“What can I do with this? Should I find a new animal, or can I use this on Chestnut or Ivy?” Yang Zhang pondered. 

Finding animals and experimenting would be quite difficult because his encounter with Chestnut was fated, just like Ash Ketchum and Pikachu kind of stuff.

And there was a possibility that it might backfire if the animal wasn’t interested in teaming up with him, just like Chestnut before. 

Chestnut wasn’t interested in him, not until Yang Zhang started giving food to that squirrel.

“And it might go rogue and attack me instead.” 

Yang Zhang looked at Ivy and then showed the Mana bead, “Ivy, do you want this?”

“Vii?” Little Ivy stretched her vine to jump to Yang Zhang’s palm. She touched the Brain bead and observed for a while until she shook her tiny head.

“Eh? You don’t want it?” Yang Zhang asked.

“Vii…”

Little Ivy didn’t seem to want it. In fact, to make her point clearer, she returned to her pot and covered the soil inside the pot with her vine, making sure that Yang Zhang wouldn’t be able to plant the Mana bead inside. 

“Eh, does that mean plants doesn’t like Mana bead?” Yang Zhang hypothesized.

He glanced at Chestnut, who was still snacking, “Chestnut, come here.”

“Squeak?”

Chestnut hopped to Yang Zhang and sat on his arm.

Yang Zhang showed the Mana bead to the squirrel, “Do you want to eat it?”

Yang Shang thought that Chestnut would evolve after eating its second Mana bead. Maybe it would mutate and grow a pair of wings, or maybe another power!

But contrary to his expectation, Chestnut sniffed the Mana bead and got repulsed. 

“Squeak!” Chestnut jumped away from Yang Zhang’s arm and returned to its previous spot to eat more nuts as a snack. 

Yang Zhang sighed in pity. He couldn’t use this Mana bead for Ivy or Chestnut, “Well, I guess I’ll keep it for now. Maybe after I find a new animal to tame, I can give this to them.”

“Vii? Vii!”

“Hm? What did you say, Ivy? You want me to… eat this?”

“Vii!”

“Ehh… But I’m a normal human, I have immunity against the Z-20 virus, so I don’t have any mutation like those zombies or ability users!”

“Vii? Vii, Vii!”

“You want me to try it because there is no wrong with trying? Damn, Xiao Mei must’ve been an optimistic girl before the apocalypse.”

He stared at the Mana bead. Honestly, he was also curious whether this Mana bead would give him an ability. Maybe he could copy the original user’s ability and such.

But he didn’t know what kind of power in this Mana bead and whether it would be harmful to him or not. 

He wasn’t sure if it would actually give him superpowers, or it would do nothing on him, which would be a big waste.

Yang Zhang was very resourceful and cautious with whatever he had, so he planned something else, “I’ll just keep this for now and see which animal I could use.”

“Vii?”

“Ah, don’t worry, Ivy! Thanks to you, I have something else on my wishlist, I have to try a Mana bead, but I need to know the power first!”

**

Yang Zhang took a bath first and washed his shirt before he went out to hunt for an animal to use the Mana bead. 

He was well prepared to leave the hut. But before he left, he looked around, trying to find good plants first.

He looked around the hut and found nothing interesting. He walked to the backyard to check whether there was an interesting plant he could plant these two Brain beads on.

But really, he found nothing interesting here. It was all grass and flowers that wouldn’t benefit him, unlike Little Ivy.

The moment Yang Zhang stepped near the graveyard of the baby and the mother, the rose was wiggling again as a way to greet him. 

Yang Zhang looked down at the wiggling rose, and he took out the two chipped Brain beads.

“There must be something that caused Ivy to reject this Brain bead….” Yang Zhang wondered. “Maybe because the defect would harm the plants and kill it? I don’t want to take a risk and hurt Little Ivy in the process. But I do need to experiment on this….”

Yang Zhang crouched and put the chipped Brain bead inside the dancing rose’s soil. 

This was a safe idea because it was just a wiggling rose rooted in this small graveyard. If it went rogue because of a Brain bead defect, Yang Zhang guaranteed it couldn’t do anything.

“It’s just a twerking rose. After all, nothing could go wrong, right?” Yang Zhang asked himself. He wasn’t sure, of course. But the rose was a perfect subject for the experiment. 

Yang Zhang glanced at the pitchfork he put near the toolshed and took it as his weapon.

He took the last glance at the wiggling rose and then left, not knowing that a quick change happened with the dancing rose right when he turned around and walked away.