Chapter 29: Chapter 29: So You’re This Wild, Too

On the way to the convenience store—

"Your counterattack was too deliberate. Yu Bao slowed down noticeably right before using Desert Concealment. It was obvious he was about to pull a trick."

"Look at the Pet Beasts in the interstellar level matches. You can never guess what Skill they’re going to use before they make a move."

"It all comes down to consistency! If you can’t maintain consistency in your Skills, then little tricks are meaningless."

"Mhm..."

Su Zhi gave a wry smile. "We got totally crushed. I thought we were facing a bronze player, but it turned out to be a king."

"Hey, no need to sell yourself short."

Liu Junpo waved his hand dismissively. "I come help Old Zhou with the kids every year for the city league. Yu Bao is the Pet Beast that’s lasted the longest against Wanzi."

"Woof." Yu Bao scratched his head, looking a little embarrassed.

Su Zhi asked curiously, "Speaking of which, why is Wanzi’s physical strength so high?"

"Well..."

Liu Junpo scratched his head, a comical expression on his face.

"Wanzi has trained Hardening to Tier Three Skill Level... uh, actually, it’s not far from Tier Four."

Su Zhi: "...?"

Hardening, a Gold Element High Level Elite Skill, can drastically increase the body’s hardness. It’s somewhat similar to Yu Bao’s yet-to-be-awakened Core Skill: Thick Earth Blessing.

The difference is that Thick Earth Blessing is, more accurately, a type of Overlord Body state, while Hardening is just pure hardness—physical hardness.

’No, that wasn’t important. What was important was...’

"A Cyan Cloud Group can learn Hardening??"

"Uh, theoretically, no."

Liu Junpo scratched his head. "But Wanzi doesn’t like the Skills in the official syllabus, and it was dead set on learning Hardening, so I just let it."

Su Zhi was stunned speechless.

"Speaking of which, doesn’t your Yu Bao also have a bunch of weird Skills and not a single one from the syllabus... Huh? Wait a minute."

Liu Junpo stared at Su Zhi in surprise.

"Could it be that you’re also..."

"..." Su Zhi said nothing, just gazed at Senior Brother Piao with deep, meaningful eyes.

The air fell silent for a moment.

The two of them gripped each other’s hands tightly.

"Senior Brother Piao! It’s a shame we didn’t meet sooner!"

"Brother Su! Same here!"

Far away in his office writing lesson plans, Zhou Shengfa let out a massive sneeze.

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"Senior Brother Piao, here you go."

"You’re too kind~"

Coming out of the convenience store, Su Zhi presented a lemon-flavored bottle of Mizone with both hands.

Liu Junpo also felt this junior was a fine-looking young man, and he felt a sense of camaraderie, the ’so you’re a fellow weirdo’ kind.

The midday was hot, so the two of them went to a cooler grove of trees.

"Wanzi, here!" After twisting off the cap, Liu Junpo offered it to the Cyan Cloud Group first.

"Jiii~"

Wanzi tilted back and drank most of the bottle, letting out a satisfied sound.

"Yu Bao, here." Su Zhi had also bought a pack of small sausages for Yu Bao.

Yu Bao had been taken down by Wanzi’s Mount Tai Crush and was still a bit dizzy, but the moment he smelled the sausages, he was wide awake.

The Dog started eating the little sausages, his tail wagging happily.

Su Zhi fed him the sausages one by one. When he got to the last one, Yu Bao shook his head, refusing to eat it, and patted his hand with a paw.

Su Zhi nodded and ate the last one himself.

When he turned back, Senior Brother Piao was lying on Wanzi with a smile, watching them with his chin in his hands.

"You and your Pet Beast have a great relationship, eh? Did you form your contract at the City Park District?"

"Yeah."

Su Zhi nodded.

"I saw Yu Bao at the Yu Dian Dog Breeding Area. I asked if he wanted to be my Pet Beast, he said yes, and that was that."

"That simple?"

Liu Junpo scratched his head. "I thought there would be some kind of fateful encounter story."

"Woof."

Yu Bao shook his head honestly.

He was a male Dog; it’s not like he could transform into a human to give Su Zhi a fateful encounter.

"You need a fateful encounter for that? Isn’t it perfectly normal for a Beast Tamer and their Pet Beast to have a good relationship?"

Su Zhi chewed on his sausage. "You and Wanzi have a great relationship too."

"That’s why we’re the exceptions."

Liu Junpo gave a bitter laugh.

"You might not feel it in a small city like ours, but you’ll understand if you go to a good school in one of the big cities. The mainstream educational view is that a Beast Tamer shouldn’t get too close to their Pet Beast."

Su Zhi asked curiously, "There’s a theory like that? Why?" 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"It’s actually a very simple principle."

"You know as well as I do that the training tasks required by the official syllabus are dull and arduous. Very few Pet Beasts are willing to diligently complete them."

"This requires the Beast Tamer to supervise, monitor, and even use corporal punishment to make the Pet Beast compliant, ensuring the required training tasks are completed to standard."

"On top of that, the inherent need to constantly optimize a Pet Beast team gives this philosophy a practical rationale."

"For example, say a very talented Beast Tamer is limited by external conditions early on and can only contract an ordinary Pet Beast."

"But in the mid to late stages, those initial limitations are gone, and that first pet instead becomes their new limitation."

"What should they do then? If they want to make their Pet Beast team stronger, their only choice is to terminate the contract."

"A weaker emotional bond with the Pet Beast results in less spiritual backlash for both parties when the contract is terminated, and they won’t feel too bad about it psychologically... and the facts have proven this to be true."

Liu Junpo said slowly. Seeing Su Zhi’s silence, he raised an eyebrow. "Feeling a little bit of that ’world-shattering’ shock?"

"...I don’t know what the mainstream thinks, but I don’t see it that way."

Su Zhi stroked Yu Bao’s head, his expression neither smiling nor angry.

"When Pet Beasts choose to form a contract with a Beast Tamer at a young age, they’re entrusting their entire lives to that Beast Tamer."

"They aren’t just ’partners’ in a Beast Tamer’s studies and career; they’re family. And shouldn’t family stick together and help each other through thick and thin?"

Liu Junpo nodded. "Everyone understands the principle. But what if the only way for you to climb the ranks is to switch your Pet Beast?"

"Then I just won’t climb."

Su Zhi spread his hands, his face blank.

"Yu Bao and I were always at the bottom of the rankings before. We still ate and drank just fine. It’s not like you can’t survive if you don’t get good scores. You just do the best you can, and as for the results, it’s better to be a little more Zen about it."

"Nice! So enlightened!" Liu Junpo raised his Mizone to toast Su Zhi.

Su Zhi didn’t have a cup, so he made do and clinked his sausage wrapper against the bottle.

"But let’s get back to business. Yu Bao’s performance in battle was quite good."

"However, since you’re using a non-syllabus training method, you need to create your own move sets and think up your own training plans. That makes systemization a serious issue."

Liu Junpo said seriously, "Have you designed a relatively complete Skill System for your Yu Bao?"

"I have! Can I add you as a contact and send it over?"

"Sure, let me see!"

They added each other as friends and sent the file.

When he saw the file Su Zhi sent—"Yu Bao’s Unique Skill Pathway 1.0"—Liu Junpo’s eyes immediately lit up.

"Unbelievable, you actually built a complete Skill System!"

"Opening with Earth Force Field, then Sandstorm... Desert Concealment... these are Skills from different Races, but putting them together makes a self-consistent system? Interesting."

"No, learning Destructive Claw here was reckless. It seems to fit the characteristics of a Yu Dian Dog, but in this system, it sticks out like a sore thumb... like a true fan in a crowd of haters..."

As soon as he got Su Zhi’s skill design, Liu Junpo instantly entered a state of extreme focus.

He unconsciously mumbled jumbled words, his thoughts sometimes leaping, sometimes suddenly accelerating, like an incomprehensible Spell.

But Su Zhi was no slouch either.

Vaguely, he found that he could also keep up with Senior Brother Piao’s train of thought.

Even their mental leaps were nearly identical, which saved them the trouble of explaining their reasoning!

Before he knew it, Su Zhi had unconsciously joined the discussion:

"It’s definitely awkward here. My suggestion is to swap it with Desert Spirit Summoning..."

"Yes! That makes it self-consistent, but that Skill is difficult to learn, so we’ll need to make some trade-offs in the sequence..."

"Senior Brother Piao, look again. This part earlier seems a bit illogical too. The flow is wrong here..."

"Exactly, but the problem here is secondary. The main flaw is in the previous step..."

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