The school had specialized equipment for detecting Beast Taming Levels. Chen Xing had taken his Beast Taming in secret to check the day before yesterday, and the little Salty Bay Crocodile was at a pitiful Level 1, just a bit higher than the newborn Level 0 common to Beast Taming newbies.
Actually, methods for quickly breaking through Energy Levels were all in the books, and they had even been taught in middle school.
Feeding a Beast Taming with substances rich in energy and easy to absorb can promote rapid growth, making nutritional elixirs undoubtedly the most cost-effective option. But even the cheapest generic nutritional elixirs required money, one thousand per bottle.
The most frequent topic of conversation among the other students in the classroom was the monthly exams and the insights on nurturing the Salty Bay Crocodiles.
For the past few days, the social media feeds of friends from elementary, middle, and high school had been flooded with Beast Taming posts.
Photos of cute Beast Taming cubs hung in everyone's feeds.
However, it would only be a few months before the number of photos dwindled dramatically. That's because the cubs of any Species looked good, but many are indescribable once grown...
After finishing today's classes, Chen Xing returned home early from school.
His sister hadn't come back, as this sort of intensive training usually meant staying outdoors for three to four days.
He took out the black box from the bedroom, opened the lid, and looked at the Salty Bay Crocodile custom reagent inside.
As soon as he unscrewed the cap of the reagent, the little Taotie smelled the fragrance and crawled over.
"Oooh ooh!" It stared with big eyes, looking pitifully at its owner.
"Open your mouth," Chen Xing said, prying open Taotie's mouth with his fingers and pouring all the nutritional reagent into it.
"You've fed the Beast Taming, Intimacy Value above 90, received 2 Skill Point Fragments."
Chen Xing's hand shook, nearly spilling the last bit of nutritional reagent, but his eyes brightened; he realized two key points: Taotie's Intimacy Value had increased, and the higher the Intimacy Value, the more Skill Point Fragments were obtained.
However, it wasn't surprising that Taotie's Intimacy Value had risen rapidly. The school had issued nearly-hatching eggs and had purposely given them two days off to stay at home and hatch their Beast Tamings by hand. Although the hatching crocodiles wouldn't see the first person they saw as their parents, they most definitely would develop a strong dependency.
The first life seen at the moment of hatching, coupled with constant close companionship, made it only natural that the Intimacy Value would reach over 90 points in just half a month.
Since feeding resulted in more Skill Point Fragments being awarded, then the gains from training should also increase, right?
But Chen Xing soon realized that the dazed Taotie was not suitable for training.
After drinking his sister's reagent, Taotie was staggering around like it had drunk fake liquor, spinning in place. It tried to bite its tail but couldn't catch it. Finally, in frustration, it jumped up and snapped at the air.
This was the first time Chen Xing had seen a crocodile jump!
With a little thrust from its four short legs, it leapt forward.
And it leapt quite far, a full ten centimeters.
Chen Xing stroked Taotie; its entire body was overheating, its temperature nearly ten degrees higher than usual, warm to the touch.
That night, after dinner, Liu Yuzhen was tidying up the pots and pans in the kitchen when a sudden bout of back pain made her drop the bowl she was cleaning. It shattered on the floor.
Hearing the crisp sound of the bowl smashing on the kitchen floor, Chen Xing quickly came out of the bedroom and saw his mother bent over, sweeping up the shattered fragments with a broom.
He hurried over, "Mom, go rest, I'll do the dishes."
"Don't fuss, you go study," she replied.
Noticing his mother's thin, worn-out face from overworking, a somewhat repressed Chen Xing blurted out, "I've finished my homework. Just sit for a while; doing the dishes won't take much effort."
After dumping the broken pieces from the dustpan into the trash can, Liu Yuzhen looked at Chen Xing, who had already taken over washing the dishes. She hesitated, wanting to say more, but the pain in her waist made her hesitate repeatedly and eventually stopped her from insisting further.
Leaning on the counter, he sat down on a stool in the dining room, watching Chen Xing's silhouette while sighing silently to himself.
Sitting on the sofa, Chen Guohai put down the newspaper in his hands and said to his wife Liu Yuzhen, "I'll cook dinner tomorrow."
"The doctor said you can't enter the kitchen. You get dizzy easily when you're even a little bit tired. Now is not the time for you to add to the chaos," Liu Yuzhen firmly refused.
Chen Guohai, once again facing rejection when he wanted to help, fell silent.
All he could do was pick up the newspaper and start reading again, even though he had already read it seven times that day.
After washing the dishes, Chen Xing took the opportunity to sweep the floor of the house before returning to his bedroom. Seeing Taotie sprawled out dizzily on the table, Chen Xing thought to himself that he had made a mistake; judging by the look of it, he probably wouldn't be able to train today.
At eleven-thirty at night, Chen Xing was woken by his alarm and promptly got up from bed, then woke up Taotie, who was still in a deep sleep.
After three hours of sleep, Taotie's condition had clearly improved, looking dazed as he woke up, and then accompanied Chen Xing for a training session that lasted all of ten minutes.
After receiving the two Skill Point Fragments from today's routine training rewards, Chen Xing happily lay back down on his bed; he now had seven Skill Point Fragments.
Reclining back beside the pillow and covered by a blanket, Taotie looked spiritedly at the ceiling, his tiny mind full of confusion, thinking, "Who am I, where am I, wasn't I just asleep?"
Outside the window, the bright silver moonlight spilled onto the head of the bed, and the little Taotie, after zoning out for a while, closed his eyes and drifted into a deep sleep.
A dreamless night.
The next day, Chen Xing arrived at school, with thirteen days left until the first monthly exam.
He took Taotie out of his pocket and compared to yesterday, Taotie seemed a bit larger. Holding him, Chen Xing could clearly feel the weight of Taotie in his hand had increased quite a bit.
He took a flexible measuring tape out of the drawer and measured from the tail to the tip of the nose: 41.2 cm!
He remembered that when he measured yesterday, it was only 35.7 cm. To have grown 5.5 cm overnight, more than half a centimeter, was certainly not his imagination.
The effect of the potion his sister gave him was indeed remarkable, but the more obvious it was, the more Chen Xing felt that the potion his sister gave him was extraordinary. The Beast Tamings of Wang Qiming did not show such clear effects even after taking customized potions.
A few days ago, he measured Taotie and found that on average, he was only growing about 2 cm per day.
If he could drink that potion every day, he would grow nearly one meter longer in a month than a Beast Taming that did not drink a potion! But such a potion would cost at least... several thousand dollars, right? For a month, that would be six figures in expenses, and a year would be over a million.
Suddenly, he deeply understood that spending money and not spending money were completely different concepts.
In fact, this trend had already appeared in his class, where some students from wealthy families had Beast Tamings that were obviously larger. They all had the same Beast Taming Species, and there was no difference due to Species either; perhaps the occasional Beast Taming with exceptional natural talents could break this norm, but those cases were very few and far between.
Nobody noticed the changes in Taotie. Currently, among the various Salty Bay Crocodiles in the class, Taotie's size was barely average, so naturally, no one paid attention.
After another day of lessons, Chen Xing returned home in the evening to feed and interact with Taotie. After accumulating 11 Skill Point Fragments, the "+" symbol representing the Skill Points finally lit up.
Chen Xing focused his thoughts on the plus sign, and the next moment, ten Fragments disappeared, turning the Skill Points from 0 to 1.
Pet Trainer, Pet Caretaker, Pet Nutritionist—Chen Xing had to make a choice among these three career trees.
He had spent three days just to accumulate one Skill Point, and at this stage, the speed of acquiring Skill Points was not exactly fast.
Therefore, priority in activating the initial profession was crucial.
If it had been before, Chen Xing might have been torn, but after feeding Taotie a bottle of nutrition reagent yesterday, he personally experienced the importance of nutrition.
Without hesitation, Chen Xing's gaze settled on the career of Pet Nutritionist.
Pre-requisite skill for Pet Nutritionist—Health Detection, activated!