the growth of plants, the rafflesia.

According to Zhu Ling, this flower species could significantly speed up plants’ growth rates and shorten the growing period.

Plant cultivation took several years per cycle, and the rafflesia was a must-have item.

Additionally, Zhu Ling also claimed that this flower could speed up the growth rate of rice and wheat, which was an apparent attempt to tempt the basin.

The third plant was a spore plant that seemed useless, but in Su Mo’s eyes, this plant had extremely high transaction value.

When the spore plant reached maturity, it could split into tens of thousands of fruits that were the size of a third of a finger.

As the name suggested, the role of this fruit was flavor!

Ten thousand fruits equaled ten thousand flavors.

Zhu Ling explained that they had made an effort to get rid of some unpalatable flavors and keep only the more delicious ones, but they had made very little progress.

After so many years, the genetic sequence structure of the flavor spore was unpredictable.

It was like opening a blind box when using the flavor spore. Out of ten tries, there would only be one that could be added into meals or integrated into other plants.

“We’ve arrived. This is the cafeteria that will serve you food!

“We hope you don’t mind the simple meals we’ve prepared!”

They followed Zhu Ling’s lead and arrived at a wooden house in the inner city.

Do as the locals do.

As soon as Su Mo walked into the house, he could smell the familiar aroma of Chinese stir-fried food.

There were a few humans who were still dining in the room. They cast their gazes over curiously when they saw an unknown group of people entering.

“Everyone, quickly finish up and leave. I’d like to serve our honored guests!”

Zhu Ling quickly picked up the remaining dishes without giving Su Mo a chance to speak and chased everyone away.

Everyone was seated after Zhu Ling placed down the dishes.

There were a lot of dishes prepared on the dining table and it was evidently prepared by more than two people.

The table was filled with dishes of meat, a few plates of green vegetables, and a large bowl of rice steamed buns.

The ents had done their homework and put a lot of effort into this meal.

“Lord Zhu Ling, thank you for your hospitality!”

Su Mo clasped his hands together and thanked him after using the system to confirm that the dishes were not poisoned.

Zhu Ling was the second foreign race lord that Su Mo had met in the New World.

Compared with Shi Ren of the Demon clan, Zhu Ling was much wiser and had powerful skills.

Zhu Lin was a territory lord who could disregard his position and lower himself because he sincerely prioritized the people of his territory.

Su Mo admired him from the bottom of his heart.

“Hurry and dig in! The food won’t be delicious when it’s cold. We’ll continue discussing the details after you all are done with the meal.”

Zhu Ling let out a relieved smile after seeing the kindness radiating from Su Mo and stretched out a branch to grab a wine jug.

At this point, Su Mo was ready to go into details with Zhu Ling.

He moved his chopsticks first. The other four villagers quickly understood his intentions and began to feast.

The ents’ chef naturally could not compete with the flavorful food of the five-star chefs in the basin, but with some unique seasoning and extremely fresh vegetables, even Su Mo could not resist devouring the meal.

Sun Di devoured the last bowl of bullfrog soup, and all the bowls and plates were thoroughly emptied. Zhu Ling tapped on the floor with a smile on his face, and the ent waiting at the entrance came to clean up.

Seconds later, the dining table was clean again, and only three jugs of rice wine were left on the table.

“I know that the people of Huaxia like to discuss things over some wine. Let’s discuss the details of our cooperation. I’m assuming Lord Su Mo has given you authority, right?”

Zhu Ling offered a cup of wine and glanced toward them with a smile.

Strangely enough, he was not looking at Sun Di, who was seated in the middle, but Su Mo, who was sitting beside him.

Obviously, he had discovered that Su Mo was the only one in the entire team that could make decisions.

He had a unique temperament, and the way he caught people’s attention while walking and his calmness when exchanging conversations confirmed Zhu Ling’s judgment time and again.

“Yes, I’ve been given a bit of authority, but I’d have to see Lord Zhu Ling’s sincerity in establishing this alliance!”

Su Mo was not surprised that his almost non-existent disguise was seen through and gently shook his head.

He picked up the cup in front of him and gulped down the wine.

No one would willingly allow others to gain power within their proximity.

In the past, Su Mo wanted to use these allies of the basin as shields.

Now, after observing the emptiness within the ents and their social structure… his heart could not contain the increasing…

Wild ambitions!