As soon as Cyan Treasure came out, its mind felt crystal clear.
The hardest part of its forehead felt like it had been hammered thousands of times, forged from pig iron into steel. Its strength had increased by a huge margin.
Cyan Treasure moved in front of the Power Stake. Its muscles tensed, and its tail straightened out, pressing firmly against the floor to provide a point of support for the front half of its body.
The next second, Cyan Treasure swung its head and violently smashed the surface of the Power Stake with a Head Hammer.
BANG! It sounded like a firecracker exploding.
The Power Stake quickly displayed a message, showing the Little Cyan Snake's Power Points.
[Power: 90 Jin]
[Power Points: 28!]
An increase of thirteen points this time!
That was huge progress—a single strike with ninety jin of force.
If an ordinary creature were hit by Cyan Treasure's attack, while it might not be sent flying, it would at least be enough to interrupt an enemy Pet Beast's skill casting and force it back several steps.
This was a Master Level Headbutt Skill.
After that, Gu Ming didn't enter the dream for Cultivation. Instead, he took the Little Cyan Snake to the strength training area to practice crunches.
Gu Ming had been to the training room before to work out. Back then, he hadn't contracted a Pet Beast yet, and he had observed other Little Cyan Snakes training.
Following the memory in his mind, he instructed the Little Cyan Snake to wrap its tail around a piece of snake-specific exercise equipment to secure it. Then, it lay its body on an inclined backboard, lifted its head, contracted its abdomen, lowered itself back down, and repeated the process.
A few minutes later, a teacher entered the training room with his Pet Beast, a Fiery Monkey, to begin their morning workout.
As soon as they entered, they saw Gu Ming and Cyan Treasure, who was in the middle of doing crunches.
Teacher Zhang looked surprised. 'Isn't that Gu Ming?'
'I heard that he contracted a Mutated Little Cyan Snake and thought I must have misheard. Why would the top student in the year choose a Little Cyan Snake? Even if it's a mutated one, it would be difficult for him to keep his number one rank.'
But now, seeing it with his own eyes, it was true.
He walked over and patted Gu Ming's shoulder. "Training?"
"Yes, Teacher Zhang. Could you see if Cyan Treasure's form is correct?" Gu Ming asked.
Teacher Zhang was the third-year physical education teacher. In the first half of the school year, he was responsible for training the students' bodies, lest they be too weak to become Beastmasters.
In the second half of the year, he transitioned to being a Pet Beast training instructor. There hadn't been a training class yesterday, so this was the first time Gu Ming had seen Teacher Zhang since the new semester began.
"Your form is wrong. When you lift your head, the snake's belly shouldn't curl. Keep the muscles taut and pressed against the backboard. Yes, just like that."
Teacher Zhang reached out from the side and pressed down on specific pressure points on the snake's abdomen.
When Cyan Treasure tried to rise again, its waist and abdomen were pinned, unable to curl.
Without the pull from its abdominal muscles, lifting its head was incredibly strenuous. It took a tremendous amount of effort just to raise its head.
Its head and torso were almost at a ninety-degree angle, and the energy consumed was dozens of times greater than before.
It immediately lay back down, gasping for breath, its muscles trembling uncontrollably.
"Hey, don't lie down. After you lift your head, you need to hold the position for a few seconds."
Teacher Zhang's words reached Cyan Treasure's ears like a devil's whisper.
'What? Hold it for a few more seconds? Isn't that asking for my life?'
Just now, it had used one hundred percent of its strength just to get into that right-angled head-lift position.
Now its muscles were aching slightly and felt powerless, making it impossible to lift its head again quickly.
Gu Ming also sensed Cyan Treasure's difficulty and explained its physical condition to Teacher Zhang.
"Sigh, I knew the Little Cyan Snake's physical constitution was poor, even with a mutated bloodline."
Teacher Zhang shook his head. If it couldn't even complete a full set of crunches, how was it supposed to build muscle strength?
The crunch exercise method was very suitable for Snake Pets, and its training efficiency was extremely high.
Correspondingly, this training method also had many subtleties.
Developed over sixty years, it had an accompanying system of medicines and methods for developing strength through pressure points.
If the Little Cyan Snake could endure the stimulation of one hundred and eight pressure points while doing crunches and complete a full training cycle, it would see a very significant improvement.
Unfortunately, the Little Cyan Snake had just exhausted all its strength while enduring the stimulation of only a single pressure point.
A Pet Beast with Four-star Potential, on the other hand, would be able to last for at least a few more rounds.
Gu Ming hadn't yet attended the Little Cyan Snake's training class, so he took the opportunity to ask Teacher Zhang how to develop Cyan Treasure's muscle strength.
"Strength training for a Little Cyan Snake is simple: just do crunches.
"Don't pay attention to what you see online. No matter how exaggerated their claims are, nothing beats simple, unadorned core training.
"The core is the source of a Snake Pet's power. Without core strength, it's difficult to even reach the Entry Level for any move.
"Whether you want to teach it the 'Z-shaped Shaking Body Technique' or the Headbutt Skill in the future, both will require core strength."
After speaking, Teacher Zhang first taught Gu Ming how to locate the pressure points by hand.
He used the pads of his fingers to press a few simple pressure points on Cyan Treasure's abdomen, demonstrating in slow motion.
At this moment, Cyan Treasure had just finished its workout, and its muscles were in a state of fatigue.
Teacher Zhang just lightly tapped its abdominal muscles with his finger, and Cyan Treasure's body flinched.
Gu Ming copied him, lightly tapping the same spots the teacher had just pressed.
HISS—
The pain made Cyan Treasure want to cry. Those pressure points were excruciatingly painful; a single poke felt like its muscles were being pierced, sending a jolt through its entire body.
"Don't be afraid, this is just for learning,"
Gu Ming comforted it as he diligently learned to locate the pressure points. The Little Cyan Snake's expression quickly became distorted.
Gu Ming had to stop. This training session was far more exhausting than he had expected.
'An incomplete workout is already this tiring. What would a complete one be like?'
"I won't teach you the rest of the pressure points. You can't train this stuff recklessly. We'll talk again after you've properly trained its mid-abdomen," Teacher Zhang said, shaking his head.
Science had shown that there was a specific order for training a Snake Pet's core muscle groups. Training them randomly could cause injury.
The five pressure points Teacher Zhang had just taught were all located in the core muscle group of a Snake Pet's mid-abdomen, its power-generating region.
"Train as soon as its strength recovers. Push the muscles to fatigue, squeeze out its limits," Teacher Zhang instructed.
Gu Ming nodded, but then he recalled something from his textbook and hesitated. "Doesn't it need rest? Won't it be overtraining?"
Gu Ming remembered his Beastmaster textbook saying that for Pet Beasts, training harder wasn't always better.
Pet Beasts have physical limits, especially Low-star Pet Beasts. Even simple exercise could make them hit their ceiling, requiring them to stop and get adequate rest, or else they would suffer the side effects of overtraining.
"Of course. If you want it to become strong and form an Inner Core before its Adolescent Stage, you have to provide it with Healing Soup, have it ingest Muscle Building Pills, and apply Demon Waist Natural Grass Powder externally.
"If you don't have any of those, then just slow down and take your time.
"However, it has already reached sixty Circulations in its Cultivation. At the fastest, it will take two weeks to fill its Mana, or four weeks at a slower pace.
"If its physical development can't keep up by then, it still won't be able to form an Inner Core. You'll have to train it hard regardless."
Teacher Zhang shook his head. When he had pressed on Cyan Treasure's abdomen earlier, he had sensed the amount of Mana within its body.
To be honest, Teacher Zhang was very surprised. He had actually seen the potential of a Four-star Pet Beast in this Little Cyan Snake. It was only a month old and had already cultivated to sixty Circulations—its aptitude was excellent.
Because of this, he was certain it was a Pet Beast that had taken Spiritual Energy Pills.
Four-star cultivation aptitude, supplemented by a pile of Elixir resources, to train a Little Cyan Snake to this level was not heaven-defying in his eyes. At most, it would be considered a minor genius.
If Cyan Treasure could complete one Circulation of training while enduring the blockage of its mid-abdominal pressure points without relying on Pills, *that* would be what he'd call a heaven-defying mutation.
After he finished speaking, Teacher Zhang patted Gu Ming's shoulder, leaving him to decide whether or not to use Body Refining Elixirs. Then he took his Fiery Monkey to practice its boxing.
Gu Ming was indeed spacing out, but he wasn't considering the list of Elixirs the teacher had given him. Instead, the system's story notifications had updated again.