Chapter 11 — A Way to Make Money

When the experiment was done, Shi Jin was hungry, exhausted, and sleepy all at once.

He had meant to clean the courtyard and the rooms first, but in his present state he decided it could all wait until tomorrow—for tonight he would just make do.

"It's getting late, Shi Yun. I'll go fix dinner now."

"Eleven, you rest by yourself for a while. Wait for me to call you for the meal."

Shi Jin turned his head and said to Eleven.

The iron-eating beast behind the tree: |д•´)!!

Rest?

It shook its head violently.

How could it?

It had only just awakened its Hardening ability—how could it rest?

It had already fallen far behind the iron-eating beasts of its own age.

It simply had to get in some training.

If it did not complete its two hours of training, it would not be able to eat its dinner in peace.

Shi Jin, who possessed telepathy: ???

Shi Jin was stunned. The keeper Lin Zhuo had been right after all—there really was something off about this iron-eating beast.

It clearly wanted nothing more than to eat something delicious, yet because it had not trained yet, it felt it could not eat its dinner in peace???

Was that not taking self-discipline a bit too far?

"There's no need to rush so much," Shi Jin coaxed. "Today is a special case. It won't hurt to rest properly for a bit."

The iron-eating beast shook its head vehemently.

"Forget it…"

"Then you can practice your Hardening ability in the courtyard for now," Shi Li said.

"Awoo—" Eleven nodded, having clean forgotten all about Shi Cen wanting to eat its bamboo shoots, its expression gradually turning serious.

No sooner said than done… it looked at the walls around it.

That look gave Shi Jin a fright.

"Wait—first practice maintaining your Hardening ability, and retracting and releasing it."

"Try to get to where you can swiftly armor and harden a part of your body in the shortest possible time."

"Put everything else aside for now."

How to practice the Hardening ability was in fact quite simple.

The training methods for such low-tier skills were generally quite basic.

The breeding manual Lin Zhuo had given him, for instance, recorded them clearly.

Proficiency in the Hardening ability came down to four aspects, no more.

Duration of maintenance, area of coverage, speed of retraction and release, and hardening intensity!

That look in the iron-eating beast's eyes just now had clearly been aimed at practicing hardening intensity.

The basic method for training hardening intensity was something Eleven had already mastered back at the breeding base—namely, taking its normal body and its hardened body and tempering them like steel, over and over.

In other words, it just had to keep getting hit, or use its body to smash things.

Before Eleven had learned Hardening, it had not mattered so much—but now that it had learned it, if Shi Jin let it practice hardening intensity here, the house would not survive at all!

So Shi Jin hastily stopped the eager iron-eating beast and had it first practice the maintenance, retraction, and release of Hardening—the techniques that would not kick up too much of a racket.

"Training hardening intensity can wait until later."

After Shi Jin finished coaxing it, Eleven scratched its face, then nodded. All right, then.

At the same time, Shi Jin relaxed.

Still, he felt a little worn out inside.

It was obviously a good thing for a pet beast to be self-disciplined, so why did he still feel so tired? How strange…

"Phew."

Having settled the iron-eating beast, Shi Jue thought no more of it. He glanced at the green silk worm in the corner, dug a bundle of wire out of the house, and with the help of some tools fashioned it into a crude birdcage, in which he kept the creature.

After running his experiment on the green silk worm and seeing how much proficiency its silk skill had gained, Shi Zhao conceived of a way to make money.

Depending on how they are cultivated, the silk of the green woolly worm has a wide range of uses.

In textiles, in medicine, in industry—the silk of the green woolly worm finds a place in them all.

That is why, whether in Pingcheng or in Bingyuan City, there are breeding farms devoted to raising green woolly worms for silk production.

The silk turned out on such assembly lines, however, is respectable enough in quality but never truly fine.

The finest silk of all tends to come from beast masters who raise green woolly worms with particular care.

Plenty of buyers are willing to pay handsomely for the silk produced by such masters' pet beasts.

The higher the grade of the silk, the higher the price offered.

This sort of thing is common enough. Silk is hardly the only case—the bodies of many pet beasts have parts with wide applications, and beast masters who treat raising pet beasts as a trade are far from rare.

A beast master contracted to a wood-attribute pet beast hastens the ripening of spirit plants; one contracted to a healing-type pet beast treats the sick. These are all ways for beast masters to earn a little extra on the side.

So Shi Jin thought: since raising the green woolly worm's skill proficiency costs him nothing at all, and buying up silk is one of the most common trades on the market, why shouldn't he make his first pot of gold this way?

While training the iron-eating beast... he would raise this green woolly worm in his spare time as well. After all, the little creature only needed ordinary plant leaves to eat for now, and those were as plentiful as the green woolly worms themselves.

In time, once its silk proficiency was piled up to the perfect grade, the quality of its silk would surely be no low thing either.

A single bundle of silk sold then would ease the family's financial strain in an instant.

"Cheep—" The green woolly worm in its cage flopped over in gloom.

Shi Yan looked at it with a chuckle. Sorry about this—a man has to make a living.

A pity the green woolly worm's intelligence was nothing much. With any other pet beast, a windfall like this—a chance to rapidly raise skill proficiency—would have had them all scrambling and shoving to get in first.

...

Night fell.

After dinner, Shi Yan's iron-eating beast was worn out.

The constant, repeated use of its hardening ability during training had drained a great deal of Eleven's stamina.

The moment it finished eating, it flopped over and fell asleep, its round body spread out in a heap.

Though it had come to an unfamiliar place, it slept soundly and peacefully—and in sleep, it wore a smile it never showed while awake.

Shi Qi looked at the iron-eating beast still smacking its lips in its sleep, and smiled along with it.

A disposition like this owed something to talent, surely—but perhaps, too, the different experiences that came of individual differences really did weigh on its mind.

It loved eating, plainly enough, yet it would not eat until its training was done. Was it afraid that if it seemed to slack, it would be abandoned once more?

As the iron-eating beast's master, Shi Jin could faintly sense its thoughts. In Eleven's eyes, the reason the beast masters before had not chosen it, had not acknowledged it, was simply that it had performed too poorly.

"Rest easy. No matter what happens, I will never abandon you."

It is common enough for beast masters to swap out pet beasts—especially once they have grown in strength, they will replace the low-grade beasts they first contracted with higher-race ones. Shi Jue knew what grade of beast master he might become, but he had resolved that he would never abandon a single pet beast he had contracted.

It did not matter if the contracted beast's race grade was low. At worst, he would risk being drained dry and go secretly learn a divine skill or two!

Speaking of which... did iron-eating beasts have any path of evolution? On that point, Shi Yu truly had no idea.

Next, Shi Jin recalled Eleven into the beast space. Resting there, it would recover and rest better than outside, and sleep more at ease besides.