The second option for a cheap source of life force is a carnivorous plant called the Green Face plant. This carnivorous plant eats any living thing, including other plants and blood.
The green face plant is a large plant that resembles a sunflower plant. But instead of a yellow head, its head is green. Its head can also open up to reveal many teeth capable of tearing meat and a jaw strong enough to crush bones.
This carnivorous plant has a clear advantage over the blood vine because its feeding range is wide, and it is not picky with its food. But it also has a major disadvantage, being that its conversion rate of food to life force is poorer than the conversion rate of the Blood vine.
Pink Ivy said that the blood vine has a conversion rate of 95% while the Green Face carnivorous plant has a conversion rate of 60%. So he will receive less life force from the carnivorous plant for each unit of food compared to the output of the blood vine.
The third option is to use the symbiotic plant called the life-giving plant. This life-giving plant looks like a small green worm. It is actually a green vine.
The life-giving plant leaves are in the body of a host. It will enter the body of the host through a cut in their skin and will go straight for their golden core.
Once the green vine reaches the core, it will coil around it like a python constricting its prey. Then it will slowly feed on the mana from the core.
The life-giving green vine will get safety, warmth, and refined energy from the host. This will inevitably reduce the rate of refining mana into internal energy and slow down natural cultivation.
But in exchange, the life-giving plant will provide the host with life force. This life force can be used to cultivate, which should more than make up for the slow cultivation speed.
However, the slow recovery of internal energy cannot be easily mitigated. The recovery of internal energy by refining mana from the environment will only slow down as the life-giving plant grows stronger.
Pink Ivy said that the rate of recovery can be reduced by up to 80%. So the speed of refining can fall to one-fifth of what it once was.
This might not matter during times of peace and relaxation in the sect. But once one gets into a fight, their inability to recover energy quickly might cost them the fight. In worst cases, the slow recovery of internal energy might cost them their life.
Aside from these pros and cons, there are still some other advantages that set the life-giving plant aside from the first two options. The main advantages are that the life-giving plant is always carried around, and the resources needed for it to produce life force are the cheapest.
Because the life-giving plant stays in the host, it can always be protected and kept safe by the host. And the fact that it can take what it needs to make life force directly from the golden core also makes raising it very easy and cheap.
As for the disadvantages compared to the other options, the main one is that the life-giving plant can't fight. The life-giving plant is very weak, which is why it needs the protection of a host in the first place.
The blood vine is weaker than plants and animals of the same rank, but it can fight. And even if it is weaker, it can use its superior regeneration to exhaust its enemy.
Not only can it heal itself of injuries, but the blood vine can also get the fuel to heal itself by devouring the blood of its enemy. This grants it an advantage that makes up for its weakness.
The second disadvantage is that the conversion rate of the life-giving plant is 35%. This is even poorer than the efficiency of the Green Face plant. But this low efficiency of conversion won't matter much because environmental mana is free.
As for the Green Face plant, it can fight, and it is very strong. The Jaws of the green face plant are so strong that the plant might be a plant version of a lion.
The main weakness of the green face plant is that it is slow. The plant can move with its roots, but its speed of movement is slow. This makes it more of an ambush predator.
Despite this glaring weakness, the green face plant is a terror to other plants and trees. After all, it can move and retreat while they can only stand and withstand the onslaught of its jaw. It is like how a one-eyed man with poor vision is far better than a blind man.
After providing the three options, she asked him to choose which one he would go with. Without giving it much thought, he gave up on the life-giving vine.
He dropped the life-giving plant as a possible option because he cares too much about the recovery rate of his internal energy. He just can't give up energy recovery for something that can't help him in a fight when there are other options that can help him in a fight.
This left the blood vine and the green face plant for him to choose from. He found it difficult to choose between them because both of them possessed something that he cherished and wanted.
After deliberating for a while, he picked the green-faced plant. He didn't pick the blood vine because it can't move. It can only remain rooted to a single place, even though it is powerful and can attack with its vines at a speed that is similar to that of a lightning bolt.
The blood vine is a good guard pet that he can plant somewhere and trust to keep that place secure. He can be sure of this because he saw the performance of the giant blood vine on Pink Ivy's floating island.