Chapter 14 - Deep Mountain Reservoir, Purple Jade's Training Method

"Brother, I feel that your future is stable. As long as you cultivate Purple Jade well, you'll easily become at least a Tier 4 pavilion-level Pet Tamer," said Su Yue happily as they left the hall. He was naturally delighted if his brother emerged successful.

"Haha, maybe."

Su Bai laughed. The bonus 30,000 yuan had come right on time, just when he was extremely short on money.

After thinking about it, he decided to set it aside as Purple Jade's funds for food. Although the money could also afford him a basic skill like hypnosis, he considered his pet's nutrition as more important.

Furthermore, the cub had yet to learn the parasitic skill jade in his hand. It would probably be some time before his pet could learn and completely master it, but by then, he should have found a way to make money and purchase new skills.

"Howl!"

Purple Jade rubbed itself against Su Bai, asking him when they would go out to play in the mountains.

Along the way, several human-pet pairs stared at the little cub from time to time. As a just-born pet that was particularly timid, Purple Jade felt uncomfortable being stared at.

"We'll go soon; let's buy something first."

Su Bai quickly calmed it down. Unlike a silver contract book, his bronze contract book could not store or keep pets.

"Let's go, Su Yue. We'll buy some bait, then head to the Construct Reservoir for fishing," he said.

He went to a fishing shop and bought some bait and nest material.

His younger sibling took a box of very expensive cyan earthworms and said, "Brother, I heard that some people had spotted very valuable Silver-patterned Tortoises in the reservoir last time. Let's buy these cyan worms and give it a try. I heard that Silver-patterned Tortoises love cyan earthworms."

"Okay, let's buy some and give it a try. Maybe you can catch one."

Su Bai shrugged casually. The Silver-patterned Tortoise was a kind of spirit, but it could only be regarded as a semiservant level.

The reason why it was considered precious was that, not only did it taste delicious, it had an effect of increasing human strength when consumed. The more silver patterns on its back, the better.

Furthermore, its tortoise shell was one of the raw materials needed for medicine.

The price of a Silver-patterned Tortoise was very interesting. It cost 1,000 yuan for a stripe, and the more stripes one had, the more expensive it was.

Su Bai did not harbor much hopes of catching one, though. There had not been any successful catches of that spirit in the Construct Reservoir for years, and it was even said to have actually already gone extinct.

After buying some bait and food, he took his younger brother and spirit back home to pick up some fishing gear before setting off for the Construct Reservoir.

When they arrived at the Construct Reservoir, it was only 10 a.m. The reservoir was surrounded by mountains, creating the image of a fairyland with the mist and transpiration. The only drawback was that the surrounding mountains were still black and did not have any green.

There was no other way. After all, Tomb Sweeping Day had not arrived yet.

However, the water used to build the reservoir was very beautiful. It was pale green, and from a distance, it looked like an emerald embedded in the mountains.

The Construct Reservoir had two large inlets, and Su Bai chose the smaller one for fishing.

Purple Jade fortunately opened the way for their group, or else the overgrown thorns would have made it difficult for them to walk through.

"Howl~"

The cub walked around the mountains like a curious kitten, obviously in high spirits.

As a wood spirit, it took great interest in opening up the way. It slightly mobilized its spiritual power, and the thorns and other plants all moved to the side, giving way for them to cross.

"Su Yue, you go ahead and fish first. I'll train with Purple Jade for a while."

Su Bai put down the things in a suitable fishing spot.

"Okay, I'll test out the waters. Brother, go do your thing."

Su Bai nodded and continued onward with his pet, preparing to walk into the wood full of large, towering trees.

Ten minutes later, the owner-pet pair finally found a good training spot. He turned to the cub and said, "Today, we'll mainly practice the proficiency of your Vine Whip skill and explore how to use it."

Although Vine Whip was an elementary skill, it was not all that simple. In a certain way, elementary meant that a skill was versatile and flexible in usage.

An example was Vine Whip; other than the whipping attack method, it could also be used to stab, entangle an opponent in a controlled manner, et cetera. In fact, the skill had multiple uses.

It was just that most people did not want to spend so much energy on such an elementary skill, but he thought differently.

Of course, the main reason was that he was too poor.

Besides training Purple Jade's skills, this was to help it advance quickly to middle-servant level.

A pet's promotion mainly depended on the accumulation, expansion, compression, and improvement of its physical strength and spiritual power.

Spiritual power and physical strength were both the foundation of pets as well as monsters.

Whether a pet could be strong or not depended on its total amount of aura, purity, density, and understanding of the law.

Understanding of the law was something acquired after at least the emperor level. Before that, the main thing was a pet's total amount and quality of spiritual power.

The so-called breakthrough was obtained when enough spiritual power accumulated in a pet's level and there was enough purity and density after compression. Furthermore, a pet's physical strength must reach the limit before it could break through and enter the next level.

The main reason why some pets could not break through was their poor physical strength—that was, their potential was not good enough.

Physical strength determined a pet's ability to withstand spiritual power, its strength, its speed, and so on.

If a pet's body could not withstand a higher intensity and higher purity of spiritual power, there was no way it would be able to break through, and forcibly breaking through would only kill it.

This was similar to when a pet did not have enough spiritual affinity, which meant that its utilization of materials was too low. Such a pet could only absorb 20% of materials, while another pet of the same spirit crystal could absorb 90%.

Besides that, low spiritual affinity meant difficulty in controlling spiritual power, slow comprehension of laws or various skills, and limited output in releasing skills.

In order to break through to a high level, a pet must accumulate spiritual power, temper its physical strength, and compress its spiritual power upon reaching a bottleneck. With a successful compression, its body would be transformed by higher-strength spiritual power and become even stronger. At this point, the pet would have entered a new level.

It would then compress its spiritual power and strengthen its body anew to sprint toward a higher level again.

This was the case for pet breakthroughs before emperor level, and some more profound things would be involved after that, but even so, the nature of pursuit for every spirit remained unchanged.

As for the evolution type, pet evolution was related to promotion, but the relationship was not particularly big.

A pet itself was equivalent to a bucket, and promotion was equivalent to the thickening of the bucket's body then purifying and compressing the water in it. However, the capacity of the bucket did not have many changes.

Evolution was equivalent to turning a pet's bucket into a bathtub, a pond, or even a lake.

Thus, there was a saying that the more evolutionary stages, the greater the potential. The more a pet evolved, the more water it could hold and the stronger its barrel would be.

This was the meaning of evolution. Although it did not affect a pet's promotion, as long as a pet had enough potential, it could advance regardless of evolution.

Nonetheless, there was a high probability that it would be unable to win in terms of evolution.

If there were two pets both at servant level, and one had evolved once, causing it to possess more physical strength and spiritual power, it could naturally crush the other.

As a servant-level pet now, Purple Jade must first have enough spiritual power to advance to the warlord level.

In addition to relying on various potions and spirit crystals to increase spiritual power, there was a better way to let pets consume clean spirits and absorb them again in order to increase spiritual power faster.

Thus, at the same time that Su Bai was exercising Purple Jade's usage skills, he was also improving its reaction speed, physical stamina, et cetera, consuming its spiritual strength in the wild; this could be considered killing two birds with one stone.

"Buddy, first of all, we have to hit a fixed target, but it won't be as simple as yesterday. Not only do you have to split the stone, you also have to piece it—or twist and squeeze it into pieces—with your Vine Whip. Can you do that?"

He took a stone and placed it far before looking at the cub.

"Howl, howl! <(ˉ^ˉ)>"

Purple Jade bobbed its head vigorously, feeling quite confident.