Chapter 21: I Do Not Like Ah Bai and Parasitic Skill
“Look carefully at this, buddy!”
Su Bai launched the powerful slingshot in his hand following his yell, and two stones flew out with a swoosh.
“Howl!”
The cub responded and immediately exploded with wood spiritual power. Two vine whips drilled from the ground and rushed toward the stones.
His pet’s accuracy had gotten pretty good, and its flying vine whips accurately caught the stones, wrapping around them and delivering both to him.
He shook his head. “Buddy, you can’t do this. The stones can’t be broken. Let’s try again.”
His request had not been to catch the flying stones but to bring them back, intact and undamaged. This was a test of its skill proficiency and spiritual control.
Especially since he used a relatively soft sandstone that could easily be broken.
“Howl~ o(一〈一+)o”
The resentment on the cub’s face indicated that Su Bai was shameless for secretly changing the stones. It wanted to sleep and did not want to continue training.
“Come on; let’s practice some more. If you don’t want to practice this, how about we practice speed?” He rubbed its head.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})“Howl!” The cub shook its head and lay down on the ground.
It refused to practice anymore. Ah Bai was always lying to it; it disliked him anymore.
Su Bai thought for a moment and took out a bottle of floral milk with wood spirit potion added inside. “Do you want to drink this?”
Looking at the milk, Purple Jade rushed over, its two front paws grabbing the bottle without any intention to let go. It looked at its owner with two round pitiful eyes. (✪ω✪)
“Okay, let’s train your speed again. As long as you can finish the obstacle course within five seconds, you can drink the milk. After that, I’ll teach you a new skill.” Su Bai made a deal with his spirit. It was increasingly becoming difficult to train after its knowledge had increased.
“Howl.”
Under the temptation of food, it reluctantly agreed, but the cub’s resentment toward him had increased by just a little.
When he said surmounting an obstacle, he meant that passageway filled by him with hurdles comprising stones, branches, and thorns. It was thirty meters long and required the cub to cross in five seconds without destroying any of the hurdles.
The passageway was not only very narrow, just enough for Purple Jade to pass through, but was also littered with small traps like stumbling ropes, as it twisted and turned multiple times. Every time the cub ran past him, Su Bai would make some alterations to the passageway so that it could not rely on memory to finish the obstacle course.
The cub’s best record was seven seconds. Five seconds was still very difficult for it, but under the temptation of milk, it burst forth with energy and finally had a breakthrough.
When he announced the start, green spiritual energy instantly appeared on the cub’s body and enveloped it. Slowly concentrating on the soles of its paws, the cub rushed forth in a green flash and depended on its spiritual power to respond to the surroundings. His pet’s accurate judgment using the five senses helped it navigate seamlessly through the hurdles and traps set by him in only 4.866 seconds.
“Great job, buddy! I admire your five senses.” Su Bai quickly poured milk for the cub as he praised it.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})“Woo~”
The cub glanced at him and twisted its head, threatening him with milk. Bad Ah Bai, doesn’t your conscience hurt?
“I was wrong, buddy.”
He sincerely apologized as he poured it some more milk.
“Howl.”
The cub ignored him and just continued lapping up the milk.
Watching it happily drink the milk, Su Bai felt that the effect of such training was simply powerful and wondered if he should continue using this method.
He was training the cub’s flexibility, its method of using spiritual power, and its timing and speed of skill release.
His goal was for the cub to be able to conjure Vine Whip instantly and be flexible enough while having a high hit rate.
Purple Jade was still lacking in that aspect, and its proficiency was still not instantaneous at the moment. However, its accuracy and flexibility were about to reach the standard level.
In fact, other than training its spiritual power control and skill release, the cub’s strength in its claws and charge could use some training, too.
Nonetheless, his spirit was just a cub and had not yet entered the growth stage. If these skills were not well-controlled, they would cause greater damage to it, so he decided not to train those in the meantime and also decided against buying additional skills for it to master.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})Fortunately, the cub’s physical fitness had been cultivated enough to show decent improvement and had not fallen behind the other spirits.
While the cub drank the milk, he took out the Parasitic skill jade and summoned his contract book.
Skill jades could not be directly used by pets. They needed to be read with contract books by Pet Tamers first before they could be taught to spirits.
Su Bai put the skill jade on the book and focused his attention to it. The skill jade turned into a green light wave, which then got integrated into his contract book. At the same time, some special writings appeared on one page of the contract book about the Parasitic skill.
By focusing his mind on the texts, he could perceive the details of the skill. Although he could not use it, he was still able to perceive it and pass this insight to his pet.
“Come, buddy. Let’s concentrate on this new skill.”
Su Bai touched Purple Jade as he urged it.
“Howl!”
Sitting upright, the cub held out its forelimbs and looked at him with its round eyes. Its attention was now fully on training since it already had its fill of food.
Su Bai mobilized the contract book to pass the skill to his pet along with his perception of it.
Parasitism could be regarded as a basic skill of the wood type, and it was not difficult to learn. Most wood-type pets could awaken this skill on their own when they grew to a certain level.
In principle, a pet had to condense its wood spiritual power into a special spiritual seed. Once this seed became parasitic on an opponent, it could absorb the target’s spiritual power growth while restoring the pet’s own. Hence, it was a good primary skill.
After perceiving it for a while, the cub began to control its spiritual power to condense spiritual seeds.
However, the end result was not ideal. Most of the seeds condensed were dead, just crystallizations of spiritual power and not at all parasitic.
“Howl!” Purple Jade lowered its head in annoyance.
“Don’t worry, buddy. There are other ways to use the parasitic seeds. You can just start with the simple ones.” Su Bai comforted it, having already estimated its failure.
“You can first control the plant seeds to achieve a parasitic purpose, then have your spawned thorn vines blossom and bear fruits. That way, you can use your seeds to activate the Parasitic skill.”
He carefully explained this concept to the cub. Since the beginner material for Purple Jade’s conception was the crystal nucleus of a Queen of Thorns, his pet could naturally spawn thorn vines regardless if it had or had no seeds. As long as it activated its spiritual power or expanded Thorns Domain, it could spawn thorn vines. These thorn vines were real and not condensed by spiritual power. Even if the cub retracted its spiritual power, the thorn vines would still survive like normal plants.
The reason other plants could not work now was that his spirit was still young and had weak control. Once it grew older, controlling plants would just be a matter of grasping it with its fingertips. It could control any plant to activate the Parasitic skill at any time and gather spiritual power seeds with the movement of its mind.
This was just the basic operation of a wood spirit, but the cub still needed to practice the skill carefully and master it as soon as possible.
Following his guidance, the cub successfully cast the Parasitic skill with its thorn vines. It jumped up and down in delight.
“Howl!”
The cub rubbed itself against his face vigorously, its eyes full of admiration. Its owner was too impressive.
“Hahaha, we both contributed to this.”
He smiled happily and took advantage of its excitement to make it practice a few more times.
A week passed quickly. Besides going to school, Su Bai continued training with Purple Jade. At night, it would play with his mobile phone while he read books about Pet Tamers to prepare for the educator certificate.
When he crossed over to this parallel world, Su Bai, who had become four years younger, was no longer that playful and would work tirelessly for his goals, instead.
On another side, Father Su’s matter was not going well. He could not contract the reservoir even now, and the gift he sent was also useless. He did not dare to press the other party too hard, for fear of being discerned. The matter had, thus, fallen into an unsolvable deadlock for a while.
