Chapter 342 – Planting Pot Card

“Could it really be that such fine Earth Source essence can’t be made into any good cards besides a {Material Card — Earth Source Essence}?” Mo Lan was unwilling to accept this.

She thought it over again and again, and decided the problem still lay with the Earth Source essence itself.

Its energy level was too high, and it was a consumable. Using it on small-space cards to grow ordinary crops and common magical plants was overkill.

But truly precious plants, like Breadfruit trees, had far more demanding growth conditions. Some even involved natural laws that couldn’t be easily replicated by her simple simulations of light sources, air, and soil environments.

The Guardian Headmistresses observing her movements remarked:

“Why hasn’t she left the Underground yet? Is she really planning to stay down there until the survival trial ends?”

“It looks like she’s making cards. That bit of Earth Source essence her original body gave her must have added more card-crafting materials!”

……

Just as they were talking, Mo Lan slapped her thigh: “I’ve got it!”

She buried herself in designing a card.

【Card Design: Spatial Planting Pot Card No. 1】

【Estimated Cost: 1000 Mana】

【Estimated Appearance: Appearance Template 1】

【Estimated Function: A planting pot with 50cm sides. When the planting pot is materialized and placed in a suitable environment, the plants within it can grow normally. When the planting pot reverts to card form, the plants inside are preserved in their current state. Maintaining card form requires planting energy, which can be periodically replenished…】

After seeing the estimated cost, Mo Lan let out a small breath of relief: “This card should be considered fairly valuable!”

By utilizing the effects of the spacetime-stasis rune combination, paired with the Earth Source essence’s ability to nourish plants, it only needed to maintain the plants’ current state.

There was no need to keep plants actively growing, and no need to simulate a growth environment — the card-crafting cost dropped dramatically.

Moreover, this way it could accommodate any kind of plant, because the key to plant growth lay in what environment the planting pot was materialized into.

The only difference was that different plants consumed varying amounts of Earth Source essence energy while in card form — but any amount was still more economical than keeping the plants in an active growth state.

Take the Breadfruit tree, for example — she could plant a Breadfruit sapling in the planting pot.

When it turned into card form, the sapling would stop growing. Once she materialized the planting pot in a place suitable for Breadfruit tree growth, like the Witch Academy, the sapling would resume growing.

When encountering rare plants, anyone with even a shred of cultivation ability would want to dig up the entire plant rather than just harvest its produce, wouldn’t they? Between golden eggs and the goose that lays them, everyone knows which to choose.

With a card like this, the problem of digging up plants only for them to die could be solved.

It would give her enough time to prepare a proper growth environment for the plant before transplanting it.

She could even just grow it in the pot permanently, which also solved the difficulty of transporting plant assets when moving.

To say nothing of anything else — this card was something Sylph absolutely couldn’t refuse.

Mo Lan crafted {Spatial Planting Pot Cards} in various sizes and numberings, then listed the entire series in the Card Shop. Only then did she feel this trip had been truly worthwhile.

Putting away the Book of Cards, she mounted her broomstick and headed straight back the way she came.

Then she picked an underground cavern that trended upward, one where the Fortune-Telling Spell showed nothing out of the ordinary and no danger, and began digging upward from its highest point.

As she dug, she practiced the Metal Shaping spell with the ore materials she’d mined from deep underground — killing two birds with one stone.

Vasida rubbed her belly contentedly: “Which Orange Witch is this? She barely settled down for one day before she’s back to feeding me rocks again. If I ever find out who it is, I absolutely must give her a {Super Trash Can Card} that can throw away anything!”

Mo Lan dug from the rock layer into the soil layer and paused temporarily. Her Metal Shaping spell was right on the verge of advancing.

If she actually dug all the way to the surface, with the complex environment out there, she might not be able to continue practicing the Metal Shaping spell.

Fortunately, at the end of her fourth year, she had obtained a spatial ring and stored plenty of emergency food inside it.

Otherwise, without using the Food Cards and ingredient cards from her card collection, she wouldn’t have been able to stay down here in the underground at all.

So she kept working with the ore, repeatedly shaping and reshaping it, bit by bit combining the Metal Shaping spell knowledge in her mind with hands-on practice, until she finally reached Peak level.

She first tested it on a low-grade magical gem.

Previously, the Metal Shaping spell could freely mold ordinary metal ore materials.

It could even achieve a state of perfect intermixing.

Producing alloys was no problem at all.

But when it came to magical ore, it couldn’t achieve the same natural fusion as with ordinary ore.

Because during the fusion process, the magical energy within the ore couldn’t be connected, so at most it could only achieve surface adhesion. From the perspective of magical energy, it was still two separate pieces of ore.

But the Peak level Metal Shaping spell had the ability to simultaneously connect the magical energy within the ore while shaping it.

However, the magical ore had to be from the same source.

If they weren’t from the same source, even ore of the same type and quality would have differences in their internal magical energy, making natural fusion impossible.

So this technique was mostly used for repairing broken magical items.

As for using it to salvage magical ore eaten by Ore Demon Bugs, Mo Lan had only seen brief mentions of this in Mo Lan had only seen brief mentions of it in Mo Lan had only seen brief mentions in Mo Lan had only seen passing references in Mo Lan had only come across scattered remarks in 《Witch’s Guide to Ore Purification》, and even those were merely speculation.

The witch who wrote that book had only used the Purification spell to extract the magical ore that the Ore Demon Bugs hadn’t fully digested.

The ore fragments she extracted at the time weren’t from the same source, so she hadn’t been able to personally test whether the Metal Shaping spell could effectively fuse them.

But she had tested on artificially shattered magical ore, which could indeed be restored using Peak level Metal Shaping spell.

So the feasibility was quite high.

Now, even though the Metal Shaping spell had reached Peak level, she still needed to practice the technique of repairing magical gems before she dared attempt it on the spatial gem fragments.

Mo Lan first took out a low-grade earth-element magical gem, then used Void Blade to cut the gem into fragments of varying sizes.

Then she used the Metal Shaping spell to repair it.

This time when using the Metal Shaping spell, Mo Lan clearly noticed that she could not only shape the gem on a physical level, but also subtly influence its energy level.

She couldn’t create something from nothing, nor could she make drastic alterations — she could only guide the earth elemental force already existing within the gem to slowly merge together.

Once the earth-element magical gem was bonded into a whole and the earth elemental force had merged together, the gem was restored to the appearance of a natural magical gem.

Using it to craft magical items or for any other purpose would pose no problems whatsoever.

After practicing on several types of low-grade magical gems, she used the Book of Cards to create several types of Intermediate magical gem cards and practiced repairing those one by one.

Only after she could proficiently repair shattered Intermediate magical gems did Mo Lan finally take out that pouch of spatial gem fragments. (End of Chapter)