Taking Whale Glue

By the time Lin Yuan's father finished dinner, it was already dark.

Lin Yuan told his parents he was heading out, then left for the academy.

Before leaving, he told them some classmates knew his family sold medicinal herbs and had asked him to help sell herbs their parents had dug up in the mountains.

With that explanation, he gave his mother the herbs Yan Beifei had cultivated.

His mother had always been shrewd, especially in business. She made Flender look like an amateur.

Flender only knew how to use his strength as a Soul Sage to charge outrageous prices.

Lin Yuan's mother could fleece someone and still leave them thinking they had come out ahead.

This time, though, she was unusually generous. She bought the herbs at market price.

As she put it, she might not be a Soul Master, but she knew Soul Masters formed teams and had to help one another.

They might even become lifelong companions.

She couldn't let his classmates lose out.

Lin Yuan couldn't help admiring the way his mother dealt with people.

Transmigrators, Yu Xiaogang, the Shrek Seven Monsters, Spirit Hall's three beauties, the Silver Dragon King...

None of them was as wise as a farmwoman from the countryside.

After that thought, Lin Yuan could only accept the several hundred Gold Soul Coins his mother gave him and return to the academy.

It was almost all the working capital the Old Lin Apothecary had.

That night, he acted as though nothing had happened.

He sat down to meditate and cultivate, quietly collecting Creation Heaven-Reaching Dew.

The next morning, he did his usual hundred push-ups, hundred sit-ups, hundred squats, and ten-kilometer run.

He attended classes as usual and spent his breaks fooling around with a few of his "best friends."

But as soon as noon came, he made sure Tang San, Xiao Wu, and Lin Tian had gone to the cafeteria. Without even eating lunch, he went straight outside the academy and bought a charcoal brazier, a fine iron mesh, and some charcoal.

Then he quickly found an inn far from both his home and the academy and rented a room.

Only then did he take out the pale-yellow Whale Rubber his mother had given him.

His mother had originally set it aside for Yan Beifei. It had been the only piece on the market at the time, and she had planned to squeeze a little more money out of him.

But Yan Beifei had never come back, leaving her stuck with it.

Not that she had lost money. She had paid only nine Gold Soul Coins for the piece.

The Hundred-Year Wild Ginseng alone had earned her two or three times what the Whale Rubber had cost.

Lin Yuan filled the bathtub with water, then asked an attendant for some ice and tossed it in.

Once everything was ready, he lit the charcoal and placed the Whale Rubber on the grill.

Heating it over charcoal was clearly much slower than using a Soul Master's flames.

A full two and a half double-hours passed. Lin Yuan had nearly fallen asleep waiting when it finally melted into a jelly-like fluid, giving off a faint, sweet, fishy scent.

He carefully scooped up a spoonful and put it in his mouth. The warm liquid slid down his throat.

It tasted a little fishy at first, with a faint sweetness afterward.

Moments later, a surge of heat burst from his lower abdomen and swept through his body.

Lin Yuan felt his skin burning all over.

He didn't dare waste time. He quickly ate the egg-sized lump of "jelly."

Then he jumped into the bathtub, sat cross-legged, and used his Soul Power to guide the heat through his meridians.

As his Soul Power circulated, tiny tearing sensations spread deep through his muscles, while something seemed to press against the gaps in his bones.

His whole body ached unbearably.

Nearly half a double-hour passed before the pain finally faded.

Lin Yuan's body gradually settled.

By the time orange-red clouds filled the evening sky, Lin Yuan finally emerged from meditation. Despite meditating for so long, he felt no fatigue at all.

"That really hurt, but the results were incredible..."

Lin Yuan could clearly feel that places his Soul Power had once struggled to pass through were now unobstructed.

His body was sturdier, too, and his muscles more defined. His overall build had not changed much,

but the outlines of his shoulders and finger bones had grown more pronounced. The contours of his bones stood out, lending him a solid, powerful air.

When he clenched his fists, the knuckles on the backs of his hands stood out sharply.

This had to be the Whale Rubber's effect of strengthening his meridians, bones, and muscles.

It nearly matched what he had gained from more than three months of training.

As for removing impurities from his body, Lin Yuan looked at the bathwater, darkened by sweat and grime, and said nothing.

He immediately took a cold shower, then hurried home to tell his mother that the Whale Rubber worked.

Naturally, she was delighted. She shut the shop at once and rushed to the medicinal herb market to hunt for more.

Before leaving, she boldly declared that she would buy up all the Whale Rubber in Notting City and feed it to her son.

As for Lin Tian, how could he be more important than her own son?

Warmth spread through Lin Yuan's heart.

But this might well arouse Lin Tian's suspicions.

It might also draw the attention of other, unknown Transmigrators.

After all, in Douluo I, Whale Rubber was only considered an aphrodisiac. If his mother bought it in such quantities

and the Whale Rubber all flowed into Notting City,

there was no guarantee it wouldn't make someone suspicious.

Looks like I can't keep all the Whale Rubber from Lin Tian. I might as well give him the leftovers.

That would allay Lin Tian's suspicions and direct any unknown Transmigrator's attention toward him.

It would also let Lin Yuan return some of his Gold Soul Coins to his mother.

Whale Rubber might not be expensive yet, but before his body developed a tolerance, he would need enough of it that the cost

would be considerable for a family with only modest means.

A school year passed before he knew it.

Each school year at Nouding Academy lasted only eleven months. The remaining month was the students' holiday.

Throughout those eleven months, Lin Yuan kept to a strict routine.

Every morning, he did a hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run.

He attended classes as usual, fooling around with his "best friends" between lessons and playing the part of an ordinary child.

At noon, he spent half a double-hour reading in the library.

Once he had finished the books on Soul Masters and Soul Beasts, he devoted that time, along with his afternoons, to meditation and raising his Soul Power.

He meditated and cultivated at night as well. He also buried the Plastic Palm-Heaven Bottle in an abandoned flowerpot, covered it with a fragment of a magical artifact, and collected Green Liquid.

He discovered that the Plastic Palm-Heaven Bottle worked just like Han Li's Heavenly Vial had when Han Li was in the mortal world of Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality.

For every seven days of moonlight it absorbed, it condensed one drop of Green Liquid.

Whenever a drop formed, Lin Yuan used it in a medicinal bath to improve the quality of his Lone Bamboo Martial Soul.

He went home occasionally to see whether his mother had managed to buy any Whale Rubber.

When she had, Lin Yuan didn't even need to go to the trouble of renting a room, buying charcoal, and grilling it.

His mother prepared everything herself.

As for Lin Tian, his mother had considered him before Lin Yuan even brought him up.

With Lin Tian's talent, needlessly antagonizing him would be unwise.

So whenever she acquired four or five pieces of Whale Rubber, she had Lin Yuan take the lowest-quality one to Lin Tian.

Over those eleven months, Lin Yuan consumed more than a dozen pieces of Whale Rubber, while Lin Tian had only two.