Chapter 251 – Treasure Persimmon

Chapter 251 – Treasure Persimmon

“Mm! It tastes just like a normal apple! The fruit just got bigger, but the moisture content hasn’t changed much.”

Vasida gave her appraisal, then took a much more uninhibited bite. “You could call this a mutant mega-apple… huh?”

That big bite had burst with juice!

“Why is it all water inside?”

It spilled all over her hands.

Mo Lan leaned over for a look. “It seems like only the outer layer is flesh. Let’s cut one open and see!”

She picked out a large apple and sliced off the top on a small plate. “There’s only about a centimeter of flesh. The inside is all juice.”

She scooped up some juice with a spoon and drank it. “It tastes just like apple juice — a nice balance of sweet and tart. Not bad!”

Vasida drank some juice too. “I think that apple tree should be called an apple juice tree. Everything it grows is basically apple juice — saves you the trouble of pressing it! If only the breadfruit tree could be this considerate.”

“Apple juice tree? That does fit. Let’s go with that name!” Sylph said.

Naming newly cultivated mutant plants was always a headache for her.

“Let’s try some other fruits!”

Mo Lan rummaged around and picked up an orange-colored fruit. “This is a persimmon, right? It doesn’t look mutated at all — pretty much the same as a regular persimmon.”

“It is a mutant persimmon. The tree’s fruit yield and fruit size are identical to a normal persimmon tree, but the plant told me that its fruit contains treasure.”

Sylph herself hadn’t tasted one yet either.

Although the persimmon felt slightly soft to the touch, as if fully ripe, with Vasida’s earlier mishap as a cautionary tale, Mo Lan decided not to bite into it directly.

She placed the persimmon on a plate and carefully cut it open. “The flesh looks perfectly normal too.”

“Could the so-called treasure be referring to the taste?” Vasida guessed.

“Let me try.” Mo Lan scooped a small spoonful and ate it. “Very sweet, but it’s just ordinary persimmon flavor and texture. Definitely not delicious enough to qualify as treasure.”

Vasida and Sylph each picked up a persimmon to eat.

Sylph bit through the persimmon skin and sucked out the soft, mushy flesh and juice. Her assessment was exactly the same as Mo Lan’s — just an ordinary persimmon. “So where exactly is this treasure?”

“Crunch~” A strange sound came from Vasida’s mouth as she took a big bite of her persimmon.

Mo Lan and Sylph both looked at her immediately.

Even if she’d bitten into a persimmon seed, it shouldn’t have made such a teeth-aching sound!

Vasida’s expression turned odd. Then her cheeks shifted, and she spat out five… gemstones?

To be precise, there were four — yellow, blue, red, and green — crystal clear with well-defined facets. The green one had broken in half. That earlier “crunch” had probably come from it.

The appearance of gemstones inside a persimmon was incredible, but Mo Lan and Sylph were more concerned about Vasida. “Are your teeth okay?”

Vasida carefully examined her palm, confirming there were only gemstones and no broken teeth, then said hesitantly, “I think they’re fine?”

Her mouth didn’t feel like anything foreign was stuck in it anymore.

Still not entirely reassured, she opened her mouth wide and let Sylph and Mo Lan inspect.

Mo Lan pledged on the collective dental expertise of Earth’s generations of dentists: “Perfectly intact. Your teeth are very healthy.”

“So these gemstones are the treasure the persimmon tree was talking about?” Vasida said. “Are these really gemstones? Gemstones grown on a tree?”

Mo Lan cleaned them with a cleaning spell, then picked up the yellow stone to examine it. “That’s right, they’re gemstones. And this yellow one has fairly high purity at that.”

“Are you sure, Moira? Isn’t it a bit too brittle? I cracked it in one bite.” Vasida still couldn’t quite believe it. How could gemstones break so easily?

Mo Lan tested its hardness. “It’s not that the stone is too brittle — it’s that your teeth are too strong! There’s no way I could bite through it, at least.”

Sylph even produced a small hammer and tried striking the broken half of the green gemstone. “That’s right, I couldn’t bite through it either!”

Vasida said in shock, “Could the Devouring Stomach have strengthened my teeth too?”

She looked around, spotted a small rock, got up and picked it up, then washed it with a cleaning spell. “Let me test whether it’s my teeth…”

Before Mo Lan and Sylph could stop her, they heard a “crunch~”.

That small rock had shattered effortlessly under Vasida’s teeth.

She hadn’t even used her molars — she’d done it with her front teeth.

“My teeth really have been strengthened! Ptoo ptoo~” Vasida spat out the rock fragments, looking rather delighted. “You two have been using the Dietary Fortification Cards regularly too, haven’t you? Maybe you can bite through things too — give it a try!”

Mo Lan and Sylph exchanged a glance, both feeling the itch to test it.

Moments later, each of them was holding a rock and biting down.

“Sss—”

The rock didn’t break, but Mo Lan’s teeth gave out first. “It seems our teeth still can’t handle rocks.”

Sylph tugged Mo Lan’s arm, gesturing for her to look at the rock.

There was a shallow tooth mark on its surface!

Mo Lan’s pupils contracted slightly in disbelief.

Vasida burst out laughing. “See! Your teeth have gotten stronger too! Keep using the Dietary Fortification Cards, and sooner or later you’ll be able to crush rocks with your teeth!”

“It really is an all-around enhancement!” Mo Lan marveled. Even without Vasida saying so, she was determined to use the Dietary Fortification Cards as much as possible.

Even if she couldn’t digest rocks the way Vasida could, she couldn’t refuse the joy of crunching a stone to pieces with her teeth!

Vasida finished off the rest of her persimmon in a few bites. “No more gemstones in this one!”

“Neither of our persimmons had any gemstones either,” Mo Lan said.

“It seems the treasure the persimmon tree mentioned refers to these gemstones, but not every persimmon contains them,” Sylph said.

“I wonder how many persimmons actually have gemstones inside?” Mo Lan was very curious.

Although the gemstones from the persimmons were ordinary gemstones, even ordinary gemstones were quite valuable.

Moreover, witches who knew spatial magic could process ordinary gemstones into spatially-attributed magical gemstones.

“How about we pick all the persimmons and cut them open to check?” Sylph suggested.

Figuring out the specific properties of each mutant plant was a very important step in the cultivation process.

“Sounds good!” Vasida was the first to agree, patting her belly. “Don’t worry about wasting the flesh — I can eat it all no matter how much there is!”

Before long, all the persimmons had been picked.

Sylph was in charge of washing them, Mo Lan directed the kitchen utensils to cut them open.

Vasida was responsible for dumping the flesh into the Devouring Stomach, narrating as she went: “Lucky you — it’s your lucky day! We picked two whole baskets of persimmons!”

Finally, a fruit platter floated into Mo Lan’s hands. The gemstones on it were heaped into a small mountain.

“All the gemstones are here. Roughly one in every four or five persimmons has these diamond-shaped gemstones instead of seeds. They’re all about the same size, usually three to four per fruit, and they come in all sorts of colors,” Mo Lan reported.

“They’re so beautiful!” Sylph said. “I know what to name this persimmon now! We’ll call it the Treasure Persimmon! A persimmon with a chance of containing treasure!”