Chapter 143 - Come On, Huang Tielan, You Can Do It!

While Zhang Che was fighting hard for his goals in the beast world, Huang Tielan wasn’t simply idling back in Qian Wei City, either.

She felt that the past two days were especially fulfilling.

Other than making a trip to the research base everyday and practicing concocting beast card cultivating fluids, Huang Tielan also exercised in the mornings and evenings, doing weight loss workouts in the gym with her mother, Zhong Yuqing.

At this moment, she was sitting at the familiar beast card cultivating workspace, looking at a bronze-quality beast card in her hand and the variety of strange herbs at the side, her eyes filled with determination.

“Come on, Huang Tielan. You can do it!”

After successfully upgrading the Sharp-Clawed Hound card a few days ago, Tienan increased the difficulty for herself and tried upgrading this bronze-quality beast card in her card.

She had failed more than twenty attempts over the past three days. The total cost of ingredients she used was in the range of tens of thousands of dollars, and yet there wasn’t even a single success.

Not only that, an explosion even occurred during one of the failures!

Fortunately, Miss Tienan was prepared for that. Using an extraordinary nimbleness for someone who was overweight, she ducked under the sturdy experiment table immediately and avoided being disfigured.

Huang Tielan worked even more cautiously after that, determined to not overlook any minor details to prevent any more mistakes.

“The concentration of scarlet leaf juice needs to remain between 86 to 87%, and has to be mixed in fifteen seconds after adding violet miscanthus sinensis juice…”

Miss Tienan was fully focused on handling the apparatus on the experiment table, extracting the essences of the various herbs. She followed the procedure strictly, adding the ingredients one after another as she mumbled the instructions to remind herself.

In the end, when all of the ingredients were mixed in with no errors, Miss Tienan covered the petri dish and placed it in a transparent heating stove. After setting the right temperature, she turned on the power.

“I can’t afford another explosion… the equipment here is all so expensive; if I destroy a few more of them, daddy will start nagging at me again…”

Miss Tienan had an engrossed look on her face, staring at the mixture in the petri dish. Her right hand was on the temperature controller of the heating equipment, ready to adjust it the moment the mixture changed color.

The knowledge involved in this process was extremely complicated, and had to be learned by heart to ensure nothing went wrong during practical operation.

It could be said that every successful beast card cultivator was the cream of the crop!

The temperature of the mixture in the petri dish gradually rose.

When the mixture approached its boiling point, Huang Tielan quickly reacted and immediately turned off the stove, waiting in anticipation.

In the end, the slightly murky fluid in the petri dish cleared up, turning a faint pink.

“Yay, I’ve half succeeded!” Huang Tielan cheered, pumping her fist. When the cultivating fluid cooled down to room temperature, she immediately lifted the cover and placed the bronze-quality beast card inside, before covering it up again and extracting all the air with a vacuum seal.

Half an hour later, Huang Tielan took out the beast card, now decorated with another hexagram, her eyes filled with hope.

“I can definitely enroll into Bei Du University’s beast card cultivation major! For Zhang Xiaoche! And for Auntie Sun’s illness!”

——–

“What is this?”

Using the green light emitted from the pile of fluorite behind him, Zhang Che finally found a piece of thumb-sized black crystal among the pile of rubble.

Under the illumination of the green light, this rough black crystal was like a tiny black hole, absorbing all of the light.

However, Zhang Che didn’t recognize this crystal.

He held this piece of black crystal in his hand. It felt much lighter than ordinary steel, but was obviously heavier than rock. It was sure to be a rare metallic mineral.

It seemed like Zhang Che had to familiarize himself with the memories of his predecessor whenever he had time in the future. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to recognize other rare minerals he chanced upon.

Zhang Che resolved inwardly to start searching his memories. He wanted to know exactly what mineral this black crystal was. However, he couldn’t find anything…

Despite searching through the entire “memory drive” his predecessor left behind, he found nothing related to this black crystal.

“Perhaps I discovered a new rare mineral?” Zhang Che grew strangely excited the moment this thought popped into his mind. It would be incredible if that were truly the case!

However, there was also another possibility: that this black crystal Zhang Che found was actually a worthless material! As it was too commonly found, Zhang Che’s predecessor didn’t actually commit this detail to memory.

“I’ll leave this for later; I’d better continue looking for purple-gold crystal mineral.”

Shaking his head, Zhang Che put this thumb-sized black crystal next to the pile of fluorite and continued sifting through the piles of rubble.

Less than a minute later, Zhang Che dug through a pile of rubble and found another piece of black crystal, about the size of a walnut.

“Strange… why is it this type of black crystal again?”

Zhang Che felt more doubtful now. He picked up this walnut-sized black crystal and looked at it from every possible angle, but he still didn’t make any new discoveries.

Could it be that the information his predecessor had seen was wrong? The purple-gold crystals were not found next to large amounts of fluorite?

That was unlikely. Such things were usually concluded only after making many similar observations. How could there be a mistake?

Left without a choice, Zhang Che could only continue digging through the piles of rubble.

When the third piece of black crystal, which happened to be the biggest one thus far, appeared before Zhang Che, he finally stopped what he was doing and looked at it blankly.

Compared to the other two pieces of black crystal, this one had more of a structured shape. It was as big as a baseball, like a piece of gemstone with some simple sculpting work done to it. It was deep black, looking as if it would devour all the surrounding light.

No matter how Zhang Che looked at it, he felt that the shape of this black crystal was extremely similar to what he remembered as the purple-gold crystal ore.

But the color didn’t match at all! Could it be that this type of black crystal was truly an undiscovered rare mineral?

It was apparent that there wasn’t any purple-gold crystal mineral to be found here, adding to the fact that Zhang Che had no idea what this black crystal mineral was. As such, he decided to stop and get out of the cave, find a large-sized exotic beast, and hunt it.

About half a day had passed. He was starving. Why not get something to eat outside first and continue exploring the cavern later?

As Zhang Che found the baseball-sized black crystal really pretty, he didn’t leave it on the ground. Instead, he took it with him and fiddled with it in his hand.

When Zhang Che exited the cave and paused to get used to the blinding light outside, his gaze swept past the multi-faceted crystal in his hand unintentionally. He froze in place, his jaw dropping in surprise…