He drank the Blood-Qi Compound.
Then Fang Yu took a sealed pale-black case out of the temperature-controlled room beside him. Inside it were boxes the size of a fist; he lifted one out and opened it, and there, sealed within, lay a pale grey pill the size of a thumb.
"Bone-Strengthening Pill," Fang Yu thought. "Starlight Group make. Eight hundred Star Coins each — again, half the price of the genuine article from the eight great groups."
For a Low-Rank Warrior who wanted to grow fast, Blood-Qi Compound and Bone-Strengthening Pills were the two most basic training aids: the first raised the speed at which blood and qi circulated and supplied the energy the strengthening of flesh and blood demanded... the second hardened the bones and toughened the fascia...
At martial junior colleges and martial universities, the training resources the Blue Moon Alliance handed out to students as standard rewards were mostly these two.
They sounded like basics.
But most warriors still could not carry the cost of them long-term.
"The genuine article from the eight great groups: two thousand Star Coins a dose of Blood-Qi Compound, and one dose every two days is best," Fang Yu thought. "Bone-Strengthening Pills, sixteen hundred each, again one every two days."
"That's over fifty thousand Star Coins a month, all together."
"Six hundred thousand and more a year." Fang Yu sighed inwardly.
And that was before wear on weapons, everyday expenses, class fees and the rest.
The martial path is a gold-devouring beast. That was no exaggeration.
It was truer still of warriors who had not yet grown into their strength — martial students in high school or just starting junior college did not merely devour gold, they devoured it and passed nothing back.
"Some of the wealthy, and the martial prodigies who sign early with the eight great groups, get Star Force Sensing Serum and Vital Regeneration Serum and Spirit-Nurturing Pills too, I hear. Those are more expensive again." Fang Yu stripped the packaging from the Bone-Strengthening Pill and swallowed it down the same way.
His own family's circumstances counted as very good.
His father's earning power was out of the ordinary.
But since his mother died on the Primordial Star the household had suffered badly for it, and since starting martial junior college, the "living allowance" Fang Yu received from his father was five hundred thousand Star Coins a year... barely enough to keep him supplied with the two basic drugs.
Which was exactly why.
When his martial skill entered Subtlety in his second year, Fang Yu had immediately used Senior Brother Dong's connections to become an assistant coach at the Iron Mountain Martial Society — partly to earn some money on the side, and partly to reflect on his own art through teaching students.
Teaching an apprentice is teaching yourself.
It had worked.
In one year he had not only earned over a hundred thousand Star Coins, his martial skill had reached Great Completion in Subtlety, and at last he could see a hope of the transfer.
And on the other hand.
Once his skill entered Subtlety, the Innate Divine Ability Devour became more efficient still, and to use his money more efficiently Fang Yu had switched his source of Blood-Qi Compound and Bone-Strengthening Pills from the eight great groups to the Starlight Group.
In this age.
Beyond the many technology companies, energy companies and financial firms... the ones that drew the most attention were the eight great warrior conglomerates.
Their founders had all been first-generation Starry Sky Warriors.
After decades of growth, each of those groups now contained a whole cluster of Starry Sky Warriors... The eight great warrior conglomerates represented the peak of the civilization's martial power, and they also controlled a great many subsidiaries that reached into every industry, and colossal wealth with them.
Within the Blue Moon Alliance, the eight great warrior conglomerates were a formidable force.
"The raw materials for those miracle-working training drugs mostly come from the Primordial Star," Fang Yu thought. "And on the Primordial Star, they say thermal weapons can't be used, so only powerful warriors can go deep — fighting savage beasts, and fighting bloody wars against the strong of any number of alien civilizations."
The Primordial Star was the civilization's battlefield.
Warriors walked the edge of life and death there for long stretches... which was the root of their extremely high standing in society and all their privileges.
It was precisely because they controlled the raw materials that the eight great warrior conglomerates held a near-monopoly on the training-drug business.
That business took a very large share of the civilization's commerce.
However.
Across decades of development, the Blue Moon civilization had produced more Starry Sky Warriors, and some new warrior conglomerates had sprung up — the Iron Mountain Group and the Starlight Group among them. They could not match the eight great groups, but they were putting out products of their own, one after another.
The Starlight Group counted as a second-tier warrior conglomerate.
The Blood-Qi Compound and Bone-Strengthening Pills they produced were what Fang Yu had settled on after trying over a dozen off-brand drugs.
On effect.
The Starlight Group's drugs came extremely close to the eight great groups' in potency... only their potency tended to be more domineering, and they carried a faint trace of drug toxicity.
Three parts of any medicine is poison.
Just as some patients, dosing themselves carelessly, can end up with liver damage or even kidney failure... training drugs were no different.
That was another reason the eight great groups' products, for all that their prices ran high, had not lost market share.
Stable supply of raw materials, gentler potency that the body absorbed more easily, low toxicity... a business in something close to a necessity, with a market both stable in the long run and full of competition.
Expensive things are expensive for a reason.
Nobody is a fool.
If the eight great groups' drugs had simply been overpriced, sales would have fallen.
"Still, with the Innate Divine Ability Devour, the drawbacks of off-brand drugs hardly touch me." Fang Yu had long since grown used to what his ability did.
Give it a drug and it could absorb that drug's potency almost perfectly in an extremely short time, wasting next to none of it — which was also how Fang Yu had been able to determine that Manager Huo and Supervisor Gao were passing off fakes.
Drug toxicity? It could dissolve that easily too, and his body was barely affected at all.
That was why Fang Yu dared to choose off-brand drugs.
...Having swallowed the blood-qi drug and the Bone-Strengthening Pill one after the other.
Soon.
Fang Yu felt the force of both of them, and a wave of squirming in his gut, as though it were digesting at an astonishing speed; streams of heat welled up from his belly and spread gradually through his whole body, devoured as if by starving men by the sinew, bone, blood and flesh of his four limbs and hundred joints.
"That's good."
"Training as hard as I have been, the potency of what I swallowed yesterday is basically spent." Fang Yu sealed both drugs away again and put them back.
He walked to the middle of the basement hall.
And began training the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms... The basic forms looked simple; plenty of primary-schoolers could put on a decent show of them with a little practice.
But watch closely, and Fang Yu now was something else entirely.
Many of his movements differed in tiny ways from the standard; not a muscle in his body trembled, and even the rhythm of his breathing had become peculiar.
"Open the Dragon Spine," Fang Yu said, coming to the last form.
He lay half prone on the ground, and like a carp leaping the dragon gate — every muscle, sinew and bone already fully opened by the forms that came before — the spine of his back rose slowly like a great dragon.
Force set out from his legs and his palms, from the root, and passed upward layer by layer.
The breathing method drove the trembling of the five organs and six viscera.
This was the hardest of the Twenty-Four Fist Forms.
Every person is different, and so there is no absolute standard for this one form; you must reach Great Completion in Subtlety yourself, circulate blood and qi, and then try and adjust, try and adjust, before you find the most efficient shape of it.
The movement is the skin, sinew and bone are the flesh beneath, the rhythm of the breath and the circulation of blood and qi are the core — and all of it acts in the end upon the spine of the back, and reaches at last its most perfect state.
These ten-odd days.
Fang Yu had spent every one of them experimenting, and only now did he truly feel this form.
"Hmmm— hmmm—" The great spine opened completely, and Fang Yu felt an ease through his whole body as strand after strand of strange force was born within the spine, and then seeped through into the five organs and six viscera, the four limbs and hundred joints.
Hidden force trains the spine, the dragon form searches the bones!
In that state, sinew, bone and muscle that had already "eaten" to their limit began, astonishingly, to absorb still more of the drug potency that had gradually gone into hiding.
Wringing the very last out of the Blood-Qi Compound and the Bone-Strengthening Pill.
This one session of training.
Almost two hours went by without his noticing.
"Hoo!"
Fang Yu rose slowly, feeling the surge of strength through his whole body, wonderfully at ease, and his eyes brightened slightly — the sleeping Aspect had already passed several strands of information to him.
"My Life Tier has reached Level 16?" Fang Yu thought.
Even with his skill in Subtlety, Fang Yu could hardly judge his own state perfectly, and the measurements of scientific instruments generally carried a margin of error too... but the sensing of the sleeping Aspect was extraordinarily precise.
"After Great Completion in Subtlety."
"Hidden force trains the spine, the dragon form searches the bones: that is the true mystery of the Twenty-Four Basic Fist Forms." Fang Yu was well satisfied. Once your skill reached Great Completion in Subtlety.
Without borrowing Star Force at all.
Simply mining the body's potential to its utmost, matched with blood-qi drugs and Bone-Strengthening Pills, could carry the body through a spell of rapid growth.
These last few days especially, Fang Yu's Life Tier had advanced at a rate to match half a month of bitter training before the breakthrough.
"Two basic drugs. It's only in this age that they're beneath notice, a thousand or two thousand Star Coins for a dose."
"In ancient times they'd have counted as rare treasures." Fang Yu sighed to himself.
In the age of ancient martial arts, those world-shaking grandmasters whose skill surpassed Inner Vista had eaten nothing but ordinary food, and had raised themselves to a punch force of two or three thousand kilograms on superb skill alone... The thought of it struck Fang Yu as absurd.
Times had changed.
"If I keep training like this."
"My Life Tier can climb a good deal further over the next month." Fang Yu's confidence was growing — and then his ears twitched.
The door had gone, and there were voices.
"Xiao Long and Siyue are back." A trace of delight showed on Fang Yu's face. He drew his fists in and went straight upstairs. "I wonder how their martial talent test came out."