"Boss, stop dragging this out. Just tell me straight, how much does acceleration cost?"
"I was just about to tell you. You were the one who interrupted me, weren't you?"
Lin Yan rolled his eyes at her in irritation, then continued,
"For a white egg, accelerating one year costs 1,000 Gold Soul Coins.
A blue egg costs 3,000, a purple egg 9,000, a gold egg 27,000, and a red egg 81,000.
Your red egg has a natural incubation period of 120 years. If you want it to finish hatching here today and see the finished product with your own eyes, you'll need to accelerate it by 120 years, for a total of 9.72 million Gold Soul Coins."
Boom!
The entire place fell utterly silent, then erupted in overwhelming cries of shock.
9.72 million Gold Soul Coins was merely the acceleration fee. So all that customization earlier had only been the setup; the real bulk of the expense lay here. The acceleration fee for a red-quality embryo was actually this terrifying.
No wonder the doubly mutated Twin Martial Souls had cost only 3.6 million in total. So this was where the catch lay.
The same went for that four-million Destined Fortune that increased the chance of Soul Bone drops. Anything scoring above 50 points was red quality, requiring at least 81 years of acceleration at 81,000 a year. That alone cost over six million Gold Soul Coins, and with the fortune fee added, the total exceeded ten million.
So if you wanted to use this to farm Soul Bones, you first had to invest over ten million Gold Soul Coins. Truly, no merchant was without cunning.
How many powers on this continent could afford that investment?
Only the top powers could obtain this one-in-ten Soul Bone drop rate and farm Soul Bones like mad.
Then the rich would grow richer, and the poor would grow poorer. That was reality.
Ning Rongrong was so angry she laughed. She had already figured out the Cultivation Room's pricing logic. The embryo was only the beginning; the expenses afterward were the biggest part.
Moreover, Ning Rongrong suddenly had a premonition that this acceleration probably wasn't everything. There would likely be other expenses later, though probably none more for now.
She silently calculated all her expenses, and even she felt her scalp tingle.
Admission was 100,000, Innate Full Soul Power three million, doubly mutated Twin Martial Souls 3.6 million, Destined Fortune four million, and top-tier appearance, disposition, and talent together nearly a million. Adding the current 9.72-million acceleration fee, she had already spent over 21 million Gold Soul Coins in less than an hour.
Even though she was the legitimate daughter of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, raised in silks and fine food and never short of money, she could not remain calm now. Over twenty million Gold Soul Coins was already half the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's annual revenue. Even her family could not withstand burning through money at such a terrifying rate.
Ning Rongrong took a deep breath. Although she already knew she had no choice but to accelerate it, she still had to ask:
"So you're saying that if I want to see the result today, I have to spend these nine million-plus, or else wait 120 years?"
"That's right," Lin Yan said bluntly.
"You really are thick-skinned. You don't show the slightest mercy when fleecing people.
Fine, I'll accelerate it."
Ning Rongrong gritted her teeth. She had already spent tens of millions; she absolutely could not get stuck at the final step.
Today, she simply had to see for herself whether this shop was a heaven-defying opportunity that had descended upon the Douluo Continent or a scam devised by a master swindler.
"The customer comes first. You pay, I do the work."
Without further hesitation, Lin Yan immediately deducted 9.72 million from her credit allowance, paying the rapid-hatching fee for the flawless red egg in full.
The next instant, the Scarlet Divine Egg inside the Breeding Machine suddenly erupted with divine radiance that filled the entire shop. Supremely pure life essence, bloodline genes, and the power of fortune surged wildly.
Streams of indescribable energy emerged from the cultivation machine and poured into the egg, seemingly replenishing what the passage of time consumed from it.
At that moment, time inside the cultivation machine seemed to have been forcibly stretched, racing past. The passage of years, invisible to the naked eyes of those watching, played out furiously upon the egg.
Soon,
Crack, crack. Fine, crisp sounds of splitting rang out...
Dense cracks spread across the scarlet eggshell at a visible speed. Dazzling, sacred seven-colored light shone through them, brilliant to the eye and extraordinarily wondrous.
In less than three breaths, the hard Divine-Grade Eggshell shattered completely and peeled away.
A tender baby girl, her entire body wreathed in seven-colored light, her skin silvery-white as jade, and her features exquisitely delicate, floated quietly at the center of the cultivation machine's luminous glow.
Her breathing was even, her vitality vast, and fortune beyond the reach of ordinary people flowed around her. One glance made it clear she was anything but ordinary.
The instant the baby girl was born, Ning Rongrong's mind abruptly trembled. An intense bond of connected blood and shared lineage swept through her consciousness. This was an absolutely real, utterly genuine bloodline resonance between mother and daughter.
Ning Rongrong's pupils quaked, and towering waves surged through her heart:
She's really my child? Just one drop of blood could produce my offspring?
Throughout this whole process, I didn't even come into contact with any man. No, I didn't come into contact with anyone at all, didn't even touch the machine. I didn't suffer the slightest hardship, and the child was born, all from a single drop of blood.
Looking at the baby before her, as delicately carved as jade, Ning Rongrong simply could not calm herself. Her heart pounded.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to scoop up this little one connected to her by blood and give her a vigorous cuddle, but reason restrained her.
She looked at Lin Yan:
"She's only an infant right now. There's no way to test her Martial Soul or Innate Soul Power.
Why wasn't she six years old as soon as she hatched?"
Hearing that, Lin Yan rolled his eyes at her:
"Are children in your family six years old when they're born?"
"True, but then how do I know whether you're lying?"
"Isn't this egg already heaven-defying enough to make it obvious?
She's your child. That feeling of being connected by blood can't be faked, can it?
She's so heaven-defying that anyone who isn't blind could see it, couldn't they?
Even someone blind would know just by getting close and smelling her aura that this child is absolutely extraordinary. She's either a peerless prodigy or a divine child from the heavens."
"That's true, but it still doesn't prove whether what you said was true.
Can you keep accelerating her?
You said you could accelerate her straight to her Martial Soul Awakening at six years old."
"Of course." Lin Yan's eyes immediately lit up at her words.
Ning Rongrong, however, rolled her eyes:
"You money-grubbing bastard. You've fallen right into a coin's square hole."
"Sure enough, there's another add-on package. Accelerate her straight to six for me, and don't pull any more tricks."
"Certainly." Lin Yan nodded and explained,
"But once she's hatched, she counts as a person, not an egg, so the price isn't the same.
A person has to grow. Accelerating a person's growth involves an even more heaven-defying domain of time, so the price will be just a tiny bit higher, roughly three times the acceleration fee for a red-quality divine egg."
"270,000 Gold Soul Coins per year. Accelerating her to six years old comes to 1.62 million Gold Soul Coins."
"You profiteer. 1.62 million it is. Accelerate her for me."
Ning Rongrong did not hesitate. The same reasoning still held: she was already here, the money was already spent, and things had already come this far. Another 1.6 million no longer mattered. She had to see the final product with her own eyes.
As the final payment was deducted, a new round of time acceleration began.
The radiant light inside the cultivation machine swirled even more intensely. Vast life force enveloped the swaddled baby girl, and the years raced past. Before everyone's disbelieving eyes, the infant soon became a toddler, then a young girl with her hair hanging loose.
At a speed visible to the naked eye, the tiny infant grew rapidly. In just a few breaths, her figure and appearance had completely transformed from a newborn in swaddling clothes into a peerlessly beautiful six-year-old girl with lovely, refined features and a transcendent bearing.
Before you continue