Chapter 37: Chapter 37 Exceptional Pet Food

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After resting for half a day and waiting for Taotie’s energy to fully recover, Chen Xing took a tennis ball from the school team’s warehouse and then took Taotie to the swimming pool behind the teaching building.

Zhou Hao was training his Beast Taming in the pool.

Just as people swim at different speeds, so do beasts.

Their physical strength, power exertion techniques, and injury state all affect a beast’s speed.

In the pool, Zhou Hao’s Salty Bay Crocodile, carrying several small sandbags, was diligently training.

Seeing Taotie coming over, Zhou Hao’s Salty Bay Crocodile stopped its movements. After a week of togetherness, the two beasts of the same species had become familiar with each other.

Zhou Hao’s Salty Bay Crocodile lifted its head out of the water and started barking at Taotie incessantly.

“Oh,” Taotie replied coolly with just a syllable.

To Chen Xing, it sounded like—”Have you eaten? I ate a lot today; the water is very comfortable. Do you want to come and play in the water with me?” “I have.”

“Classmate Zhou, may I use the pool for a bit?”

“Go ahead,” Zhou Hao called his beast out of the water readily.

Chen Xing had Taotie create the Great Vortex in the pool, turning it into a tumbling washing machine.

Chen Xing threw the tennis ball into the water.

“Your beast has awakened a second skill?!” Zhou Hao was shocked as he recognized the skill at a glance in the pool’s Great Vortex.

“Yeah, your beast should be close too, right?”

Upon hearing this, Zhou Hao’s spirits lifted.

“Very close. I’ll break through to energy level 10 within a week at most.” Zhou Hao was confident in awakening the second skill before the second monthly test at the end of the month.

However, as he spoke, Zhou Hao couldn’t help but sigh inwardly. During the first monthly test, his beast had been 0.6 energy levels higher than Chen Xing’s.

Now, in just half a month’s time, he had already been left behind. The only advantage he could take pride in front of Chen Xing had vanished.

He watched Taotie, following the tennis ball and jumping into the pool, and hesitated for a moment. “What’s this about?”

“Training,” Chen Xing replied.

“Retrieving… tennis balls?” Zhou Hao watched Taotie fetch the tennis ball from the bottom of the pool like a dog and couldn’t help but fall into contemplation.

Having gained a bit of proficiency, Chen Xing left with Taotie, leaving Zhou Hao still pondering on the spot.

Is this training?

This… should be training, right?

Perhaps it’s some new type of training method he isn’t aware of.

Maybe I should give it a try later.

…

Compared to basic meat pet food, intermediate meat pet food requires higher quality ingredients.

When it comes to meat, monster meat is needed as a raw material; other than that, there isn’t much difference from basic pet food.

After class, Chen Xing went to the largest monster meat market in the new district to select ingredients.

As Jinzhou’s twelfth district closest to the west side, the terrain here was flat and the plains vast. Lots of monster breeding farms had been built in this area.

Chen Xing had thought that the monster meat market would be somewhat refined, but upon entering, he realized he was mistaken. The huge market hung with a tall dome, the floor paved with gray concrete, and the air was thick with the scent of blood.

Chunks of meat, neatly divided, hung on hooks, clearly priced according to different parts.

The market was bustling with customers, and there were more people buying monster meat than Chen Xing had imagined.

After wandering around the market a few times, Chen Xing had a good grasp of the prices of different qualities of monster meat.

The price of the meat varied greatly, with cheap meat at 200 per pound and expensive meat selling for up to thirty-three thousand three per pound, each piece of meat labeled with its species and energy level trademark beside it.

The main factors determining the price difference were the meat quality, part of the beast, and the beast’s energy level.

Having done his homework before coming, Chen Xing knew that even within the same beast, different parts contained different nutrients and had different tastes.

After a long selection process, Chen Xing finally bought twenty pounds of Green Stone Fish belly meat for eight thousand yuan, at four hundred yuan per pound. He also bought two thousand yuan’s worth of various side dishes.

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The Green Stone Fish is a freshwater monster that lives in shallow water. The N14 Green Stone Fish, upon reaching adulthood, can grow between 2 to 3 meters in length, has a mild temperament, and feeds on aquatic plants and algae, embodying a pure herbivore.

Its name comes from its hard dorsal scales, which make it look like a large green rock submerged in water when viewed from the shore.

While the flesh on the back of the Green Stone Fish is rather coarse, its belly meat is tender and chewy with few bones. It grows quickly, reaching adult size in two years.

The twenty pounds of Green Stone Fish belly meat Chen Xing purchased were from an N14 adult Green Stone Fish. According to the butcher who cut up the fish, it was a fully-matured Green Stone Fish that had been raised in a large pond for three years.

After returning to his residence, Chen Xing prepped the ingredients and began cooking.

An hour later, a bowl of Intermediate Carnivorous Pet Food (Green Stone Fish Belly version) was ready.

Taotie gave the food a doubtful glance, sniffed it and wondered why today’s meal smelled a bit different from before.

It tentatively took a bite.

Taotie: Σ(っ°Д°;)っ

It was a flavor it had never tasted before! So delicious!

Perhaps because it was exactly to its taste, it devoured eleven pounds of fish before stopping, full and content, and then sprawled lazily beside him.

Adding in the side dishes, Chen Xing estimated in his mind that just this meal alone had cost 5,000 yuan.

That was nearly the equivalent price of a bottle of Grade C universal nutritional reagent on the market, and even for him now, that price was admittedly expensive…

Selling all the resources given by the school team weekly could barely cover Taotie’s daily meal.

While the market price for Grade B universal nutritional reagent was 25,000 yuan, he could not sell it at the original price in private transactions.

The auction house would buy it at 70% of the market price, only fetching a price of 17,500 yuan. Two bottles would therefore be 35,000 yuan, and with an additional contribution of 8,000 yuan from his own pocket for household expenses, it was just enough to cover Taotie’s weekly food costs…

Chen Xing even began to consider whether Intermediate Carnivorous Pet Food might be too expensive.

If it were just Basic Carnivorous Pet Food, a meal would only cost three to four hundred yuan, as regular beast meat was much cheaper.

Early the next morning, Chen Xing felt a pressure on his chest.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a large head resting on his chest.

Taotie was lying on its back, its pale belly facing up. As it grew larger, the small bed was becoming increasingly burdened.

Now when Taotie slept, it could only curl up, forming a C or D shape.

“Get up,” Chen Xing said with effort as he pushed Taotie away, still puzzled by the fact that it hadn’t felt this heavy the morning before.

“Wait a second…”

Chen Xing hurriedly got up from the bed to take a closer look.

Ever since Taotie had started to grow larger, there had been a daily increase in size, but it wasn’t as noticeably rapid to the naked eye as when it was younger.

However, this morning, its size had clearly increased substantially, with a growth rate that was somewhat embarrassing, as if it were cheating.

[Species]Salty Bay Crocodile

[State]Healthy (Slightly Hungry)

[Energy Level] 10.79

[Energy Level Limit] 38

[Length] 277.9cm

[Weight] 131kg

[Skills]

Intermediate Skill: Great Vortex (omitted)

Passive Skill: Water Mimicry·Rest

If he remembered correctly, the length was only 254 centimeters yesterday; it had surged by 23.9 centimeters overnight.

What was more significant was the increase in Energy Level by 0.78.

However, if it continued growing at this speed, it probably wouldn’t take two years for Taotie to reach the full adult size of eight to nine meters—it might take just a month.

But would others think he was cheating? It wasn’t too outrageous for a child to grow tremendously in two months as if it were two years, right?