Determined to assist himself with the current situation, Chen Xuan slowly bloomed a purple flower on one side of himself and a blue flower on the opposite side, sending the signal to 'come to the small tree'.
Testing to see if one is stronger than the other, Chen Xuan watched before the ant on the side of the purple flower seemed to be coming towards him with more determination.
"Guess blue is general but weaker"
He muttered his observation before turning his gaze to one of his blue flowers, hesitating for a few moments.
Needing to finish his test, Chen Xuan hesitantly reached out 2 of his branches before plucking a flower petal, feeling a pain from that area like a bee sting.
"That wasn't that bad... and I can still feel it"
He muttered before using one of his purple flowers to being an ant close to him before putting the flower petal onto the ant while at the same time sending a faint signal via the blue petal "carry the petal".
Upon receiving the instruction, Chen Xuan attempted to close the flower that the petal originated from, finding no issue when the flower fully closed, prompting a light sigh of relief from Chen Xuan.
Onto the next test, Chen Xuan ordered the ant to slowly walk away from him to test how far he would go before losing the faint connection.
The farther away the ant got, the weaker the connection was to the petal, until finally, after reaching 20 meters away, the connection felt like it was on the brink of breaking so Chen Xuan sent an order to come back.
Once the ant was back, Chen Xuan carefully felt the connection to the petal, finding it was fine after it got back however he did feel a faint loss of energy.
Wanting to determine if it was time or distance that caused this, Chen Xuan waited for a few hours, checking the connection every few minutes.
While testing, Chen Xuan was continuously using his purple flowers to get insects to come close before making them into nutrients and energy, needing all the energy he could get.
After about 2 hours of not giving the ant any orders, Chen Xuan felt only a faint loss of energy. For the final test, Chen Xuan sent an order to the ant while very carefully sensing the energy inside the petal, finding that the petal lost a larger amount of energy.
Based on the original energy level of the petal, chen Xuan guessed that there were about 6 used, of which he had used 3 so far.
Such a result made Chen Xuan smile wide, have one last thing before going through with his plan.
Sending one more order to the small ant, Chen xuan ordered it to go back to its nest while carrying the flower petal, assuming there was a nest nearby due to the number of ants.
With its order being given, the small ant walked back to its colony, finally entering after a minute or two of travel.
Once Chen Xuan sensed that it got back to his colony, he used up the remaining energy in the petal to send out a large wave of electricity that carried a single order.
'Being food to the tree', He ordered, with it, carrying a faint image or knowledge of where the tree in question was. It was Chen Xuan.
Immediately, the ants started scattering from out of their colony, looking like a brown flood coming from the ground.
Ants numbering in the thousands surged throughout the area 20 meters of Chen Xuan, gathering all the food and newly dead things that they could find.
Some of the ants that went outside the 20m radius each lost their hypnosis after a minute or two.
Meanwhile, Chen Xuan felt a headache, feeling the connection to about 5000 ants at the same time stressed his mind, like looking at a massive, unsolvable problem but far worse.
Luckily for Chen Xuan, each of the ants brought something back, amounting to a large volume of compost material.
Even though most of it won't give a lot of life energy, the sheer volume would make up for the lack of quality.
"Heh... and they said quality is better than quantity"
He muttered, quickly ordering the ants away. Once they were a few meters distant, he immediately broke off the mental connection to the ants, relieving his mental strain.
Considering the amount of energy surrounding him, Chen Xuan decided to relax, closing off most of his senses other than a bit of his vision, acting as if someone were mostly shutting their eyes.
Chen Xuan rested like this for a few days when he spotted something through the trees, which looked larger than any ants or hares he had seen occasionally.
The large creature appeared to be running moderately fast, with Chen Xuan estimating it was about 8 m/s in some areas without trees, slowing down slightly when going through the trees.
Such a large creature scared Chen Xuan slightly, prompting him to sit fully still and position himself like a normal tree sapling, completely closing all the flowers so that they wouldn't reveal as much of their color.
Carefully observing the moving figure, Chen Xuan noticed that behind it was a beast far longer but shorter in height. The figure behind emitted an intense pressure that instilled a primal fear in Chen Xuan, who quickly did his best to suppress this feeling.
Despite Chen Xuan's slight trembling, fortunately, it only looked like trees swaying in the wind.
The longer creature seemed to be chasing a gathered dark, taller shadow through the forest.
Within moments, the two creatures came within 15 meters of Chen Xuan, allowing him to see what they were.
The taller creature was a human, an adult man of about middle age, sprinting with all his might away from the other creature. The man was tall and quite muscular, wearing clothes that made him look like a hiker.
Meanwhile, the creature in the back looked like a very large leopard. The leopard was about 3 meters long, including the tail. Its light golden-yellow fur color, combined with its black markings, made it look ferocious.
This leopard was larger than any Chen Xuan had seen online; it had large, dense muscles scattered over its body, making it look bulky yet still sleek.
What scared Chen Xuan, however, was a dense life energy that emanated from the leopard, so dense that Chen Xuan could sense it.
Within moments, the two—human and leopard—ran just out of view before a loud scream sounded, followed by silence.
Such a scene made Chen Xuan nauseous, as if he were going to throw up, but as he was now a tree, he no longer had the ability to do so.
He already knew what happened to the running human; comparing a human to a leopard was no fair fight, and that is what made him sick.