“Uh…” Charles was momentarily stunned, looking at Lily with some surprise. “Why are you suddenly asking about this?”
“Ah, it’s nothing. I’m just concerned about you. I was thinking, our Charles is so handsome, he must have a lot of girls liking him in college, right?” Lily smiled brightly, a fleeting shadow of sadness in her eyes, but she quickly regained her sparkle.
“Come on, let’s go for a ride!”
She swung her long legs over the motorcycle and revved the engine.
It was a familiar scene for Charles, flashing back to memories from three years ago. In high school, he was often cornered by a gang demanding money. After Lily found out, she started picking him up and dropping him off at school on this very motorcycle, and since then, no one bothered him anymore.
Seeing Charles standing frozen, Lily handed him a helmet, patting the motorcycle beside her. “Hop on! Hold onto my waist, and don’t fall off!”
Charles hesitated for a moment but eventually put on the helmet and placed his hands around Lily’s soft waist.
The engine roared like a lightning demon ape.
The motorcycle sped through the streets, just as Lily had many times taken him to school, the pair speeding along the riverside avenue before slowing down and winding their way to an old neighborhood.
This was the old neighborhood where Charles had lived for ten whole years. The flower beds were overgrown with weeds, and large patches of paint peeled off the building, as if to narrate the tales of its time-worn past.
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“I’m sorry… I wasn’t paying attention and drove here again.” Lily knew about the vandalism at Charles’ home and was worried it would upset him; her face showed a hint of apology.
“It’s okay, I actually wanted to come home and check on things,” Charles waved at Lily and then jogged towards the entrance of the complex.
As he stepped into the building, a mix of dust and mildew hit him, a familiar scent that brought him comfort. When he reached his apartment door and pushed open the rust-stained iron gate, the chaos inside tugged at his heartstrings.
The trash might have been cleared away in this time, but nothing could return to how it was before—not the broken home, nor the disappeared parents.
Recalling Sly’s actions, Charles clenched his fists lightly.
With his current wealth, Charles could easily afford several riverfront mansions, but no opulent residence could ever match the home that held his childhood memories.
Charles got up and walked down the street, glancing at a photo in his phone’s album. Suddenly, his eyes began to moisten, and he dialed a number.
buzz—
“Hello, the number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try again later!”
buzz—
“Hello, the number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try again later!”
Still no response.
Charles put away his phone with a sense of defeat. He longed to loudly tell his parents, “We’re wealthy now, you don’t need to work dawn to dusk hauling goods anymore. Your son is now a proud Beast Master!”
However, all he got in return was a cold, emotionless automated message.
Passing by the barbecue restaurant around the corner of the neighborhood, Charles caught a pungent scent and suddenly brightened up, “Mr. Bard, how much chili powder do you have at home? Could you sell me some?”
“Charles, you’re back?” A balding man in slippers hurried over. When he heard Charles wanted ten tons of chili powder, he was shocked: “Ten tons of chili powder, what are you planning to do?”
Despite his puzzled look, Mr. Bard made several phone calls, and within ten minutes, he managed to gather ten tons of chili powder for him!
Seeing the ten tons of chili powder, Charles couldn’t help but smile…
After sending Lily a text, he slipped into a shadow at the street corner and vanished into the darkness.
…
Charles stealthily moved through the shadows until he reached a shadowy area under a street lamp in front of the Fenton family pharmaceuticals. He bypassed the reception and headed straight for the miracle drug production workshop behind the Fenton family pharmaceuticals.
Though it was a pharmaceutical company, the security outside the workshop was even tighter than the city lord’s residence, which seemed quite sinister.
However, Charles easily avoided the guards while remaining in the shadows.
Just as he stepped out of the clean room, Charles smelled a pungent odor and felt a surge of exhilaration.
“This is the smell of morphine vapor! Damn it, these bastards are indeed lacing the healing medicine with drugs!” Charles became alert and began to purify the air of toxic fumes using his fire energy.
He cautiously approached the production equipment in the darkness, glancing at the feed hopper. They were using the cheapest revival flower. A wood-attribute beast core, after being ground into powder, had been diluted into a thousand bottles of healing medicine. At this concentration, it was barely distinguishable from a placebo.
On the other hand, the sedatives meant to be used in trace amounts—morphine, cocaine—were being added to the alchemy vats in massive quantities, tens or even hundreds of kilograms at a time, as if they cost nothing.
[Ding! You have unlocked: Industrial Alchemy.]
A system notification flashed briefly in front of the screen, but Charles didn’t have time to pay it any attention.
Finding the right moment, he swapped all the prepared medicine with his own concoction of chili water.
With a sly smile, satisfied with his work, he left the pharmaceutical workshop.
…
After leaving the Fenton Family Pharmaceuticals, Charles sprinted through the shadows all the way to the logistics center, heading towards the transit warehouse he had rented.
Here, he was going to conduct an experiment to improve Hemostatic Powder.
Back then, a single Tone Reproduction Hemostatic Powder could fetch a sky-high price of 50 silver coins at the Misubi auction house, not to mention the white-quality version. This miracle drug was time-consuming and labor-intensive to produce, and its price reflected that. It was far from something a first-rank Beast Master or a commoner could afford.
To compete in Lsengard’s pharmaceutical market against the combined forces of Sly, Kevin, and Axel under the Fenton Family Pharmaceuticals, Charles had to find a way to make Hemostatic Powder affordable and monopolize the miracle drug market.
Clang!
With a crisp sound, Charles pulled a long alchemy production line, over ten meters in length, from his storage space. He had casually swiped this from the equipment warehouse when he left the Fenton Family Pharmaceuticals.
Upon closer inspection, the alchemy equipment bore some resemblance to the pharmaceutical production lines from his previous life. However, instead of being powered by electricity, it was driven by a few fire spirit stones.
He recalled the three core elements of alchemy: alchemical materials, the alchemy lab, and fire.
From his professional perspective, this equipment, which used the heat of fire spirit stones instead of actual fire and processed the lowest-grade materials, was nothing but a pile of “garbage.”
However, even this kind of “garbage” would still be snatched up by those ferocious beast hunters once it hit the market. The thought made Charles feel a bit wistful.
Charles opened the alchemy panel in front of him on the screen. It not only recorded the alchemy formulas he had mastered but also contained a wealth of knowledge related to alchemy.
He browsed through it for a while, then suddenly noticed a newly unlocked option—Industrial Alchemy.
As soon as Charles focused his attention on it, a pop-up window appeared, and a torrent of knowledge flooded into his mind like a surging wave.
[System Notification: Industrial alchemy involves two key points: stability and low cost. Both are indispensable, and the key to achieving stability lies in the selection of fire spirit stones and the improvement of the alchemy lab’s boiler structure…]
The influx of specialized knowledge left Charles a bit dizzy, but with this infusion of information, he started to understand the colorful alchemy equipment around him. They no longer seemed so unfamiliar.
From his storage space, he retrieved five Hemostatic plants and added them to the boiler beside him. The energy from the fire spirit stone flowed into the boiling mixture, but before Charles could even control it, all five Hemostatic plants turned into ashes.
“It seems that controlling the temperature between the alchemy lab and the alchemy equipment is quite challenging!” Charles muttered regretfully as he gazed at the pile of ashes in the boiler. “I should install temperature regulators at different depths of the boiler to ensure the herbs are evenly heated…”
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Charles grabbed a pile of parts from his storage and began tinkering with the alchemy boiler again.
Two hours later, after countless failed attempts, Charles finally produced a green paste-like liquid from the five Hemostatic plants that he had placed into the alchemy boiler.
While Charles still wasn’t satisfied with the quality, by the lowest standards of healing potions, it was far superior to anything available on the market.
Next, using the same method, Charles processed anesthetic plants, Rebirth of lotus roots, and spirit roots—all of them reduced to a thick paste. He gradually increased the dosage by tenfold, then a hundredfold!
“The ingredients for the Hemostatic Powder have all been refined into liquid form. Now, it’s time for the final step in making the Hemostatic Powder…” Charles carefully guided the mixture in the boiler, all while recalling the steps he had just learned.
Each type of herb had a different tolerance to temperature, and at this point, he needed to precisely control the temperature in different sections of the alchemy boiler and adjust the stirring force accordingly.
Charles easily wrote a program, with the temperature control system automatically adjusting without needing him to lift a finger.
Beep! Beep!
The crisp sound of the alarm on the alchemy furnace went off, and Charles, feeling a rush of excitement, opened the output valve. Instantly, a bright green liquid began to flow out of the pipe.
With a light touch of his fingers, Charles picked up a small drop and smelled the rich, alchemical fragrance of the potion.
It was still far from the miracle drug of Tone Reproduction, but the effectiveness was at least a hundred times better than the Fenton family’s so-called “healing medicine”!
“With this, Hemostatic Powder can finally be produced on an industrial scale. I’ll share the news with Raj tomorrow.”
Looking at the containers filled with the bright green liquid, a sense of pride welled up inside Charles. He also keenly sensed the business opportunity.
In this Beast Mastery World, there was no concept of [patents]. If he dared to release the formula, it would immediately be copied by every pharmaceutical company in Lsengard.
But…Charles suddenly recalled a case. He could completely follow Coca-Cola’s production model!
“Coca-Cola kept its formula and equipment entirely secret.”
“They would ship the [Coca-Cola concentrate] nationwide, taking a cut from the distributors who would dilute it with water according to a set ratio, turning it into the Coca-Cola drink sold on the market.”
“I can totally replicate Coca-Cola’s business model and sell [Hemostatic Powder concentrate].”
“I’m a genius! Haha!”
—