Wasn't this student, Mi Xiaoyu, being taught by a teacher named Wang Ze? Where had this genius Teacher Luo Yu from an extracurricular tutoring class sprung up from?
The school administrators were stunned. Who was it again? Why did the name sound so familiar? Naturally, no one immediately thought of fifteen-year-old Luo Yu. At his age, there was no way to associate him with a teacher.
"Luo Yu from the Luo Yu Research Institute?" Yu Lei asked tentatively. He remembered the names of everyone on Mirror Moon Island, and there was only one person named Luo Yu.
"Mm-hmm." Mi Xiaoyu nodded repeatedly, a smile appearing on her chubby face. Actually, it had been stung by a Honey Water Bee. Luo Yu had discovered that stings for "Five Senses Enhancement" worked best on the face, with the most noticeable improvement to sight and hearing.
Everyone: "..."
"When did Luo Yu become a teacher?!" Director Yu Lei was bewildered. Wasn't Luo Yu working on breeding medical Ink Fish? How had he ended up running an extracurricular tutoring class too?!
"You mean your Wind-Entwining Worm became this powerful because Scholar Luo Yu tutored you?" A vice principal began to question everything.
She had spent half her life working in education. To be fair, this defied common sense. In a normal cultivation plan, shouldn't one feed a pet beast until it evolved before talking about combat?
What did she mean, it had jumped in and fought a zombie beast while still in its worm form?
What kind of extracurricular tutoring class had such a wild approach? Was it even legitimate?!
"All right..." Yu Lei had already noticed something was off, but the examination was still underway, so it wasn't a good time to ask more. He said, "Let's keep watching the others first... By the way, how many people are in your tutoring class?"
"Counting me, three..." Mi Xiaoyu said quietly. "The other two are actually stronger than me..."
There were more experts? The school administrators exchanged glances.
Among the new students, a group came from relatively well-off families. Their parents were all elites of the great fleet, and they had emptied their family savings to buy their children pet beasts of an "upper-tier common species." No matter how troublesome the zombie sea beasts were, while it was easy to overcome a difference of one minor species tier, overcoming two was much harder.
However, the students who had contracted upper-tier common species did not put on the most eye-catching performances, because the other teachers and students knew they were relying on their pet beasts' species advantage to crush their opponents.
But three people had achieved the same overwhelming results with pet beasts of lower-tier species, making them stand out far more from a cultivation standpoint.
Mi Xiaoyu was one...
Later, Zhuang Feng, who had contracted a Wave Dog, also took the field... It was the first time the teachers and students had seen a Wave Dog whose claws were trained instead of its teeth... Was this a dog or a cat?
But judging by both the fight and the result, this Wave Dog had also performed exceptionally well. Not only had it easily kept up with the zombie frog's movements, it had cleanly sliced off the zombie frog's tongue with a single swipe the moment it attacked.
A torrent flashed across its claws like a streak of blue sword light.
Water-tune beheading!
The zombie frog's head flew off as well.
Many students who had contracted Wave Dogs parted their lips slightly, wondering if they had been cultivating theirs in the wrong direction. Could it be... that claws were more useful than teeth?
Bing Liang and his pet beast, an Ice Mist Lizard, were there purely to show off their skills!
Ice Mist froze beneath the lizard's feet, forming something like ice skates, and it actually began skating around the arena. Despite being in such an unstable state, the giant lizard was frighteningly nimble, circling the licker and kiting it.
Some students could kill a zombie frog, but very few had pet beasts that could toy with a zombie beast the way his did.
"How come this extracurricular tutoring class seems to teach even better than the school's elite teachers?" Director Yu Lei's words struck like thunder, leaving the school administrators drenched in sweat.
Yes, they wanted to ask the same thing! Why?!
That same day, Director Yu Lei summoned Luo Yu.
"I did it. I helped them assess their pet beasts' talents. That Wave Dog's claws underwent a secondary mutation, the Cold Mist Lizard has some talent for speed, and the Wind-Entwining Worm has an ice-element talent." Luo Yu's battle robe fluttered in the wind.
"My eyes haven't failed me yet..." Director Yu Lei took a deep drag on his cigarette. "That can't be achieved just by pointing them toward the right cultivation paths and developing their talents. Under normal circumstances, how could a Wind-Entwining Worm have enough strength to slap its body against the ground and launch itself several meters into the air? Is it a jumping spider?"
"And that level-six Wave Dog's level is what it is. Condensing a 'high-pressure torrent' at that flow speed... makes very high demands on a pet beast's physical strength and defense, yet its body could withstand it easily... Well-developed claws alone can't explain that anymore."
"As for the Ice Mist Lizard, the 'balance' it displayed while sliding around the arena on ice isn't something that can be trained overnight, either. It requires extremely sensitive visual, muscular, and nervous-system responses to the surrounding environment!"
"Physical strength, bodily defense, and the five senses... In these three qualities, those three pet beasts were like entirely different species!" Director Yu Lei analyzed.
An expert indeed.
Sure enough, he had what it took to become a director.
Luo Yu said with a sigh, "They did undergo some special training in those three qualities..."
"What special training?" Director Yu Lei asked at once. "Can the training method be made widely available?"
If it could be made available to every student, it was hard to imagine how good the next batch of graduates would be.
Growth in strength could also snowball. With a solid foundation, their advantages would only grow.
"Well..." Luo Yu looked troubled.
"Actually, this training method is still only in the experimental stage. It's related to a new Honey Water Bee research project I'm working on. How about this, Director? It's getting late, so I'll give a detailed report on the research at tomorrow's 'research briefing.'"
"I'll bring all the training data with me then."
Yu Lei was taken aback. A new... research project?!
He fell into deep thought.
Where had this new research project come from?!
Wasn't the Luo Yu Research Institute supposed to have been working on breeding Ink Fish this past month?
Besides, he could put the breeding of medical Ink Fish down to Luo Yu having taken over some of the research results of Scholar Luo Shui and his wife and completed the final step, but Honey Water Bees... Had the Luo Shui Research Institute ever studied Honey Water Bees before? He had forgotten!
The next day, at September's research briefing.
The heads of the various research institutes gathered once more. All of them had unsteady steps and thermoses in hand. It seemed the research on the Ancient Grotto was indeed exhausting.
Once everyone had arrived, Director Yu Lei didn't even light a cigarette. He immediately asked Luo Yu, "All right, hurry and report on your research results!"
Seeing how impatient Director Yu Lei was, Chen Zhuo and the other researchers thought that the director really was invested in the research on breeding medical Ink Fish... He ignored everyone else and went straight to asking Luo Yu about the progress...
"All right, I'll give my report on the Luo Yu Research Institute's research into 'Honey Water Bees' now..."
As soon as Luo Yu finished speaking, Bai Dong, the Hybridization Granny, was taken aback. "Honey Water Bees?"
She wondered if Luo Yu had misspoken and said Honey Water Bees instead of Ink Fish.
"Honey Water Bees, yes," Director Yu Lei said.
That was exactly what he wanted to hear about. The breeding of Ink Fish was already on track, and for now, the Honey Water Bee training method was more interesting to him!
"Honey Water Bees are a new type of mutated beast my institute is studying..." Luo Yu said. "Our research has found that some individual Honey Water Bees have also undergone a 'mutation.' The effects of this mutation are enough to rewrite the current state of education on Mirror Moon Island."
The heads of the research institutes, aside from the director: ???
What did he mean, the Luo Yu Research Institute was researching a brand-new mutated beast?
What about the fish?! Was he not bothering with them anymore?
Besides, hadn't he just led a revolution in the medical field on Mirror Moon Island? How had he gotten involved in education too?!
"The toxin in these mutated individuals' poison stings has a certain strengthening effect on some attributes of other living beings, such as strength, defense, sight, and hearing."
"So I thought of using this characteristic of theirs to strengthen Beast Tamers and pet beasts. I named it the 'Sting Training Method.'"
"You mean if Honey Water Bees attack Beast Tamers and pet beasts with Poison Sting, the Beast Tamers and pet beasts will grow stronger?" Chen Zhuo asked. "Is that really possible? Can it work? What about side effects?!"
He was a researcher who studied the strengthening of the bond between humans and mutated beasts, so he was especially sensitive to mutated beasts' abilities that could have positive effects on the human body.
Luo Yu said, "It works, and very well."
"Besides trying it myself, I also took on three students, all of whom are new students at the Beast Taming school this year."
"I trained them using this method for less than half a month..."
"Just yesterday, all three of them performed exceptionally well in the new students' assessment. The director was there at the time."
Everyone turned to look at Director Yu Lei in unison.
Director Yu Lei nodded and said, "That's true... From what I've learned, those three students were previously only in the middle of the pack among the more than five hundred new students."
"But in yesterday's assessment, their contracted pet beasts, whether the Low-Rank Species Wind-Entwining Worm and Wave Dog or the Mid-Rank Species Cold Mist Lizard, all displayed overwhelming strength against the 'lickers.'"
"You could say every one of them was capable of quickly defeating a licker of the same level!"
"That performance was second only to the few new students who had contracted Superior Species."
"And most importantly... it was only half a month?"
Director Yu Lei confirmed the time frame with Luo Yu again. Less than half a month... That was too outrageous!
"Wait, wait?!" Shen Mo, the virus researcher, was taken aback. "There's nothing strange about a Wave Dog or a Cold Mist Lizard defeating a licker of the same level, but a Wind-Entwining Worm defeated a zombie beast of the same level?"
Was he kidding?
Luo Yu smiled faintly and said, "That's why I say the 'Sting Training Method' works. Of course, the main reason that Wind-Entwining Worm could win was that it had good talent... It had an additional elemental talent..."
"In short, I think that with the 'Sting Training Method,' it would probably take only half a month to train a student of passing standard to an excellent level. Of course, there are costs and side effects too. The process is very painful, and one or two sessions won't show much effect. It needs to be continued over a long period, and the stung areas will also swell for a while..."
"However, unlike Ink Fish ink, these Honey Water Bees' toxins retain some effect for several hours after leaving their bodies, although the effect is weaker. So perhaps they could be combined with other materials and made into a 'strengthening potion.' It might work even better and reduce the pain."
But he couldn't research that aspect himself, mainly because he didn't understand it.
"Of course, there are also some difficulties in making this training method widely available at present. The Luo Yu Research Institute has too few Honey Water Bee specimens right now, and I haven't started breeding experiments yet. So at this briefing, I'd like to apply to the director for an additional batch of research funds..."
"And build another Honey Water Bee farm and breeding base...!" Luo Yu looked at everyone.
Even though he had learned from Yu Wan that the island was short of money too, this concerned the island's future. Who was in favor, and who was against?