Beast Taming Begins with the Inner Circle of Pets

There's news in Chapter 91.

Or perhaps the animal breeder who raised and nurtured the spirit pet for Wu Anbang's wife deceived her. After gaining her trust, he did something to her spirit pet behind her back...

Seeing her expression, Wu Jingyu immediately realized something and was about to ask her when the door to the private room was opened.

It was Wu Anbang who walked in…

"Thank you for your hard work today. If you come over these next few days, you can have your meals here. Consider it my way of thanking you," Wu Anbang said to Lin Manman.

"Uncle Wu, you don't need to be so polite. I didn't really help much..." Since Xiao Qi's treatment hadn't worked, Lin Manman felt embarrassed to accept his thanks.

Wu Anbang smiled slightly, "Compared to the money spent on hiring a pastor before, what are these few meals?"

He then nodded to Xia Ming, sat down beside him, and gestured for her and Wu Jingyu to join him at the table for dinner.

The meal was plentiful and tasted very good.

After finishing her meal quietly, Lin Manman decided to tell Wu Anbang the clues she had come up with, so that she could accept the gift with a clearer conscience.

After listening, Wu Anbang remained silent for a long time before slowly speaking.

"Too much time has passed. After my wife fell into a coma, all the animal breeders were dismissed, and I don't know where they went now. But I still want to thank you for the clue; I will investigate in that direction."

"Your return journey has been arranged. It's getting late, so you should go back and rest."

Lin Manman sensed something was off about Wu Anbang's somewhat indifferent reaction.

However, perhaps he was more concerned with saving his wife than with finding out the truth.

Xia Ming had no idea what they had done that day, and it wasn't appropriate to ask them at the dinner table. It wasn't until Wu Anbang put them on the land vehicle that he finally asked.

Wu Jingyu recounted the afternoon's events in a soft but detailed voice, and even lavishly praised Lin Manman a few times, making Lin Manman feel utterly flattered.

Xia Ming nodded, lowered his eyes as if deep in thought, and then fell silent.

It's unclear whether Xia Ming made prior arrangements before returning, but when she got back to the hotel, the people impersonating them were no longer in the room.

Wu Jingyu was given a different room by Xia Ming, so Lin Manman was still sleeping alone in her original room.

Her aunt and Fang Yaqi didn't seem to realize that it wasn't her who returned to the hotel today. The feeling of being impersonated and no one noticing made Lin Manman feel very... strange.

Reflecting on what happened today, Wu Anbang's wife being harmed by the contract made her vaguely aware that things weren't so simple.

If Wu Anbang's wife was murdered, it's either because the couple had made enemies and were being retaliated against, or because someone was after his special status.

However, this matter didn't concern her much, so she didn't want to pry too much.

After letting out a soft sigh, she forced herself not to think too much.

She has a match tomorrow, so she should get some rest.

The second day was the round of 32 to 16 in the individual competition, with eight matches in the morning and eight in the afternoon. Lin Manman was lucky today, drawing the number 3 draw, which meant she could finish her match in the morning.

After her competition, she can take Xiaoqi and her friends out for some fun!

While waiting for the first two matches, Lin Manman chatted with Wu Jingyu while trying to find her senior brother, whom she hadn't seen in two days, in the crowd.

With tomorrow being the last day of the competition, and still no news about the mysterious person and the mysterious organization behind him, she couldn't truly feel at ease.

Xia Ming seemed to have noticed something and reassured her, "Captain Wu is very well prepared. You don't need to worry about anything. Just focus on the competition."

Lin Manman nodded in agreement, but she still couldn't put her mind at ease.

It was Lin Manman's turn to compete. Her opponent was a tall and handsome female mage with short wolf-tail hair and a uniquely designed silver ornament on her right ear.

"I never expected to be assigned to the King of Hell," the female sorceress teased.

When Lin Manman heard her call her the Living Yama, she forced a polite smile, said nothing, and directly raised her hand to summon Amber.

The female mage's eyes lit up when she saw amber.

As soon as the referee blew the whistle, Amber rushed forward eagerly. Having learned from yesterday's experience, it knew that if it performed well, it would get more meat.

The female mage held a long-handled staff, which she slowly drew in a circle, instantly transforming her into a layer of icy armor. The armor had barely covered her body when her staff lit up again.

As Amber was running, she was suddenly stopped by a giant ice spike that shot up from the ground.

Seeing that it was about to hit the ice spikes, Amber instinctively wanted to use its talent, but then remembered Lin Manman's request from yesterday. It quickly opened its mouth wide, and a beam of blazing fire shot out onto the tip of the ice spike. The high temperature melted the extremely lethal spikes, and Amber crashed headfirst into the ice pillar.

"Awooo..."

Although the impact didn't cause much damage to the amber, the immense inertia still made it feel pain.

It glared at the female mage opposite it, as if holding a grudge against her for embarrassing it. With a roar, Amber unleashed the fruits of its training from the previous day—multiple fireballs.

Thanks to yesterday's training, Amber's fireball spell can now fire five fireballs at the same time, although the power of each fireball is much less than that of a single fireball.

The female mage remained completely calm upon seeing this move, even revealing a slight smile. She then lightly tapped her staff forward, and a thick wall of ice rose from the ground.

Amber was dumbfounded when it saw that its confident fireball spell was blocked by the ice wall.

While it was stunned, the female mage opposite it was not idle. With a swipe of her staff, a row of ice spikes condensed in mid-air and then shot towards Amber at great speed.

Fortunately, Amber was quick on her feet, dodging the attack by leaping left and right.

After the female mage missed her first attack, she continued to strike. Under the relentless barrage of attacks, Amber finally realized that it was being forced back and that the distance between it and the female mage was growing ever greater.

Its fireball was easily blocked by the opponent, and its fire-breathing attack was out of range. For a moment, it couldn't think of a better way to attack.

"Up there! Her ice wall can't defend against that!" Lin Manman, who had been silently watching for a long time with her arms crossed, finally couldn't help but remind her.

Amber's eyes lit up when it heard her voice. "That's right, how come I didn't think of that? My owner is so clever!"

While dodging the female mage's magical attacks, Amber tried her best to control the fireball spell to form in mid-air.

Because he had to focus on dodging the attacks, the fireball never managed to condense successfully, and he spent almost ten minutes jumping around to avoid it.

Suddenly, the temperature inside the arena rose noticeably. Above the female mage's head, one after another, star-like points of light appeared.

The points of light rapidly increased in size, turning into fireballs the size of human heads.

At the same time, Lin Manman heard the pleasant system notification sound again.

[Amber, the pet, learns the skill: Fire Meteor: Condenses a large amount of fire elemental energy into a large fireball, attacking a target area within a certain range.]

This time, the female mage was dumbfounded; it wasn't that she hadn't heard Lin Manman's words.

However, she knew that in addition to defensive skills, she was also equipped with protective gear, so even if Amber could really cast a fireball spell on her head, she could withstand it until she was out of the attack range.

But that was based on her estimation of the power of Amber Fireball. Now, this... each of those huge fireballs is several times or even dozens of times larger than the original fireball. Not to mention there are a whole bunch of such fireballs. How can we withstand that?

She had no time to think; the attack came down quickly. She could only cast spells to block some of the falling fireballs while relying on defensive skills and armor to withstand the fireballs that she couldn't block.

Fortunately, Amber is only at level two, and her newly learned skill proficiency isn't very high. While Fire Meteor has decent damage, its range isn't very large.

The female mage took five or six hits from the fire meteors before escaping the skill's range.

However, those five or six attacks had already exhausted the energy of her protective gear, and the Xuanbing Armor shattered.

The moment she was out of attack range, she wanted to reapply the Frost Armor.

However, Amber didn't just stand still and wait for her to escape after releasing the fire meteor.

Amber, who had already closed in, seized the moment before she could replenish her Xuanbing Armor, and four chains formed of flames simultaneously bound her limbs.

The chains formed by flames would suppress the flow of energy within her body, so once bound, she was unable to use magic to break free.

As Amber charged closer, it rammed into her, sending her flying.

Predicting that its opponent would land inside the arena, it added a fireball, causing the opponent to be hit twice in mid-air and eventually fall outside the arena.

Seeing Amber's smug look of having gotten her revenge, Lin Manman burst out laughing.

It turns out that besides rainbow jade, amber is also a vengeful creature.

Hearing Lin Manman's laughter, Amber immediately ran back to her side, her bright eyes filled with longing for praise and reward.

"Wow, Amber, you're amazing! You've even mastered a new skill! Although you joined our family late, your intelligence is definitely among the top in the family! You'll get two extra pieces of meat today!"

Amber squinted her eyes at the compliment, then puffed out her chest and started walking around her like a cat.

"Alright, alright, the referee has declared us the winner, it's time to go down. Others still have matches to play." With that, she put away Amber, who was trying to use the ring as a catwalk, and turned back to Wu Jingyu and Xia Ming's side.

After sitting down, she noticed unread messages on her wristband. When she opened it, she saw that it was a message from Gao Zhixian, which must have been sent during her competition.

The message not only told her that the beast tamer being attacked by the contract could only be caused by the spirit pet's backlash before its soul collapsed.

He also mentioned the latest developments regarding the strange spirit beast's corpse. It was confirmed that it was indeed a mutated spirit beast whose evolution had been forcibly interfered with by human means.

The good news is that while these things are undergoing distorted evolution, they are also contaminated by energy that cannot be properly absorbed and transformed, so most of them have short lifespans and very fragile bodies.

The bad news is that, judging from the way this thing evolved, this one doesn't seem to have been studied alone; it's more likely that it was mass-produced through experiments.

In other words, there are likely many more strange spirit beasts like this that can use the Soul Impact talent!

(End of this chapter)