After two months of continuous activity, Jiang Ziliu stopped pushing his luck and took half a month to rest and recuperate.
During that time, he also kept having his two contracted beasts absorb Elemental Crystals, steadily reinforcing their foundations.
During this period of rest, they finally achieved breakthroughs in their levels of life.
Because Jiang Ziliu valued their foundations, their breakthroughs came as naturally as water flowing into a completed channel. Their accumulated foundations had simply reached the point where a full vessel overflowed, carrying them to new heights of life.
After the two contracted beasts broke through, their life feedback also brought Jiang Ziliu a small amount of growth!
Jiang Ziliu: Profession: five-star black iron grade beast tamer Lifespan: 16 (198) Life status: healthy Soul strength: 109.7 Life level: black iron grade lifeform Dark energy level: 57.2 Personal skills: Probability Judgment (innate skill): could determine the probability of a specified outcome at any time Feedback skills: Life Aura Concealment (SSS rank) Electromagnetic Manipulation (SSS+) Flesh Shapeshifting (SS) Contracted beasts: two-star bronze rank Azurite Rock Man, one-star bronze rank Mutated Lightning Snake, nine-star gray rock rank Green-Skinned Shapeshifting Spirit Contracted beast skills: Azurite Rock Man: Life Aura Concealment (SSS rank), Rock and Earth Avatar (S-), Rock and Earth Evasion (B rank), Rock and Earth Concealment (B- rank), Mutated Spirituality (C+), Rock and Earth Sneak Stab (C+), Saber Mastery (D-), 1.2% dwarf titan bloodline (D-), Earth Space Evasion (unawakened) Mutated Lightning Snake: Electromagnetic Manipulation (SSS+ rank), Electric Current Attack (B- rank), Lightning Sky Skimming (B+ rank), Mutated Spirituality (B- rank) Green-Skinned Shapeshifting Spirit: Flesh Shapeshifting (SS), Transform into a Plant (C-), Transform into an Animal (C-), Super Digestion (D+) Contracted beast ranks: Azurite Rock Man: two-star bronze Mutated Lightning Snake: one-star bronze Green-Skinned Shapeshifting Spirit: nine-star gray rock Contracted beast status: Azurite Rock Man: healthy, favorability toward beast tamer 95%. Mutated Lightning Snake: healthy, favorability toward beast tamer 92%. Green-Skinned Shapeshifting Spirit: healthy, favorability toward beast tamer 70%.
Following this succession of breakthroughs, Jiang Ziliu's contracted beast, the Azurite Rock Man, had advanced to two-star bronze rank, the Mutated Lightning Snake had advanced to one-star bronze rank, and the Green-Skinned Shapeshifting Spirit had also reached nine-star gray rock rank with support from a small amount of resources.
The combined life feedback from these advances raised Jiang Ziliu to the life level of five-star black iron grade.
After his life level rose again, his lifespan also grew to nearly two hundred years.
His raw strength alone was now enough to overwhelm ninety percent of gray rock grade exotic beasts specializing in strength and physique.
One had to remember that exotic beasts were stronger than humans of the same rank.
With this advancement, Jiang Ziliu's overall combat strength reached upper bronze rank, and he could even defeat some lifeforms at the peak of bronze rank.
With the necessary tactics added to the mix, Jiang Ziliu was confident he could exchange blows with silver rank exotic beasts.
And silver rank was the strongest level publicly known in the tier-four Base No. 12!
Only now, in this wondrous and varied world where the strong could overturn rivers and seas, did Jiang Ziliu possess a basic ability to protect himself and a little sense of security.
After this advancement, the Azurite Rock Man looked even more like a human. Its advances seemed to keep pushing it in a human direction.
The little fellow had not grown any larger, but its strength had increased tremendously.
With its dwarf taidan bloodline, the Azurite Rock Man now possessed terrifying physical strength.
It could already lift objects weighing nearly two hundred tons.
After advancing to bronze rank, its strength had reached the hundred-ton level. A single punch was enough to blast a huge crater into the ground and cause a small earth tremor.
And after reaching bronze rank, its Rock and Earth Avatar could summon a rock-and-earth giant nearly fifty meters tall-a truly terrifying giant lifeform!
In its Rock and Earth Avatar state, the Azurite Rock Man could withstand a concerted assault by dozens of tanks.
That was the power of bronze rank lifeforms.
They were merely the third level of extraordinary life. The name bronze rank might not sound particularly grand, but their destructive power was terrifying as hell!
Such strength was more than enough to threaten Base No. 12's defenses.
The Mutated Lightning Snake had advanced a little more slowly, reaching only one-star bronze rank.
But the Mutated Lightning Snake's size had undergone an enormous change.
Upon reaching bronze rank, its surface still resembled white jade, and it still looked extremely beautiful.
But its body had grown to seven meters long!
A seven-meter giant snake, and one that could fly at that, was an enormous creature that inspired fear at first sight.
The Mutated Lightning Snake's enormous growth was entirely in keeping with the tendency of most exotic beasts to grow larger as they grew stronger.
The seven-meter Mutated Lightning Snake could already carry Jiang Ziliu soaring through the sky with ease.
Jiang Ziliu tried flying on his contracted beast. Apart from the somewhat uncomfortable electricity on its body, the sensation of flying was truly exhilarating.
Only by soaring through the sky could one experience the fear, excitement, pleasure, and longing for a broader world that came with being up there.
When people achieved flight through the sky, they would feel incomparably free and yearn for the skies at even greater heights.
Jiang Ziliu found flying almost addictive.
Fortunately, he restrained his desire. After learning to ride the Mutated Lightning Snake in flight, he began testing its other abilities.
Having reached bronze rank, it could make better use of its B- rank Electric Current Attack skill.
It could now spit out a bolt of lightning to attack, with a maximum striking range of around a hundred meters.
At the same time, it could use Electric Current Attack to create a chaotic electrical storm within twenty meters of itself.
Every living thing within this range, apart from the Mutated Lightning Snake itself, would face terrifying strikes of randomly appearing lightning.
But the most formidable aspect of the bronze rank Mutated Lightning Snake was the Electromagnetic Cannon derived from its Electromagnetic Manipulation skill.
When it fired the Electromagnetic Cannon, it could launch an attack with a maximum range of a hundred kilometers.
Its effective range for inflicting heavy damage was ten kilometers.
In other words, as long as another bronze rank contracted beast was within ten kilometers, with no obstacle between it and the Mutated Lightning Snake, the Mutated Lightning Snake could finish off that being of the same rank with a single shot.
Such combat strength was already extremely powerful in ranged attacks, a terrifying force comparable to silver rank.
Its close-quarters combat strength was somewhat weaker.
But that weakness was only relative to the power of the Electromagnetic Cannon. It was now an evolved snake capable of flight.
It was an aerial combatant. Flight combined with electrical strikes gave it an inherently powerful and special advantage against ground-based exotic beasts.
Overall, the Mutated Lightning Snake could absolutely be considered a powerful upper bronze rank combatant, or even a quasi-silver rank one.
If the two worked together, with Jiang Ziliu's strength added in, the three of them combined already possessed genuine entry-level silver rank combat strength.
The Green-Skinned Shapeshifting Spirit, meanwhile, was truly a support combatant and could be disregarded.
Initially, after the preliminary contract was formed, its favorability toward Jiang Ziliu had been only 60% because of fear and fright, but that favorability had arisen from fear and submission.
Only after he continuously soothed and fed it did its favorability rise to 70%, making for a relatively good start.
It had been allocated fewer resources and had made only a small advancement, strengthening to nine-star gray rock rank.
Its progress was slow mainly because Jiang Ziliu had spent most of his resources on his first two contracted beasts.
This round of strengthening had been an advancement in their levels of life, primarily consuming Elemental Crystals.
Nearly a quarter of the Elemental Crystals Jiang Ziliu had hunted for over almost two months had been consumed.
What he currently had left consisted mainly of Elemental Crystals of other attributes.
What Jiang Ziliu did not know was that many forces already had their eyes on him.
And they did not know what Jiang Ziliu's true strength was, much less that he had now achieved an enormous increase in strength.
That was how the beast-taming world was: circumstances were always changing, always filled with uncertain, unknown factors.