Chapter 72: Considering the Future
“Pa.” A crisp switch sound echoed.
The bright light in the bedroom flickered on, illuminating the previously pitch-black room with glaring clarity. It was Inkband, who had received Zhou Ming’s order, that turned on the light for him.
At that moment, Zhou Ming sat on the bed, his face pale with a bluish tinge, lips bloodless, and his entire body appearing utterly drained.
If Wang Yan were to see him now, he would never believe this was Zhou Ming’s condition after meditation. Instead, he might think Zhou Ming had gone all out fighting for his life in some dark alley.
“Cough.”
“I didn’t expect the threshold for this Original Meditation Method to be so high.”
After sensing the danger hidden within the White Bone Contemplation Meditation Method, Zhou Ming finally understood why the Original Meditation Method had been withdrawn from the stage of the Blue Star Alliance.
If the Original Meditation Method was still used as the main method to promote Beast Tamers today, then the Beast Taming profession would only remain an exclusive privilege for a small number of people.
Perhaps, during the developmental process of the Blue Star Alliance, there were indeed people who had such thoughts. Yet in the end, due to external factors, they had to abandon them.
After all, if the humans of Blue Star were all gone, such privileges would be nothing more than a bubble.
Zhou Ming didn’t dwell on the matter for long, because in reality, the Basic Meditation Technique had already become the common meditation method within the Blue Star Alliance.
Even though not everyone could become a Beast Tamer, at least everyone now had a chance to become one.
“Still, though the White Bone Contemplation is dangerous, its effects are truly extraordinary. Even the quality of my Spiritual Power has been tempered.”
Zhou Ming slightly probed the state of his Spiritual Power and soon discovered that both its quantity and quality had improved.
If his Spiritual Power had reached a level of six before, then after this meditation, it had now reached seven.
Considering that the normal limit of Spiritual Power for an ordinary person was nine, as long as Zhou Ming continued using the White Bone Contemplation Meditation Method to raise his Spiritual Power to nine, and then pushed his beasts’ strength to the limit of low-tier Ferocious Beasts, he would meet the requirements for advancing to an Official Rank Beast Tamer—provided he possessed the advancement ritual and the necessary transition materials.
With such a harvest, Zhou Ming naturally set aside the danger of the White Bone Contemplation Meditation Method. If he couldn’t even bear this level of risk, his path as a Beast Tamer would not go very far anyway.
After consuming a low-tier Nutrient Potion, Zhou Ming slowly recovered his vitality.
His previously pale face began to regain color, and his bent back straightened once again, no longer looking like he could be blown over by a mere gust of wind.
Feeling the sticky sweat on his skin, Zhou Ming stood up, preparing to take a bath.
Inside the bathroom, the steaming hot water had already been drawn. Zhou Ming lay in the bathtub, wiping his body with the hot water while also contemplating the direction of his future.
With the White Bone Contemplation Meditation Method in hand, Zhou Ming no longer had to worry about the difficulty of improving his Spiritual Power.
Given its remarkable effects, he was confident that before exhausting his current batch of resources, he could push his Spiritual Power even further.
Even if he couldn’t reach the absolute limit, he would at least come very close to it.
However, Zhou Ming still faced two major difficulties at present: the strength of his beasts, and the problem of class advancement.
Relying on the spiritual item Serpent Saliva Fruit, both Inkband and Vermilion Jade had broken through their species limits and advanced to low-tier Ferocious Beasts.
But their current strength was still only at the lower-middle level among low-tier Ferocious Beasts. To push their power to the limit of low-tier Ferocious Beasts would still require significant effort from him.
Though the process would be difficult, it was a problem that could still be solved through sheer investment of resources—by forcefully raising their strength.
Moreover, once his Spiritual Power reached its limit, he could use it to feed back into his beasts, helping Inkband and Vermilion Jade rapidly increase their strength.
The reason he wasn’t using that method now was mainly because it would affect the improvement of his own Spiritual Power.
In the cultivation system of Beast Tamers, there were generally two main paths to increase strength.
The first was for the Beast Tamer to prioritize enhancing their own Spiritual Power, and after it reached the peak of their current level, they would then focus on nurturing their beasts.
The second was to primarily strengthen their beasts first.
Once the beasts reached their own limits and could no longer advance, they would then, in turn, use their power to feed back into the Beast Tamer.
Usually, the choice between these two depended on personal circumstances.
Of course, if a Beast Tamer possessed exceptional talent and had ample resources, both could be pursued simultaneously without issue.
Due to Inkband and Vermilion Jade’s circumstances, Zhou Ming was currently focusing most of his resources on himself, occasionally cultivating his beasts to help them grow steadily.
Although the strengthening of his beasts was difficult, at least it had a clear direction for effort. The true obstacle lay in the class advancement ritual—something he could not avoid.
Because human Spiritual Power on Blue Star had a natural limit, and since Beast Tamers mainly commanded beasts, in essence, their combat capability was not much different from using firearms.
Even if their beasts could destroy mountains or devastate battlefields, a single close-range ambush by an intelligent Ferocious Beast or a foreign race could still end a Beast Tamer’s life instantly.
Hence, to overcome this weakness, the Class Advancement Ritual was developed—each stage a gradual transformation from ordinary human into something akin to gods and demons.
Throughout the history of the Blue Star Alliance, countless advancement rituals had been researched, yet in the end, only four major advancement paths became the mainstream choices among most Beast Tamers.
They were: Phantasmal Tamer, Beast Knight, Shepherd, and Beast Spirit Sorcerer.
The origin of the Phantasmal Tamer traced back to the Alliance’s early scientific efforts—attempts to study the genes of Ferocious Beasts and create biological weapons to combat beasts and alien species from other realms.
Though those attempts failed, once the Beast Tamer profession emerged, the results of that research found new use.
By integrating the extraordinary knowledge obtained from foreign races with the biological weapon project, the Phantasmal Tamer advancement system was born.
When an Apprentice Beast Tamer broke through to the Official Rank, they could use extraordinary materials and a ritual to evolve their beasts into Phantasmal Beasts.
Phantasmal Beasts were beings half-biological and half-energy, capable of manipulating elemental energy particles.
Their Beast Tamers could also, through resonance, gain access to such elemental power—though weaker than their beasts, it still allowed them to personally touch upon supernatural strength.
At the Apprentice Beast Tamer level, one relied on the power of elements to break through the limits of Spiritual Power, enabling continued advancement.
At the same time, the Phantasmal Beast could transform into armor, granting its tamer not only formidable close-combat ability but also mastery over elemental energy.
It could be said that upon becoming a Phantasmal Tamer, a qualitative transformation occurred between an Apprentice Beast Tamer and an Official Rank Beast Tamer.
The most evident difference was that the Beast Tamer’s own weaknesses ceased to exist—they could walk unharmed through a storm of bullets.
Beyond the Official Rank, the Phantasmal Tamer could further advance to become a Weapon Master.
Their Phantasmal Beast would evolve into a pure elemental lifeform, and the Beast Tamer’s strength would surge dramatically—able to transform their beast into an elemental weapon that directly guided the world’s elemental forces in battle.
The final stage was the Legendary Saint, something Zhou Ming had learned about earlier from the Detailed Explanation of Beast Tamer Career Advancement he purchased in the Black Market.
The ultimate form of the Phantasmal Tamer profession was the Elemental Annihilator.
It was said that one must cultivate a second Phantasmal Beast with an element completely opposite to the first, and through the collision of elements, grasp the power of annihilation.
However, the complete Phantasmal Tamer Advancement Ritual was only possessed by the Blue Star Academy, whose dean was one of the few Legendary Saints in the entire Alliance.
To enter this academy, one had to reach the Official Rank before the age of thirty in order to even qualify for application.