High School Student with Immortal Race System

Chen Beiwang held the [Bone Marrow Cleansing Pill], looking even more surprised than Yang Shen.

"Of course I recognize it. I took quite a few of these when I was younger. They’re incredibly precious—one of the best targeted Supplements for the Marrow Refining Realm."

"If it wasn’t for this stuff, with my lazy personality, I would’ve had a hard time getting a high score on the college entrance exams."

"That’s not right... Even Xu Bamboo couldn’t get her hands on this stuff, and her mother would never allow her to give it to someone else... Where did you get it?"

Yang Shen frowned. "Can you be more specific? What exactly is the connection between Xu Bamboo and the [Bone Marrow Cleansing Pill]?"

Chen Beiwang scratched his head. "You could say there’s a connection, but you could also say there isn’t."

Yang Shen said, "I feel like you’ve said something, yet said nothing at all."

Chen Beiwang sighed. "The specifics... if I told you, it would be like gossiping behind their backs. To be precise, Xu Bamboo wouldn’t recognize this anyway. It’s a matter concerning her parents. Just forget I said anything."

Yang Shen said, "You’re a real piece of work... So helpful. How about a twenty percent discount on my tutoring fees from now on? Would that persuade you to tell me?"

Chen Beiwang laughed, full of confidence. "Ha! How about I charge you one hundred and twenty percent? Would that persuade you to stop asking?"

"It’s a deal! Six hundred an hour from now on."

Chen Beiwang: ?

Since he couldn’t pry any information out of him, Yang Shen could only turn his attention back to the [Bone Marrow Cleansing Pill]. "So, is this Elixir Pill the real deal? Is it safe to take?"

Chen Beiwang sniffed it. "From my experience with this stuff, it should be genuine. But just to be safe, I’ll run some tests on it for you later."

"That friend of your uncle is pretty generous, huh? This stuff is extremely hard to come by because several key ingredients are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Judging by its color and quality, it seems to be an older pill, but it’s been preserved very well."

If even Chen Beiwang called it precious, then it was truly precious.

Yang Shen asked, "It’s that valuable... Can I sell it?"

Chen Beiwang said, "What? You want to sell it? It’s a foregone conclusion that you’ll enter the Marrow Refining Realm, so wouldn’t it be better to take it yourself? You’d get a lot of money for it, but if you tried to use that money to buy it back... good luck."

This sloppy, terrible adult suddenly thought of something. He placed the bottle back on the coffee table and sighed.

"If you’re in a bind for money, I can lend you some. But [Bone Marrow Cleansing Pills] are a once-in-a-lifetime find; you can’t just go out and buy them. Even I can’t get my hands on them anymore. I suggest you keep them for yourself. Or, if you can bear to part with some, you could give a few to Xu Bamboo."

"But... don’t tell her what they are, and don’t ask her if she recognizes them. Trust me. I’m not trying to be mysterious or play games. Some questions are better left unasked, or they’ll just lead to heartbreak."

The tangled web of intrigue only made Yang Shen more curious.

"I’ve changed my mind. Fifty percent off my tutoring fees from now on. Will that get you to talk?"

Chen Beiwang pointed to himself. "Do I look like an idiot? I’m not falling for that again."

"I don’t know how that ’uncle’ of yours got his hands on this... Maybe it was part of a batch that was lost overseas... Just think it over. There’s no need to rush your decision."

Yang Shen nodded.

He was willing to help Xu Bamboo if the opportunity arose.

The [Bone Marrow Cleansing Pills] were expensive, but he had already drunk nearly a whole case of her Essence Liquid.

He had approached Chen Beiwang not just because he had a basic level of trust in him, but largely because the man was filthy rich and wouldn’t be tempted to do something stupid just because the item was valuable.

For anyone else, the value of the [Bone Marrow Cleansing Pill] would likely be enough to break their "trust."

Chen Beiwang then picked up the third item Yang Shen had brought: a [Peiyuan Pill].

This Elixir Pill was a single unit; Yang Shen hadn’t brought the bottle, just this one in a small pouch.

Yet Chen Beiwang picked it up, sniffed it, held it up to the light for a moment, and then went so far as to scrape off a tiny flake with his fingernail... and pop it in his mouth.

’Chen Beiwang is truly reckless,’ Yang Shen thought. He himself would never dare taste an Elixir Pill of unknown origin like that.

Chen Beiwang shot to his feet.

"Whoa? What is this? This stuff packs a punch!"

Yang Shen said nothing, simply giving him an expression that said, ’That’s what I’m here to ask you.’

Chen Beiwang scraped off another flake, placed it in his mouth, and closed his eyes to savor the sensation for a moment before continuing to scrape at it.

"Stop scraping it... you’re going to turn it to mush! Are your fingernails even clean?!"

Chen Beiwang’s frown deepened. Finally, he said, "This isn’t made with any common Yanhua Country pharmaceutical process... Its source absorption efficiency is far beyond conventional levels..."

This matched what Yang Shen had felt when he took the [Peiyuan Pill]. Both the absorption speed and the "Source Concentration" far surpassed any Supplements he’d ever encountered.

Logically, solids should be less effective than liquids, and liquids less effective than injections. But this thing was faster and more concentrated than an injection!

Chen Beiwang muttered to himself, "Some foreign country has this technology? But Yanhua Country is the global leader in biopharmaceuticals..."

Yang Shen offered, "Mr. Lei spends all his time at sea. Could it be an ancestral secret formula from some island?"

Chen Beiwang clicked his tongue in amazement. "I’m a Martial Arts Researcher. I don’t believe old methods can outperform new ones, but I can’t rule out the possibility of a special ingredient whose applications just haven’t been discovered by the market yet."

Yang Shen steered the conversation. "So, can you reverse-engineer its ingredients and production method?"

Chen Beiwang said, "I can try with the ingredients... The production method will probably be tough. Come on, head upstairs with me."

As he was pulled upstairs, Yang Shen discovered that the third floor of Chen Beiwang’s house was set up like a laboratory.

It was a mess, but its sanitary conditions were impeccable—a stark contrast to the rest of the mansion. The lab was filled with high-tech equipment he didn’t recognize.

Chen Beiwang changed into a white lab coat and instantly looked a bit more respectable.

’So the Martial Arts Tractor has a side I’m not familiar with...’

Chen Beiwang spoke as he powered up the equipment.

"I have to live here for the next few months, but work is work. I don’t trust the skill level of the guys at the company. Part of the research for the ’Martial Arts Psychosis’ suppressant was done right here."

"How many of these do you have? Analyzing the ingredients means destroying the pill, so it would be best to have a few."

Yang Shen lied without batting an eye. "This is the last one."

"Then we’ll have to use it sparingly... Let’s start with the composition analysis."

After that, Chen Beiwang moved from one piece of equipment to another, at times scraping off a sample for a microscope, at others using some kind of spectrometer or source-spectrometer...

In any case, Yang Shen was just an onlooker.

Before high school, academic classes only covered the basics. Only liberal arts colleges and research-focused majors at Martial Arts Universities delved into more advanced subjects.

As mentioned before, Cyan Blue continuously acquired new technologies from the Exotic Realm.

As a result, apart from its own "Martial Arts-Origin-Biological System," other scientific fields were rather lackluster; they just took whatever was readily available.

This also meant that liberal arts colleges offered no real prospects. Only the research-track majors at Martial Arts Colleges were highly regarded.

In other words, one could only access true knowledge by excelling in Martial Arts.

Biology, for example, was a university-level subject. High school only covered the human body and exercise, without going into more complex details.

Advanced knowledge was only passed down through family lines, blood, and Martial Arts... This wasn’t by law, but a natural consequence of the development of Martial Arts Socialism.

Chen Beiwang was clearly one of the experts.

To be able to develop a suppressant for "Martial Arts Psychosis" so quickly, Chen Beiwang and his company had to be top-tier. Even so, Yang Shen didn’t understand why he was staying in the Jinshui District as if under house arrest.

Hmm... ’house arrest’ wasn’t quite right. Chen Beiwang was living far too comfortably for that.

As he fiddled with the equipment, Chen Beiwang said, "Your progress seems to have skyrocketed lately. It’s not because you’ve been eating a lot of this stuff, is it?"

Yang Shen shook his head. ’There were ten in total. I ate two, and this one today is going to be destroyed. That only leaves me with seven.’

’If I had a ton of Peiyuan Pills...’ he thought.

’I’d completely dominate Nanliang High School! I’d grab Director Liang and smash his head in!’

A single pill was worth 10 points of Qi and Blood Value, twenty times that of an Initial Realm Passage.

If you only calculated its "Source Content" without considering its special effects, one Peiyuan Pill was equivalent to forty thousand yuan worth of "Initial Realm Passage." A bottle of ten would be worth four hundred thousand...

It wasn’t any cheaper than the [Bone Marrow Cleansing Pill]...

Thinking about it this way... Holy shit! Yang Shen felt a sharp pang of regret.

Chen Beiwang was experimenting with his forty thousand yuan!

"Let’s try to be a little more frugal. I see some flakes stuck to your blade... could you please scrape them off and use them?"

Chen Beiwang was speechless. "Am I really that hard up for your little crumbs? I’m not even charging you a testing fee! Do you have any idea how much it costs to hire me for a job?"

"I just know that my price for tutoring you is six hundred an hour."

About two hours later, during which Yang Shen had "angrily" earned 1,200 yuan in tutoring fees while dozing off, Chen Beiwang finally exclaimed in frustration, "Damn it! It’s still not enough!"

Yang Shen sat up. "Did you figure anything out?"

Chen Beiwang sighed. "The sample is too small. I could only focus on analyzing the composition... There are a lot of seemingly familiar but not-quite-right things in here. I suspect a special manufacturing process has altered their properties."

"Not-quite-right?"

Chen Beiwang nodded. "Right. I can only say they’re approximations... How bizarre."

"There are three main ingredients and six auxiliary ones, for a total of nine."

Yang Shen took the piece of paper with the writing on it.

Main ingredients: Qi Gathering Vine, High-Source Yellow Essence, Nascent Source Grass.

Auxiliary ingredients: Five-leaf Polyporus, Nectar, Dendrobium, reishi mushroom, Earth Bone Skin, Red Dates.

Yang Shen hadn’t expected Chen Beiwang to be so capable. He had actually managed to figure out the Pill Formula!

The main ingredients were all "High Source" plants, while the auxiliary ingredients were common medicinal herbs, even if their names sounded profound... For example, Earth Bone Skin was actually just the outer skin of a certain plant’s rhizome.

Even something like Nectar was probably just used as a binding agent.

Chen Beiwang muttered to himself, "I have two questions. First, there are no modern, refined pharmaceutical components in here. It’s all made from old-fashioned, obsolete stuff... Is it really some lost secret formula from an island?"

"My second question... the properties of all the ingredients are only approximations... It feels like I’m reasoning backward, forcing a conclusion... But there’s only one known type of herb for each of these effects... Could these be special variants from that island?"

This was obviously because the Spirit Plants from the Cultivation Realm and Cyan Blue were only similar, not completely identical.

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