"I tested ten desolate beasts, and most of them have very short lifespans, the shortest lived only four seconds, and the longest lived 47 hours and five minutes. They pretty much all died of old age. Even among the same species of desolate beast, the degree of aging varied. One claw-tailed monkey lived for two hours, while another lasted only two minutes," said Elder Luo, whose experiments were extremely meticulous, setting up various experimental and control groups to explore the basic characteristics of the beast pills.
"It must be related to the carrying strength of the heart; they all have very large hearts," Xiang Beifei recalled the heart of the one-armed crab he saw being cultivated in Feng Kang’s office. He had to be very selective and took a long time to find a suitable heart for cultivation, which indicates that not all hearts meet the characteristics.
Elder Luo was somewhat surprised, "I hadn’t considered that, but now it’s lost its vitality, and I can’t perform any more experiments."
"Can’t you revive the desolate beasts anymore?"
"No, I suppose this beast pill also has power requirements. Currently, I can’t determine what power it needs to be replenished with," Elder Luo said.
Xiang Beifei related what he had seen in the wholesale market’s office, talking about it casually as if Feng Kang’s office door happened to be left open and the cameras broken, and then he just went in for a look.
Elder Luo was skeptical, "Why do I doubt your story so much? You could see their secrets that easily? You were on vacation?"
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"Isn’t this thanks to your good teaching?"
"Have I ever taught you this?"
"Outstanding qualities, learned by osmosis," Xiang Beifei replied earnestly.
Elder Luo glanced at Xiang Beifei and huffed lightly, clearly convinced he had used some means. This kid was no easy task!
But he didn’t care to delve deeper, it was habit by now.
"Understood, I’ll keep an eye on that company," Elder Luo nodded slightly.
The conclusions reached so far were few, but it was apparent that the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company was definitely the key!
The next step was to thoroughly investigate.
Xiang Beifei burned all the ladybugs that were gnawing on the bones, their flames spread wide, leaving nowhere for those lost without their mainstay to hide. These were the most common black ladybugs, which fed on corpses, used to conceal the situation here.
Elder Luo used a spatial system item to collect everything that could be studied from the site, stopping just short of dismantling the entire shed.
There was no necessity to report this incident to the Alliance.
Xiang Beifei was certain that the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company, daring to do such things, surely had informants within the Alliance.
The Alliance was a place filled with a mix of characters, where status was determined by system level, and high-level individuals had significant influence. Virtually anyone who was an SR could somehow link to the Alliance.
This was a major flaw, as the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company inevitably had SR-level powerhouses too!
Should the Alliance initiate an investigation, they might hear about it right away and start to be on guard.
Counting on the Alliance for the investigation was unreliable.
----
By the time he returned home, it was already evening. Xiang Qingde was cooking, while Xiang Beifei went back to his own room.
He’d acquired many clues so far, but Xiang Beifei found that all leads pointed towards the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company. Up to now, they seemed to lurk behind each incident.
Xu Yang had worked at the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company.
The SR-level Awakener Xiao Sheng who had disguised himself as a store clerk mentioned Lin Long in his system log. Lin Long was a manager from the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company.
The one-armed crab attacked the street of Kong Daming’s shop, and normally, only restaurants could likely have a desolate beast, which almost all sourced their supply from the desolate beast wholesale companies. It’s highly probable that it came from "Bowl Embracing the Moon"!
Without his knowledge, he had become famous, and the Alliance launched a public welfare event called "Options," where the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company was one of the sponsors!
The "Wufu" characters inside the Pioneer Stone.
...
The previous clues were scattered, and Xiang Beifei had always lacked a thread to connect them all.
But the appearance of the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company made all the clues clear.
All arrows pointed towards the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company.
"Could the person who kept in contact with Xu Yang on the phone be that S-level Awakener Qin Hongyi who is above the God Refining stage?" Xiang Beifei thought of the warrior he saw in the ruins, who destroyed the existence of the one-armed crab. He had a very deep impression of Qin Hongyi; it was too rare for an S-level to have reached a realm above God Refining.
It was now crucial to properly investigate this "Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company."
"Xiaohei, there’s a call!"
Xiang Beifei quickly took out his computer.
Xiaohei had been rolling around on the bed out of boredom, but Xiang Beifei grabbed him, plugging his paws into the computer ports.
The recorded electric arc fell from the bubble, and electric sparks crackled and jumped at random on Xiaohei’s body. Xiaohei’s fur bristled and then settled back down, restoring in circles, and soon all the data copied from Feng Kang’s computer was restored onto his own computer.
"Woof!"
Xiaohei, done with being electrified, seemed somewhat entranced, as if the electricity had exhilarated him. He couldn’t help but stretch out his paw towards the power socket again.
Crack, crack, crack!
The voltage in the house suddenly became unstable!
"Xiaohei, work, stop messing around,"
Xiang Beifei’s computer screens were flickering, so he hastily reminded.
Speaking of which, he just realized that Xiaohei seemed to quite like being electrified. When he had awakened with the Awakening System, the thunderstone had electrified him and Xiaohei had been electrified out. After chewing the thunderstone until it was out of voltage, Xiaohei hadn’t touched electricity again until today, when he got electrified for a second time copying data.
Since he liked being electrified so much, next time he should find a place to let him have enough of it.
"Woof..."
Xiaohei shook the fur on his body with lingering enjoyment and then flopped back onto the bed, rolling around bored, like a little furball.
Xiang Beifei flipped through the data on the computer, which recorded the requirements for cultivation in a report. Specially, the report clearly documented the anatomy of the One-Armed Crab, including dissection diagrams, with clear requirements for each part.
After reviewing all the experimental data, since he had learned about desolate beast dissection and experimental classes, Xiang Beifei found it easy to understand the data on desolate beasts. Leveraging "Learn by Analogy," he quickly grasped the purpose of the experiment.
The first objective was to cultivate an independent heart!
This heart needed to have basic physiological instincts, a strong reaction to dangers from the outside world, and the ability to avoid dangers by itself. If possible, it should be able to parasitize other creatures of the same species.
The criteria for the heart sources used in cultivation were stringent; the One-Armed Crabs providing the hearts were required to have a life cycle of over fifteen years, a cultivation level in the late Qi-Controlling stage, and capable of bearing meridian-opening stage spiritual power without exploding.
"The conditions are pretty harsh."
Xiang Beifei browsed through the experimental data, and soon his gaze settled on the cultivation liquid. The liquid was pale green, very viscous, and emitted a strange smell.
As for how the cultivation liquid came about, there was no record in the data; Lin Long would regularly deliver the cultivation liquid, and have Feng Kang screen the hearts of the One-Armed Crabs for cultivation.
Xiang Beifei used his spiritual power to try and analyze the cultivation liquid, hoping to identify its components based on the different waves of reaction to spiritual power.
But he soon frowned.
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The cultivation liquid seemed to have a strong resistance, repelling spiritual power and disrupting its recognition, preventing Xiang Beifei from fully identifying it.
This was a protective measure. In the field of biology, many biological companies would add a special anti-spiritual agent to their products to prevent them from being forcibly cracked by competitors using system abilities.
After all, this was an era where everyone had a system.
In the desolate beast dissection class, Xu Yang also mentioned to Xiang Beifei and the others that each company would spend a huge sum of money to have SSR or even UR level Awakeners from the Alliance Patent Office set various anti-theft protection measures for their patents.
The cultivation liquid in Xiang Beifei’s possession also had patent protection measures, but in theory, these kinds of measures shouldn’t affect Xiang Beifei at all, since patent protections were system abilities, and he could break them in an instant.
However, Xiang Beifei discovered that the cultivation liquid had no system abilities within it, yet it still possessed an anti-spiritual agent that greatly resisted his spiritual power!
This was troublesome.
If he couldn’t identify the components of the cultivation liquid, he would be unable to replicate it on his own, the experiment would be difficult to reproduce, and it would be impossible to thoroughly investigate the whole matter.
For some reason, Xiang Beifei felt like he had encountered this kind of resistance somewhere before.
He thought carefully but couldn’t come up with anything after a long while.
"It seems the answer should be at the Wufu Desolate Beast Research Company."
Xiang Beifei put the cultivation liquid back into the bubble.
This was a desolate beast research company. If he wasn’t wrong, it was probably the company Xu Yang had recommended to him last time. With his status as a top student from a prestigious university, it would honestly be easy to intern at such a desolate beast research company.
But now that Xiang Beifei had just begun to make a name for himself as a top influencer, and the public’s choice wasn’t just for fun, his identity would attract too much attention if he interned at the Wufu Company. He would likely be watched wherever he went.
The company’s senior leadership would also be wary of him, making it nearly impossible to investigate anything.
Therefore, he would have to forge an identity to enter the company.
The Alliance recorded information for every Awakener, and everyone had an Alliance ID card. To be employed at such a major company, one would inevitably need related records. In this internet era, companies like this would definitely investigate the identities and education of their employees.
But Alliance IDs were very high-level, all supervised by UR level Awakeners, and ordinary people could hardly fake them. Even if Xiang Beifei could counter various fancy system abilities, the company would discover the lack of his fake identity in the Alliance Talent Archives Bureau upon checking.
Xiang Beifei planned to visit the Alliance Talent Archives Bureau to add a little something to his record.
He had been wanting to visit for a while now.
Since the Alliance could record the system levels of all Awakeners, both Qin Hongyi and Xiao Sheng must certainly be on file there.