Jiang Xing quickly realized that this system bro had most likely just come straight out of some urban Pokémon novel setting—starting off with the standard two-hit combo: evolution plus energy cubes.
In the typical urban Pokémon formula, this was basically the equivalent of Minecraft's "if you want to get rich, start by punching trees."
The problem was…
This had gone too far. This wasn't a Pokémon world!
What use was rewarding him with a berry blender? Was he supposed to pull two berries out of his pants and start making energy cubes for it?
Jiang Xing really couldn't hold it in.
But then again.
Although the reward for the system's second task was kind of ridiculous, the task itself was extremely simple.
To save on research costs—and also to better control his experimental data—Jiang Xing usually bought materials himself and made fish food for the Golden-Patterned Koi.
As for other kinds of Pokémon food, he wouldn't dare say much, but producing a batch of high-quality fish feed? That was effortless.
Using the lab equipment, in less than twenty minutes, a large basin of excellent-quality fish feed was freshly made.
[Task completed. You have received a reward.]
[Name: Portable Automatic Berry Blender]
[Effect: A portable berry blender that requires no manual operation. After placing any berries inside, it will automatically produce the corresponding type of energy cubes… however, because of this, quality cannot be guaranteed, and it can only produce cubes of standard quality.]
[Stored in the dedicated Pokémon item storage space. Can be accessed at any time.]
Jiang Xing remembered that in the Pokémon world, berry blenders required manual operation.
The types of berries, their proportions, the rotation speed… all of these would affect the quality of the resulting energy cubes.
If incompatible berries were used, the process could even fail entirely.
So although the automatic berry blender only produced average-quality energy cubes, for someone who didn't know any formulas, it could save a huge amount of trial-and-error cost.
But Jiang Xing still had to say it again.
This was a Beast Taming world!
Even in the Pokémon world, genuine berries required the correct formulas and proportions to produce energy cubes.
Even if Jiang Xing found some vaguely similar fruits and put them into the blender, it would be impossible to create real energy cubes—
They simply weren't the same thing.
So although the berry blender looked promising, in reality, it was just junk.
'Forget it. This is still high-end equipment from the Pokémon world. Maybe I can analyze its technology later and reconstruct the theory behind energy cube production…'
'The Beast Taming world also has resource fruits and crops that contain energy and are used as Pet Beast food.'
'If I can grasp the underlying principles, maybe I can turn those into energy cubes as well.'
Jiang Xing set the berry blender aside and focused on refining his experimental plan, checking if there were any areas for optimization.
But before he knew it, his gaze drifted back again.
…Should he try it?
After all, it was a reward from the system. Not using it at all would be a waste.
And although high-quality resource fruits were expensive, many common ones had already had their cultivation problems solved by agricultural experts and were being mass-produced.
The cheapest types were even cheaper than many ordinary fruits.
Jiang Xing might be poor, but he wasn't so poor that he couldn't afford to give it a try.
So he went to a fruit shop, spent a hundred yuan, bought seven or eight cheap resource fruits, and hurried back to the lab building, eager to toss them into the berry blender.
The berry blender could hold up to four types of berries at once.
To save money, Jiang Xing chose the two cheapest kinds. If it failed, he'd just keep the remaining fruits to eat himself—after all, humans were, in essence, also extraordinary creatures and could eat Pet Beast food…
However, before he could even process the resource fruits—
A "ding" sound rang out, and from the blender's output slot, six energy cubes popped out.
The cubes were pale yellow, like neatly shaped candy, emitting a faintly sour apple scent.
Holy shit!
Jiang Xing immediately grabbed the energy cubes and placed them into the lab instruments.
High nutritional value, high energy content… wait, no—just one cube's energy index had already far surpassed the two resource fruits used as materials. All six combined contained nearly ten times the total energy!
Not to mention, according to the test results, as an energy concentrate, it was far easier for Pet Beasts to absorb than raw fruit, with much higher absorption efficiency.
This made no sense!!
What? System-produced?
Then it's fine.
Thinking about it, that made sense. In the Pokémon world, there were items like "Leftovers"—as long as a Pokémon held them, it could keep eating endlessly and recover stamina infinitely. A true perpetual food machine.
Compared to that, energy cubes simply increasing nutritional value by a few times through synthesis was already quite conservative.
And more importantly—
Resource fruits from the Beast Taming world could actually be used in the berry blender to produce energy cubes!!
The system reward was actually useful!
System bro, I'll never call you trash again!
'This is great. With the berry blender, I can make specialized energy cubes to train the Golden-Patterned Koi and carry out my research…'
'Although resource fruits containing dragon-type energy are still very expensive, they're far cheaper than true dragon-type resources!'
'This will greatly ease my financial pressure!'
With the food issue solved, the remaining problem was move learning.
Dragon-type moves were extremely valuable, often kept as secret techniques within dragon-taming families and never shared.
However, Jiang Xing didn't need anything too powerful. As long as it had some effect and was even slightly related to dragon-type attributes, that would be enough—
After all, the Golden-Patterned Koi was only a Low Extraordinary Tier species. Truly powerful dragon-type moves would be beyond its ability to learn anyway!
This would significantly reduce the cost.
After a brief moment of thought, Jiang Xing took out his phone and made a call.
When the call connected, the sound of crashing waves came from the other side, along with a pleasant female voice.
"Jiang Xing? Why are you calling all of a sudden? Trouble with your paper?"
"Senior, you guessed right." Jiang Xing said awkwardly. "I want to test whether the Golden-Patterned Koi can evolve into a dragon-type Pet Beast, but I'm missing a dragon-attribute move… I remember you trained a dragon-type Pet Beast. Could you lend me some data?"
Even the weakest dragon-type move, even after reducing costs as much as possible, would still be worth no less than a million.
Under normal circumstances, Jiang Xing would never ask Senior Su to "lend" him resources at this level.
But now, with the [Berry Blender] and [Energy Cubes], even if the experiment failed, he could repay the favor in the future by producing energy cubes.
That was the only reason he dared to shamelessly ask for help.
"Carp turning into a dragon? Not a bad idea."
"I'll send the file to your email shortly. Focus on your paper—don't disappoint your advisor."
Jiang Xing let out a sigh of relief and smiled.
"Thank you, Senior!"