Chapter 283 Natural Adhesive Glue

..The great dragon is dead.

The variety of the poisonous bees was unknown, and no one cared what kind of bees they were. With a surge of martial aura, limbs flew everywhere. By the time the sun was about to set, the poisonous bees were almost all dead.

Even the bee hive had been cleaved open, and the bee queen inside was found and strangled on the spot.

Only a small number of poisonous bees flew away. Based on their behavior, they would likely linger around here for a few days, and only after confirming that the hive no longer existed would they finally leave.

"Master Marcus, remember to warn all the slaves that no one is allowed to enter this area."

"Understood, sir."

At that moment, Lassie suddenly shouted, "Sir, there’s honey in this hive!"

"Is that so? Let me see." Sir Liszt lifted his visor and looked into the broken section of the hive that Lassie had pried open. Sure enough, he saw golden honey exuding a faint, enticing sweetness.

He pried deeper and found white larvae cells inside some of the honeycombs.

These were bee pupae.

They were about the thickness of a finger and the length of a thumb, plump and well-formed.

Seeing these white pupae, Liszt almost drooled with anticipation. He had eaten fried bee pupae before; they were delicious, crispy, and savory. Moreover, bee pupae were an excellent health supplement, rich in protein, low in fat, and packed with various vitamins and micronutrients. With this man-and-a-half tall poisonous bee hive, they could easily gather ten pounds of pupae.

We have plenty to eat!

"Lassie, Griffin, carry the pupae back! The honey and pupae inside are valuable items; they’re mine."

"Yes, sir!"

The two of them tried to lift the hive but couldn’t budge it.

"Didn't you eat?" Master Marcus asked, bewildered.

As Earth Knights, although they couldn't be called immensely strong, they were at least several times stronger than ordinary adults. Moving a bee hive weighing less than five hundred pounds shouldn’t have been that difficult.

Upon hearing this, Lassie’s face turned even redder.

Using all his strength, even straining as if suckling, he activated his martial aura, and only then did the bee hive budge slightly.

Griffin, who was helping him carry it, suddenly noticed the issue, "Captain Marcus, the hive and the tree trunk seem to be stuck together by something. No wonder we can’t move it."

"Stuck together?" Sir Liszt also walked over, inspecting the part where the bee hive and the tree trunk were connected. Indeed, as Griffin said, there were some white substances tightly binding them together, impossible to pull apart. "It must be the sap from the tree. Is it really that sticky?"

Looking up along the white substance, it was exactly from the broken branch that Lassie had cut earlier. A lot of sap had flowed down and dried, solidifying into this sticky mass.

It seemed even stickier than glue.

"Glue... solidifying..." Sir Liszt thought this substance seemed extraordinary. If used properly, it could have a wide range of applications.

By now, Marcus had drawn his steel longsword and began chopping at the sticky joint.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

After three swings, the white substance only cracked slightly but didn’t separate.

"Take a few more swings, Teacher Marcus, use your battle qi," Lister gestured for Marcus to continue swinging to test the adhesive strength of the sap.

Marcus complied.

Surging with battle qi, a cyan glow enveloped his longsword. He aimed at the white substance and struck it hard. Crack! The blow finally split the white substance, completely separating the poisonous beehive from the tree trunk. "What is this stuff that's so hard? I used a full-force strike and only just managed to cut through it."

"The sap flowing from this large tree, Teacher Marcus, Lassie, Griffin, we might have found something even better." Lister said, a smile on his face as he pointed at the large tree in front of them.

The tree was a very ordinary type of common tree. Lister had studied this kind of tree back when he first landed on Black Horse Island in search of dragon bones. The trunk was straight, with high branches that weren’t very lush, no flowers or fruits, and it didn’t grow very tall. When he came before the New Year, the leaves were slightly yellow, and now they had completely turned yellow.

His earlier conclusion was that it was an ordinary deciduous tree, likely only good for timber. He had planned to cut down all the nearby trees around the grass field once he had enough manpower to expand the grazing area. Now, it was a good thing he hadn’t cut them down. A tree that could produce such strong adhesive sap was clearly a treasure bestowed by nature.

The sun was setting.

Lister wasn’t in a hurry to return. After all, there were no monsters on the island, so there was no danger. "Griffin, take a swing at the tree trunk."

"Yes, sir!"

With one strike, the bark split.

About a minute later, white sap began to seep from the cracked area. Lister used a stick to collect some of the sap, then stuck it to the tree trunk, occasionally shaking it to test the sap's adhesion speed. After about five minutes of exposure to the air, the sap began to solidify.

Once solidified, it was almost unbreakable.

"The effect is very strong, do you see its potential uses?" he asked proudly, intending to show off. The sap of this tree was undoubtedly a natural adhesive, and judging by its solidified strength, it was comparable to rubber, a mix between rubber and super glue.

The importance of rubber was undeniable, and the uses of super glue were also immense.

Combining the advantages of both, this was undoubtedly a more valuable natural glue.

However, Marcus and the others didn’t immediately realize this, so they seemed a bit confused.

Griffin even replied seriously, "Maybe it can be used to stick two things together? It looks like it might be troublesome. Sir, when the serfs are cutting down trees, they might end up sticking their axes to the trunks."

"Cutting down trees?"

"Yes, sir, you planned to cut down all the trees on the island to expand the grazing area."

"That was the old plan; it’s changed now. We need the grassland, but we need these trees even more!" Lister said decisively, "What I just said might not have gotten through to you, but this tree sap is something precious, something so valuable that, to me, it’s worth more than gold."

"Worth more than gold?"

"The sap can be used directly as glue to bond items. For example, a cooper could use it to bond two wooden boards together, creating a perfect seal that wouldn’t leak or come apart. Using it for barrels would be a waste; it might be more suited for bonding weapons."

Calming his excitement, Lister continued, "Of course, we need to determine its properties first, such as its durability, whether it’s fire-resistant or waterproof, how to collect and store it, and so on..."

As he spoke, he suddenly remembered that the smoke mission had been completed and that his spirit bug should have arrived. While Marcus and the others studied the properties of the natural glue, he silently called up the mission status.

To his surprise, the mission content had not updated, and the task of clearing the poisonous beehive had not been marked as complete.

"It seems we’ll have to wait until all the bees are gone and the danger is completely eliminated before the mission is considered complete. But this tree and the mission..." Looking at the tree and thinking about the mission, he felt there might be a connection. "Could it be that my tenth spirit bug is related to this tree?"

He quickly activated his Magic Eye to observe the large tree in front of him. As his gaze moved to the top of the tree’s canopy, a flash of magical light appeared in his vision.

( = )