After visiting the Crown Prince's Mansion, Kong Bo returned home and went on with his usual routine. Even with two cute girls added to the household, he still focused his energy on academic research, cultivation, and underground Soul Fighting. The only difference was that after breakfast, he would hug Qing Yuan, Su Ning, and Gu Long'er, and at lunchtime, he and Gu Long'er would eat together, with two extra place settings.
Qing Yuan and Su Ning were also very obedient. Their cultivation and living conditions were now far better than before, and they listened carefully to whatever Kong Bo said. If he told them not to go down to the basement, they stayed away. Every day, they went to school and came home on time, had lunch with Kong Bo, ate dinner with Gu Long'er, and practiced combat with Zi JI and Ice Empress after returning home. The two cute girls spent much more time with Gu Long'er than Kong Bo did.
Qian Renxue said to Kong Bo, "At last, our home feels a little more lively. Otherwise, were there even any humans in this house?" Indeed, before this, the ones living with Kong Bo had been the Evil Emperor, Snow Empress, Ice Empress, Demon Empress, Zi JI, Lan Fozi, and Gu Long'er. There really hadn't been any humans.
During this period, Kong Bo had a task to focus on: researching a Douluo Continent version of Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin. Whether they wanted to seize the throne from the Xu Family or fight Shrek Academy in the future, they would need a great deal of money. No matter how wealthy the Kong Family was, supporting those plans would still stretch its resources thin.
So Kong Bo needed money, and naturally, he would go after whoever had the most. Shrek Academy was currently the wealthiest, so Kong Bo needed to earn money from Shrek Academy without supplying it with resources—or, more specifically, from its powerful Soul Masters and students with powerful Martial Souls.
On Douluo Continent, especially by Shrek Academy's standards, what counted as a powerful Martial Soul? Of course, it was the Martial Souls of powerful beast-type Soul Masters, particularly those who specialized in close combat. In their eyes, a real man charged straight into the fight. As the saying went, "All power comes from within."
While dissecting Evil Soul Masters, Kong Bo had also conducted related research. He discovered that the muscles of close-combat beast-type Soul Masters served not only as the medium for generating Soul Power but also as the vessels that held Soul Power and powered enhancement Soul Skills. In other words, they functioned as both an engine and a fuel tank.
With these experimental results, Kong Bo came up with an idea. What if he invented a medicine, just like Blue Star's Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin, that rapidly built up a Soul Master's muscles? Wouldn't close-combat beast-type Soul Masters be able to improve their strength quickly? And rapid improvement always came at a cost. In any case, Kong Bo wouldn't be the one paying it.
Once he had an idea and a plan, he needed to find raw materials and start testing and developing it. Kong Bo wanted to create a Douluo Continent version of Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin, something not even Mingde Hall's drug development program covered. He would have to start from scratch and find the ingredients himself.
Where should he look? Kong Bo recalled a story Di Tian had told him back when he lived in the Star Dou Great Forest. From August to October every year, Soul Beasts in the forest's northern region grew restless. This had been happening ever since Di Tian began overseeing the Star Dou Great Forest.
As Bi Ji had put it, "Even a forty-thousand-year-old White Lynx will dare to take a swipe at an eighty-thousand-year-old Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear. A ten-thousand-year-old Night Wolf will even bare its teeth at a forty-thousand-year-old Man Faced Demon Spider. And in my observations, their attacks are more powerful than at other times."
Kong Bo had been curious then and asked Bi Ji, "Sister Bi Ji, does this only happen to carnivorous Soul Beasts?"
"No," Bi Ji had replied. "I was just giving examples. Herbivorous Soul Beasts also grow restless during that period, and their aggression and attack power rise sharply."
Kong Bo had immediately formed a theory. "Sister Bi Ji, Soul Beasts without intelligence must be similar to wild animals when it comes to reproducing. Different Soul Beasts must have different breeding seasons, and during those periods, a particular species becomes more aggressive."
Bi Ji had nodded. "That's right. That's exactly where the problem lies."
Kong Bo had offered a hypothesis. "Then I think they must be eating something, probably a plant. Otherwise, herbivores wouldn't go crazy too. Here's my guess: herbivorous Soul Beasts eat this plant and become restless because it contains some kind of substance. Then carnivorous Soul Beasts eat the herbivores, and that substance enters their bodies as well."
"That makes a lot of sense," Bi Ji had said. "But it's a minor matter. At most, it might affect human Soul Masters like you. It doesn't affect us."
Kong Bo still thought very much like a scholar. Having arrived in a completely new world, he believed it was real and far more than what had been recorded in the book that sang the Tang family's praises. There were plenty of unknown things that the novel had never mentioned. The phenomenon Di Tian had described was one such example; it had never appeared in the novel.
Now Kong Bo wanted to create a Douluo Continent version of Nine Dragons Pulling the Coffin, bulk up everyone at Shrek, and give Douluo Continent its own bodybuilding Soul Master scene. That was when he remembered the phenomenon. It was already August, so he brought it up with the Evil Emperor and asked him to take him to the Star Dou Great Forest to investigate.
After taking leave, Kong Bo had the Evil Emperor bring him to the core region of the Star Dou Great Forest. He told Bi Ji and Di Tian about the matter. Given Kong Bo's standing among the Soul Beast Clan, calling him the "executive deputy Beast God" would hardly have been an exaggeration. Kong Bo said he wanted to find out what plants made the Soul Beasts in the forest's northern region so irritable, particularly those that began growing vigorously in August and stopped by October.
No one in the Star Dou Great Forest knew more about plants and plant Soul Beasts than the King of Ten Thousand Demons. He searched for them based on his memories. At the same time, Kong Bo had the Evil Emperor catch Soft Bone Rabbits and keep them in captivity for experiments.
Kong Bo divided the Soft Bone Rabbits into control groups, numbered the various plants the King of Ten Thousand Demons had brought back, ground them into juice, and fed it to the rabbits. Then he observed their behavior. A day later, he found that the Soft Bone Rabbits in experimental group two had become extremely aggressive—the most aggressive of all.
Kong Bo began comparing the various physical indicators of the rabbits in experimental group two with those in the other groups. He found that their muscle strength was greater than that of the rabbits in every other group. This was exactly the raw material Kong Bo had been hoping to find.
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