Yu Xiaogang's hand froze, teacup suspended. The three young men leaving the pharmacy staggered past—pale, hollow‑eyed, yawning, their limbs slack. They boasted of fighting until dawn, yet their bodies betrayed them. The contradiction lodged in Yu Xiaogang's mind like a splinter.
Across the White World, reactions split. Bibi Dong scowled at the heavenly curtain, disgusted that Yu Xiaogang would even consider such methods. Hu Liena looked on, curious but cautious. At Shrek Academy, Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang dismissed the idea as nonsense and ordered his disciples back to training. Ning Rongrong alone lingered, determined to watch the whole broadcast.
Back in Blue Lightning City, Ye Hengchuan returned with the booklet and found Yu Xiaogang staring after the departing youths. He scolded at once: "Don't follow their example. They wasted their lives on false shortcuts." Yu Xiaogang smiled, not offended. He had not been thinking of vice but of method. If those men used drugs to appear stronger, why did their bodies remain weak? If the potions had any real effect, could they be applied differently—deliberately, systematically—to strengthen the incarnation body itself?
Ye Hengchuan admitted he did not know. The old apothecary had seen many remedies, but never a reliable way to permanently raise a cultivator's baseline through tonics alone. Yu Xiaogang proposed an experiment: test the medicines on animals first. If the drugs could alter physiology in a controlled way, results would show faster and safer in livestock than in humans.
They tested. Ye gathered a stock of tonic herbs—deer antler powder, tiger bone wine, goji berries, whale glue, dried seahorse—and dozens of pigs from the sect's supply. The animals were restrained and force‑fed the concoctions. Yu Xiaogang watched with a mixture of scientific curiosity and grim resolve as the first effects began to take hold.
That night the pens erupted. The pigs, bound and drugged, howled in a chorus that shook the neighborhood. The screams drew bewildered complaints for years to come. For Yu Xiaogang, the noise was the sound of an experiment finally underway—messy, crude, and necessary.
When morning came, the stench and the sight were worse than anyone expected. The pens reeked; many who entered retched. Yu Xiaogang had anticipated the mess and hired help to clean, but the Spirit Masters summoned by Ye hesitated at his orders. Pride and habit made them reluctant to take direction from a boy they considered talentless. Ye Hengchuan stepped forward, his quiet authority cutting through their resistance. Reluctantly, they obeyed.
The inspection revealed something remarkable. Several pigs had snapped their ropes and escaped their cages. The breaks were clean, forced—no sloppy knots, no human error. Ye checked the records and traced the difference to whale gelatin. The pigs that had broken free had been fed whale glue aged decades. Whale glue, Ye explained, is a rare secretion from Spirit Beast whales, categorized by age—ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years—and prized as a tonic. Most people only ever saw ten‑ or hundred‑year varieties; thousand‑year and ten‑thousand‑year whale gel were legendary.
Yu Xiaogang stared at the freed pigs and then at the list: twenty‑year whale gelatin, thirty‑year, fifty‑year, forty‑year. Even decades‑old whale glue had produced a measurable increase in physique and strength in the animals. If decades could do this, what might a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand years of whale gelatin accomplish for a human body prepared to absorb it?
The discovery was intoxicating and terrifying at once. Whale gelatin was not a miracle cure—its effects depended on age, dosage, and the host's capacity to absorb it. The records Yu Xiaogang had studied warned of the same danger: over‑absorption, mismatched rings, and rushed upgrades could maim or kill. Yet the mocking glances at his Awakening hardened his resolve. If changing fate demanded risk, he would accept it. If evolution required sacrifice, he would pay it.
That afternoon, Ye Hengchuan and Yu Xiaogang cataloged the results, noting which samples produced the strongest physiological response and how the animals reacted over time. The experiment had not proven a safe shortcut, but it had revealed a lever—a material that, when aged and applied correctly, could raise the body's tolerance and open new possibilities for ring absorption.
Across the Douluo Continent, the heavenly curtain's footage did more than shock and scandalize. It handed everyone a new question: how far would they go to change destiny, and at what cost. Yu Xiaogang had moved from theory to practice. The path ahead would be dangerous, but for the first time he had a tangible tool and a plan to test it.