About two and a half hours later, Guding had already reached the final potion. Apart from the first three being of Extreme Quality, starting from the fourth one, the potions he concocted reached Perfect Quality. He then became more proficient, and his speed of preparation also increased. He tried six methods to finally fuse the potion. From taking fifteen minutes initially, he sped up to making one vial in less than four minutes later on; such progress was nothing short of terrifying.
When Pama came out of her private potion lab and passed by the communal potion room, she noticed the door wide open. Slightly surprised, she walked to the entrance and saw a young boy fully engrossed in mixing potions. Pama raised her eyebrows with some delight; she was the top Pharmacist on Sea Blue Star and the only Pharmacy Department professor for the Basic Military Students. Seeing a student so diligently working naturally pleased her. Upon inspecting the boy closely, she realized she didn't recognize him, as the academy had three potion instructors, and he might be a student of the others. She didn't care much about whose student he was, as she held a fondness for any student with an interest in pharmacy.
Pama stood silently at the door, watching the boy's concoctions. His hands moved incredibly fast—she had been standing there for only about ten seconds when he already completed the first step of extraction. Her eyes immediately lit up, watching the boy's actions without blinking.
After completing the extraction, the boy simultaneously placed different materials into twelve distillation flasks, which caught Pama off guard. Yet, what he did next nearly made her lose it. He turned the flames under the twelve distillation flasks to the maximum.
"Reckless!" Pama frowned, preparing to walk over and reprimand the boy, only to find his actions exceptionally skilled as he simultaneously removed three flasks that had just changed color at a leisurely pace, as if he knew exactly when the solution would do so. In just over ten seconds, the distillation was complete, and all twelve flasks were removed with timing that was frighteningly precise.
"My God..." Pama looked at the alarming scene before her, almost dropping her eyes out.
She then witnessed a scene that left her speechless: the boy didn't even use a measuring cup and directly poured various solutions into the Fusion Cup according to unknown ratios. He picked up the Fusion Cup and started shaking the solution inside with a strange method she had never seen before. In less than two minutes, the solution in the cup turned completely silver, refracting beautiful halos under the light.
Guding poured the solvent into a pre-prepared test tube, capped it, and was about to throw it into the Storage Space when a voice stopped him.
"Wait a minute..." a woman's voice came from the door.
The woman appeared to be around twenty-five or twenty-six, wearing wide-framed glasses and a ponytail, with a very competent outfit. She wore a teacher's uniform, and the gold-edged nameplate on her chest indicated her esteemed identity—professor.
"Could I see that potion?" The female professor's voice carried a tentative inquiry, which seemed impossible to other students.
"Sure, but return it when you're done. I'm planning to sell it for money," Guding could clearly tell that the woman was mostly delighted rather than greedy.
The female professor took the potion from Guding, examining it thoroughly up close before removing her glasses to scrutinize it again.
Guding internally sighed, "Without glasses, she's actually really pretty."
"This... is truly a Perfect Quality Cell Enhancer?!" The female professor, after several confirmations, finally drew a conclusion she could hardly believe. It took her a moment to regain her senses, "You said earlier you wanted to sell it, could you sell it to me?"
"How much are you offering?" Guding didn't want to suffer a loss.
"You know that the market price for a qualified product is 1,200 Star Coins, and Perfect Quality is twenty times that price. I won't let you suffer a loss. Twenty times is 24,000 Star Coins, I'll give you 25,000." The female professor clutched the potion tightly, clearly determined to obtain it.
"Deal!" Guding agreed readily.
After completing the transfer, the female professor stored the potion in her Storage Space. Seeing Guding packing to leave, she asked, "Which teacher taught you?"
Guding was puzzled, "I'm not a Pharmacy Department student, I belong to the Combat Department."
"Combat Department?" Her eyes lit up again, "Would you be interested in transferring to the Pharmacy Department? I'm a teacher here."
"No interest." Guding packed his things, stood up, shook his head, and walked away.
"What's your name?" The female professor quickly asked as he was leaving.
"Guding."
"Guding..." she murmured softly, watching him reach the door, then called out, "If you encounter any trouble at school, feel free to come to me. I'm Pama, and although I'm just a teacher in the Pharmacy Department, I still have some influence at the academy."
"Okay, thank you!" Guding nodded, turned around, and briskly left.
"Looking at him packing so much, he must have made more than one potion..." Pama muttered softly after a moment, heading towards the top-floor monitoring room.
Pama spent a full two and a half hours reviewing the surveillance, and the shock in her eyes only intensified, "In just two and a half hours, he completed twenty vials of potion. The first took about fifteen minutes, and at the distillation stage, he was evidently a bit flustered. He maintained tension throughout the process, clearly making it for the first time. His subsequent attempts had slight errors in different places, yet the potions' hues seemed at least Excellent, likely Extreme Rank. From the fourth attempt, he achieved flawless operation, concocting his first Perfect Quality potion. By the fifth, his composure improved markedly, and his proficiency increased. His technique quickened by the sixth, stretched through the seventh and eighth, and by the ninth, his fusion technique started to change... besides the first three vials, the remaining seventeen were all Perfect Quality. What kind of monster is he to possess this horrific talent? Regrettably, the camera angle only shows his back, not the whole process."
Guding was oblivious to the recording of his concoction process. Sea Emperor knew it well, and deliberately didn't block the camera's surveillance, hoping someone would notice Guding's talent in potions, garnering warranted attention to secure more resources for him.
By then, Guding had returned to his home in the Red Light District. As a graduate, he had accumulated enough credits, and remaining classes didn't matter; he could fully arrange his free time.
"Soaking your body in hot water accelerates the absorption of the potion," Sea Emperor advised.
"Yeah," Guding had read about this online. He filled the bathtub with hot water, shed his clothes, and submerged himself. Then, reaching into his Storage Space, he took out a Perfect Quality Grade F Cell Enhancer and downed it in one gulp.
A surge of heat coursed down his throat, exploding with staggering heat upon reaching his stomach, spreading everywhere. Guding instantly felt as though his body was on fire.
"Don't resist this heat, let it cleanse every cell in your body, and try to stay conscious. If you pass out, the absorption rate will halve. Though your Cell Comprehensive Index will increase by 7 points regardless, some manage to absorb the effects fully in a week, whereas others take more than two months. When the effects dissipate, absorption and speed are at their peak," Sea Emperor explained from the side.
Guding clenched his fists, enduring the pain, striving not to think about the scorching heat over him.
The fire-like heat currents surged through Guding's body, and wherever they roamed, it felt like searing iron branding his flesh. The agony was intolerable for most people.
He wasn't sure how long had passed when his consciousness began to blur, strange scenes materializing in his mind.
Snowflakes drifted from the sky as a middle-aged man held a baby, making his way to the Rose Tavern. Arriving at the doorstep, he placed the baby in a trash bin.
"Hey, what are you doing? Abandoning a child is strictly prohibited under Federation Law and demands at least twenty years of imprisonment!" Guding shouted at the man while rushing over, attempting to stop him.
But, upon reaching, his hand passed through the man's body, as though he was transparent. He looked up and recognized the face, "Dad?!"
The man quietly stared at the baby in the bin, a snowflake landing on its forehead. The man brushed it away as the infant inside the bin reached out with tiny hands, clutching the man's little finger, giggling cheerfully.
A peculiar glint flickered in the man's eyes; after long deliberation, he picked the baby up again, entering the Rose Tavern.
"I picked you up from a trash bin." Guding remembered that his dad always remarked so with wine-laden breath whenever asked about his lineage.
"The first time I saw you, you were just a baby, tightly cradled by that drunk," Guding recalled Mrs. "Meat Floss" saying.
"How could you possibly be my biological son? My eyes are blue, yours are black. My hair is brown, yours is black, and I even have some sorta natural curl, though not overtly. I'm so tall and brawny while you're so slim. Plus, I'm this handsome, while you... are somewhat handsome, yet that's surely not hereditary. How many times must I repeat until you believe I picked you from a trash bin?" Dad would boast proudly, unfavorably comparing Guding to himself.
"You fool, fought again? Your thighs aren't even as thick as others' arms, losing is normal. Why weep... I'll teach you, pick fights with those smaller than you." Whenever Guding got into fights, Dad would rub his head and comfort him, fully aware that Guding was the smallest among the children.
"Here, drink up. Not being able to handle drinks by ten, are you even a man?" He remembered the raucous laughter in the Rose Tavern when Dad coaxed him into drinking at age ten.
"According to a pact with an old friend, the fifteen years I've cared for you have ended. Do not seek me out." Those were Dad's last words, scribbled on a blank sheet. A glass once weighed it down, shattered by Guding himself over half a year ago; the paper was ripped to shreds then.
"Dad..." Guding's tears flowed uncontrollably.