The old couple lay awake all night, unable to understand their son's choice.
The Iron Gall Lone Dragon stayed in their bedroom, stomping on the floor and howling incessantly, trying to vent its boundless energy.
Mrs. Gu, annoyed by the sight, snapped her fingers. She had her Hidden Mist Butterfly create an Illusion Realm, letting the Iron Gall Lone Dragon lose itself in combat and have fun on its own.
The two of them lay in bed, tossing and turning, looking at each other.
"This won't do, Gu Daguo. You have to find a way to make our son take the medicine."
"Sigh... After thinking about what he said, it actually makes some sense. Maybe we should just forget it?"
Mr. Gu said hesitantly. He had clearly remembered something.
He hadn't paid it any mind before, but the more he thought about it now, the more he felt that the medicine shouldn't be taken.
"What! How can we just forget it? Gu Daguo, what on earth are you thinking!"
Mrs. Gu flew into a panic, swatting wildly at Mr. Gu's chest.
Mr. Gu remained silent. Only after his wife had vented her frustration did he speak gently.
"Our son's concerns aren't entirely baseless. I've seen our next-door neighbor's son before. He's five years older than our boy, and he also took that medicine five years ago..."
At first, Mrs. Gu didn't want to hear his explanation.
But when she heard that the neighbor's son had gone insane this year, she froze. It took her ten seconds to process it. She grabbed Mr. Gu by the shoulders and asked:
"What do you mean, 'gone insane'? Are you saying there's a problem with the medicine?"
"It's not that there's a problem with it, per se. It's the string of subsequent expenses..."
Mr. Gu wasn't sure how to put it.
The neighbor's expenses were far, far greater than their own.
He didn't just take the Sea of Consciousness Expansion Medicine at eighteen. Later, he took the Golden Sea Liquid at nineteen, the Divine Mansion Liquid at twenty, and the Ascension Powder at twenty-one, on top of various other divine medicines for a Beastmaster's Body Refining.
They had spent forty million on the Beastmaster alone, and they definitely must have taken out loans.
And that wasn't even counting the expenses for the Pet Beast.
He did a quick calculation. The total cost for the person and the Pet Beast had ballooned by a hundredfold compared to the educational expenses of a decade or so ago.
If he remembered correctly, the neighbor's family had gone bankrupt and liquidated their assets in the first half of the year. The entire family's fortune was burned through, and they were saddled with a mountain of debt that it seemed they could never repay, even if they worked until they died.
They had struggled so hard to support a student who got into one of the nation's top ten universities, only for it to end like this.
If their son had managed to hold on and not go insane by graduation, he could have just slowly paid back the loans.
Life is long. If he had a stroke of luck and broke through to a High-star Level, his earning potential would increase, and the money would have been paid back.
Mrs. Gu kept her mouth shut, silently listening to Mr. Gu talk about their neighbors.
The two of them gradually realized something.
They had been willing to scrimp and save for their son for over a decade, putting money away until today.
By that same token, many other families had done the same.
The educational expenses projected eighteen years ago had now inflated a hundredfold, or even several hundredfold.
The money they had saved for more than a decade wasn't even enough to cover their son's four years of university expenses. They would need to take out loans to help their son maintain his high-level cultivation needs.
A Pet Beast like the Iron Gall Lone Dragon, while not the best in the world...
...was still a top-tier Pet Beast in their own city, and its subsequent cultivation costs would be immense.
If the follow-up cultivation resources couldn't keep up, the Iron Gall Lone Dragon wouldn't get enough nutrition, and its Dragon Blood Muscle would absolutely suffer from chronic degradation.
Once it degraded to a critical threshold, it would no longer meet the prerequisites for awakening its Dragon Race bloodline, which would in turn affect the Iron Gall Lone Dragon's future evolution path.
This was a single issue that could derail everything. As Five-star Beastmasters themselves, they couldn't possibly ignore future matters of evolution.
"So you're saying we should lower our son's starting line and let others take the lead?" Mrs. Gu murmured.
"It's not about giving up completely. The reason our son doesn't want to drink it is mainly that he's too smart."
"He's calculated that the subsequent costs are too high for a 'gambler family' like us to afford." Mr. Gu found this hard to admit.
With their current family finances, if they really chose the Iron Gall Lone Dragon, they definitely wouldn't be able to support it. They would have to borrow money from relatives, and then the whole family would have to take out loans to send their son to a Beast Taming University.
Hearing this, Mrs. Gu had a rare moment of clarity. She sighed, "Alas, he's too sensible."
So, the path before them was a difficult one of no return: borrowing money to support him.
The future burden was too heavy, enough to suffocate the family.
In truth, if the two of them just lowered their expectations, not aiming for a top-ten or even a top-one-hundred university...
...and let their son live an ordinary life at a Beast Taming University, he could have the healthy life of a middle-class Beastmaster.
However, the two of them were not resigned to that.
After more than a decade of forbearance and planning, wasn't the whole point to help their family ascend to a higher social class?
Yet when that day finally arrived...
...they discovered that the gap between the classes of Beastmasters had widened once again.
A decade or so ago, they were middle class. Now, whether they could still be considered middle class was a big question mark.
Perhaps the moment their son contracted the Little Cyan Snake, their family had already fallen out of the middle class.
...
On Gu Ming's end, he had a few rare days of peace, taking time each day to chant scriptures to the Grouper Fish.
He had thought his parents would get desperate and do something reckless, but they acted very calm. They were slacking off just as they always had, going out for a little gambling for fun whenever they had the time.
This was good, too.
Setting aside the risks of the Divine Invitation Ceremony, if he had really taken that Sea of Consciousness Elixir, he would have been forced to contract the Iron Gall Lone Dragon. His parents would never have watched him contract a nearly dead Zero-star Starfish Pet.
Gu Ming had gone online and calculated it; the cultivation and evolution costs for the Iron Gall Lone Dragon were terrifying.
Breaking a hundred million was just the starting line. There were many more unlisted expenses, and a more detailed cultivation budget could only be customized after he started university.
Terrified of being poor, Gu Ming had thought it through carefully. Rather than contracting the Iron Gall Lone Dragon, it was better to bet on the Old Grouper Fish.
As long as Old Ban broke through to One-star, its lifespan would increase by another two or three years, and then there would be hope of breaking through to Two-star.
The Kunpeng Talent of Devouring Evolution was no joke. As long as it kept devouring, it could evolve toward a higher-level Inner Core. This was a Talent that not even the "Time Dragon" possessed.
As for the "Time Dragon," the Little Cyan Snake, Gu Ming had recently been trying to figure out how to use the system to have it earn Spirit Stone resources for him.
The results were not optimistic.
「Your Time Dragon has returned after being out for some time. It brought back nothing. At the same time, the risk probability for going out has increased by 10%.」
The Time Dragon went out three times. Not only did it fail to find any treasures, but it also racked up three "risk probability +10%" notifications from the system, scaring Gu Ming so much that he didn't dare send it out again.
He didn't think anyone would actually resort to murder and robbery in the real world, but the system's reminders forced him to worry.
No one might come to kill it, but it was possible that a natural predator, like a bird, might snatch the Little Cyan Snake.
After all, birds held the advantage in the sky, and a flightless Little Cyan Snake would indeed have a hard time dealing with them.
Besides, the Little Cyan Snake hadn't evolved yet and hadn't learned any Combat Skills. Sending it out rashly was risky, so Gu Ming had to give up on the idea.
Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Gu hadn't given up, but their bottom line had lowered.
They were planning to return the Iron Gall Lone Dragon but keep the Spirit Medicine for now.
They were preparing to look for a Pet Beast with more affordable cultivation costs but still high combat potential.