Jiang Xing had still been immersed in the power of mythology when he saw the system text and nearly lost it.
Had the System Bro bugged out again?
A Key Stone was a type of stone from the Pokémon world that contained an unknown power. It could interact with Mega Stones created under the influence of XY energy, awakening the latent power within Pokémon and allowing them to undergo Mega Evolution...
What the hell did that have to do with the Blessing Pendant?
This thing was clearly a blessing gemstone condensed from the power of mythical Pet Beasts in the Beast Taming World!
And where the hell was the System Bro?
Why did it vanish immediately after identifying this thing as a Key Stone?
At least give him a mission!
Don't tell him that because Key Stones and Mega Stones were paired items, and only part of the set had been discovered here, the corresponding mission would only trigger after the complete set had been gathered?
Wouldn't that be completely doomed—
If the Blessing Gemstones were crystallizations of mythical Pet Beast power, and therefore possessed power similar to Key Stones—the ability to resonate with Mega Stones and allow Pet Beasts carrying Mega Stones to undergo evolutions beyond their limits...
Then where the hell was Jiang Xing supposed to find the Mega Stones corresponding to every individual Pet Beast, the ones capable of releasing their specific hidden potential?
There was no way he could pull those out of his ass too, right?
'...'
Jiang Xing waited for a moment, only to discover that the system had disconnected again without the slightest response.
Left with no choice, he reluctantly returned the Blessing Pendant to Su Muli.
No matter what, the System Bro's reputation was still rock solid.
Since it had identified the gemstones symbolizing blessings, then those gemstones definitely contained power similar to that of Key Stones—power capable of stimulating a Pet Beast's hidden potential.
With that in mind, Jiang Xing decisively made his choice.
Compared to the achievement of becoming a Beast Taming Doctor, a Perfect-Quality Blessing Stone was far more important.
What if he really managed to get Mega Stones someday?
...
After finishing his conversation with Su Muli, Jiang Xing turned his attention back to training and development.
Compared to Mega Stones, which were still nothing more than a vague fantasy, the Fairy Plate was already in his possession—a real, tangible resource.
Better to make proper use of the resources already in hand before thinking about future possibilities.
Jiang Xing first ordered ten Sunlight Stones online.
This was a type of rare Secret Realm stone produced in the Radiant Sun Secret Realm. It contained intense Light-type power and could trigger evolution in certain Wood-type and Light-type Pet Beasts.
They were extremely expensive, starting at two hundred thousand per stone.
But Jiang Xing was rich now. He was no longer the broke guy who used to feel heartache over buying a few Dragon Scale Lychees and desperately wanted to monopolize the supply chain immediately afterward.
Ten Sunlight Stones amounted to just over two million. He didn't even blink while placing the order.
He couldn't even be bothered to come up with an evolution plan just to fleece official funding over such a tiny expense anymore...
If you were going to fleece them, you fleeced them properly. This was pocket change!
Jiang Xing used those Sunlight Stones for practice. Following the blueprints left behind by Dr. Amru and combining them with Spiritual Weaving Cloth, he crafted a Light-type evolution item—
In terms of appearance, Jiang Xing designed it as a golden fabric flower radiating warm sunlight.
'Even though I already have the Fairy Plate, Fairy-type power in the Beast Taming World is still far too thin. Whether it can actually function right now is still unclear...'
'To be safe, I should prepare the original Light-type evolution item first.'
'Besides, there are a full thirty Honey Attendants in the research institute. Perfect for testing the actual effects of different evolution items...'
After completing the Golden Sunflower, Jiang Xing took out the "Fairy Stones."
The predecessors of these Fairy Stones had originally been several Empty Energy Stones.
These could be inserted into devices like Talent Detectors and Attribute Detectors as energy sources, functioning similarly to energy batteries.
They were renewable resources. Once depleted, they could be placed in special environments to slowly recharge and acquire the corresponding attribute energy.
The process was relatively slow, however, and required fairly strict environmental conditions.
As a result, research institutes generally treated Empty Energy Stones as discount goods, exchanging them with energy stone companies for fully recharged new ones.
At this moment, Jiang Xing took advantage of that characteristic, drawing power from the Fairy Plate to create these special Fairy Stones.
Then, using the Fairy Stones as materials and following the blueprint, he crafted the second evolution item.
Though it shared the same flower-like appearance, its color and power had transformed into pink Fairy energy.
Considering that the Fairy Attribute was also known as the Fae Attribute, Jiang Xing named this evolution item the Pink Fae Flower.
...
While Jiang Xing busied himself crafting items, Su Muli wasn't idle either.
She gathered all the Honey Attendants and Ugly Waterfowl in the research institute and began move training.
Among them, the Ugly Waterfowl's training progress was far from optimistic.
Although these Ugly Waterfowl were the second batch raised by Jiang Xing, they were not "second-generation birds." They still belonged to the "first generation."
Their personality flaws—low self-esteem, timidity, and the like—still remained.
On top of that, in order to test the effects of Beauty evolution, Jiang Xing and Su Muli had deliberately avoided increasing their Friendship, causing those flaws to never improve.
The progress of developing original Beauty moves was painfully slow and extremely torturous.
Fortunately, Su Muli quickly came up with a new solution—
First train Inky and the Mysticfeather Peacock, allowing them to develop the Beauty move [Gorgeous Feather], then teach the completed Gorgeous Feather move to the Ugly Waterfowl.
Sure enough, once they switched methods, both the development process and the learning process became much easier.
The former were naturally beautiful Pet Beasts and could wield Beauty power with ease.
The latter admired and longed to become like the former. During training, they studied with exceptional seriousness, desperately trying to wear the Strange Feather imbued with the Mysticfeather Peacock's power in order to unleash Beauty moves.
At last, progress began to move forward.
One Ugly Waterfowl after another completed evolution, transforming into Mysticfeather Peacocks.
Throughout this process, by organizing the collected data, Jiang Xing not only confirmed the Mysticfeather Peacock's evolution conditions, but also refined the Beauty Theory based on fluctuations in the effects of Beauty moves, establishing its foundational model and a simple numerical framework—
Just like his earlier hypothesis, Beauty was divided into Base Beauty and Additional Beauty. Only when the two were combined did they form the true Real-Time Beauty.
Jiang Xing calculated them separately, assigning each a maximum of 100 points, for a total of 200 points.
As for the Mysticfeather Peacock's evolution conditions, they were:
[Level + Real-Time Beauty ≥ 150]
Among them, the Gorgeous Feather move and the Strange Feather item could provide as much as roughly 100 points of Additional Beauty.
That meant that as long as those two conditions were fulfilled, the Ugly Waterfowl only needed around 50 points of Base Beauty to complete evolution.
Fifty points of Base Beauty was relatively easy to achieve.
As a result, the Mysticfeather Peacock's evolution conditions could practically be regarded as:
[Level + Move + Strange Feather]
'Compared to the simple and stable nature of Friendship, Beauty really is far more complicated...'
'And Beauty is only one branch of Contest Appeal. At the very least, there are still the four other stats: Cool, Clever, Tough, and Cute.'
'If I want to fully develop all of them and satisfy the conditions necessary to hold a Contest... there's still a very long road ahead.'
As for whether Beauty, like many people speculated, represented some undiscovered attribute just like Friendship did...
Jiang Xing could only answer: he didn't know.
Because humanity currently only possessed two methods for detecting special unknown attributes similar to Emotion.
The first was directly collecting the corresponding energy and analyzing it through instruments. The second was using move interactions and type suppression to perform attribute analysis.
But the "Charm" corresponding to Beauty was something even more vague and intangible than the power of emotions.
Not only was its energy difficult to collect, but it also lacked any offensive moves...
All known Charm-type moves were special-effect abilities such as seduction, intimidation, or making opponents cry from ugliness.
There was no such thing as "the prettier it is, the higher the damage," nor nonsense like "the trajectory of this spit attack is exceptionally elegant, so its power increases."
Since there were no offensive moves, naturally there was no way to use move-testing devices for attribute analysis.
As a result, no matter how much people speculated that Beauty might correspond to a hidden attribute, it could only remain at the level of a Hypothesis.
Only one day, when someone developed a true "Glamour Attack" whose power genuinely depended on beauty...
Or when technology advanced far enough to directly collect and analyze "Charm" itself...
Would humanity finally obtain the answer to that question.
This became yet another unanswered question newly born within Pet Beast Attribute Studies.
The Beauty Hypothesis.
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