The housekeeping robot brought A-Wu a cup of the sweet hot drink she liked.
She took a small sip and narrowed her eyes as she absorbed the faint spiritual energy inside it. It was nowhere near as good as spiritual tea from the cultivation world, but it was still quite pleasant.
A-Wu’s light screen was showing the Pill Shop auction.
At the moment, the first item up for auction was a third-grade Mirror Fate Pill.
The pill, marked with three silver patterns, was projected in front of everyone watching the auction. It looked almost exactly like the real thing.
More importantly, its effect was incredible:
It could repair the ability core of an ability user of B grade or below!
It was something no one had ever seen or even heard of before!
If Shi Mo had not publicly confirmed the medicine’s effects under his real identity, perhaps not a single person would have believed it.
After all, this was a problem that the entire Federation had spent years and enormous resources trying to solve without success.
How many soldiers had been forced to retire because their ability cores were damaged by the Zerg?
Most of them were left with constant weakness and eventually death.
Even if they managed to survive, they had to spend huge amounts of money on medicine every day, becoming a burden on their families while being unable to do anything else…
The appearance of this medicine could instantly save countless families and pull them out of despair.
Even if they could not afford it right now, it was still a ray of hope.
And as long as people had hope, they could keep living.
The moment the countdown ended, the bidding price beside the projected pill began to rise wildly!
Each price remained on the screen for less than a second.
Only after it passed one million credits did the bidding finally slow down a little.
This was exactly what A-Wu had expected.
This was a unique life-saving medicine.
Although it was only a third-grade pill, there were not many ability users above A grade in the interstellar world. The vast majority were below A grade.
The third-grade Mirror Fate Pill was therefore perfect for them.
A-Wu finished her hot drink and narrowed her eyes as she watched the numbers continue to climb.
The price had already passed five million credits.
The fourth-grade pill she had sold to Shi Mo had only brought her three million.
She had practically given it away at half price.
When the third-grade Mirror Fate Pill was finally sold for 8.9 million credits, A-Wu let out a deep sigh.
“There are really so many rich people in the interstellar world!”
Compared with people who owned several resource planets or even energy-stone mines, she was still truly poor!
The next item was a Cleansing Pill.
Its effects had also been publicly confirmed by a real patient.
Because so many people wanted this kind of medicine, and it was not particularly difficult to refine, A-Wu had prepared five sets.
However, she had not announced this beforehand.
She wanted to give everyone a “surprise” during the auction.
Although it might turn out to be more shocking than pleasant.
A-Wu secretly felt a little amused.
After the first person spent a huge amount of money to win one Cleansing Pill, what expression would they have when they suddenly discovered that several more were coming afterward?
Just as A-Wu expected, the first Cleansing Pill sold for 6.5 million credits.
What surprised her was that she had originally thought the price would fall after people realized there were several pills.
Instead, every single one was sold for a price no lower than the first!
A-Wu once again felt the enormous size of the interstellar market.
She became even more excited about her future cooperation with the Federation government.
She had a feeling that a huge wave of faith was already rushing toward her!
As the auction continued, A-Wu could feel the spiritual energy inside her body becoming more active.
This further confirmed her theory about the power of faith.
When the auction ended, A-Wu had earned more than 70 million credits in total.
After Lin Xu finished packing and shipping all the pills, he watched in shock as A-Wu immediately spent almost all of the credits.
In his eyes, that amount of money was practically astronomical.
But A-Wu had not bought anything else.
She bought nothing but energy stones.
With such a huge amount of credits, she could finally get her hands on top-grade energy stones!
She immediately placed orders on the Star Network and bought the most valuable S-grade and higher energy stones from several shops.
The price of S-grade energy stones depended on their size and the amount of energy they contained.
They ranged from one million to tens of millions of credits.
After carefully comparing them, A-Wu bought ten pieces and kept the remaining few million credits for later.
Some of the shops were nearby, so the energy stones arrived in her hands only a few hours later.
As a former truly poor person from the cultivation world, A-Wu gently stroked the top-grade spirit stone in her hand.
Her emotions were surging.
She felt as if she had finally become a winner in life!
She picked the smallest one and planned to use it as the core of her Spirit Gathering Formation.
She also wanted to experience what it felt like to cultivate with a top-grade spirit stone!
A-Wu picked up the small spirit stone and hesitated.
She looked at it again, then replaced it with a slightly larger one.
Well…
She was a rich person now.
She couldn’t be so stingy anymore.
She should use a bigger one!
She stored the other stones in her storage artifact, happily carried the large one back to her bedroom, and began cultivating.
Meanwhile, as soon as the auction ended, the Vanguard Corps of the Federation’s First Legion, which had just returned to Capital Planet from the front lines for rest and recovery, received a new mission.
They were ordered to go to Azure Star and protect Pharmacist Lin Wu.
Their superiors told them that further instructions would be given after they arrived on Azure Star and met Pharmacist Lin Wu.
The Vanguard Corps was the unit Tao She belonged to.
Its commander was Qi Yuzhan, the eldest direct grandson of Qi Kou, the Federation’s Supreme Commander.
He was also a student of the First Legion’s commander and the officially expected future successor of the First Legion.
For years, Qi Yuzhan had used his outstanding military achievements to silence everyone who opposed his succession.
The Vanguard Corps had a total of 2,000 soldiers.
It was the smallest but most elite unit in the First Legion.
The name said it all.
The Vanguard Corps was always the first group to charge into battle, so its casualties were also extremely high.
After the deaths and injuries suffered during this battle, only a little over 1,700 soldiers remained.
The vacant positions would later be filled by outstanding soldiers selected from the other corps.
Whenever the Vanguard Corps went into battle, it would always have exactly 2,000 soldiers.
This protection mission was not particularly difficult.
Azure Star was a B-grade habitable planet near Capital Planet, so its security was relatively reliable.
Therefore, Qi Yuzhan did not bring an escort fleet.
He simply took the main warship and 500 elite soldiers with him and headed toward Azure Star.
Naturally, his core team came along as well.
Qi Yuzhan, Luna, Tao She, Fatty Tang Chao, Skinny Xuan Zhu, and Rose Qi Mei—the six core leaders of the Vanguard Corps—were gathered in the command room of the main warship.
A-Wu’s information, including her image, was projected above the meeting table.
After reading through her information, everyone fell silent.
Tao She had just returned from the battlefield, and the killing aura around him had not completely faded yet.
But now he was staring at A-Wu’s image with fascination.
He had never expected the real A-Wu to be even more attractive than she was on the Star Network.
She was exactly his type!
Every part of her seemed to have grown according to his imagination!
Ah~ This was great!
He would finally get to see her soon!
When the time came, he would definitely stay by her side and protect her personally.
No one else was allowed to steal the job from him!
“Tsk!”
Among everyone present, Luna probably understood the relationship between Tao She and A-Wu best.
After all, Tao She had been the one who originally posted the Pill Shop link in their group chat.
“Big Tao, can you please stop making that lovesick face? Seriously, you look like some kind of pervert~”
Qi Mei gave him a disgusted sideways glance.
Tao She immediately wiped the expression from his face.
He put on the serious expression he usually wore in front of his subordinates.
Combined with his military uniform, he looked like a handsome and righteous military officer.
Fatty lazily lay across the table, supporting his two chubby cheeks with his hands.
“She really is both beautiful and talented! I want to marry her~”
Skinny glanced at him.
“Have you been driven crazy by all those forced marriage attempts? If this young lady actually falls for you, I’ll give you my entire year’s allowance as your wedding gift!”
Fatty immediately became unhappy.
“That was just a metaphor! A metaphor, understand?”
He waved his hand.
“Forget it. I’m not talking to you. You’re an old man. There’s no way you can understand the trends among young people these days. Hmph~”
Skinny rolled his eyes.
He was only three years older than Fatty!
The moment Tao She heard that Fatty was actually interested in his goddess, his eyes widened.
“This is my goddess, got it? She’s going to be on my household registration someday! A brother should never go after another brother’s wife!”
This time, Skinny did not argue.
“Big Tao and her actually seem pretty compatible. Keep it up, Big Tao. If necessary, use your beauty to win her over. It would be even better if you could bring her into our corps!”
Qi Mei and Luna exchanged a glance.
They were both speechless.
If Lin Wu were really obsessed with looks, wouldn’t she be able to see beautiful people every single day just by looking in the mirror?
Skinny clearly had a strange misunderstanding about beauty.
Seeing Tao She looking so hopeful, even Fatty could not help rolling his eyes at the two of them.
“Use your beauty to win her over,” huh?
It would make more sense if the commander tried that~
“All right.”
The commander, Qi Yuzhan, finally spoke from the head of the table.
Everyone immediately stopped joking and turned toward him, waiting for his instructions.
That was the absolute authority of a commander.
Qi Yuzhan was not even fifty years old.
By interstellar standards, he was still a very young man, almost like someone who had only recently become an adult.
That was one of the reasons so many people had opposed him becoming commander of the Vanguard Corps back then.
He had one-quarter Hua blood and one-quarter plant-human blood.
Because of this mixed heritage, he had short, pure-black hair and a pair of emerald-green eyes.
His plant-human bloodline made him look gentle and non-threatening.
His Hua bloodline gave him a warm, refined temperament, like a gentleman from ancient times.
Yet he always liked to keep a serious expression on his face.
On the battlefield, he was a god of death who had killed countless Zerg, as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Outside the battlefield, however, he looked calm, steady, and completely harmless.
He looked up at A-Wu’s projected image, then glanced around at his subordinates.
Remembering what his grandfather had told him the day before, his eyes became serious.
“This pharmacist possesses pharmaceutical technology that is extremely important to the Federation. This mission must succeed without fail.”
After saying this, he paused for a moment before continuing.
“No personal feelings are to interfere with the mission. We must make sure this pharmacist maintains a close and friendly relationship with the Federation.”
Hearing the commander’s words, Tao She and the others immediately stopped smiling.
They answered seriously,
“Yes, sir!”
As soldiers who were stationed on the front lines and borders for most of the year, they all understood what the commander meant.
Outside the Federation, there were not only the Zerg watching them hungrily.
There was also the unpredictable and ambiguous Snow Empire.
It was extremely rare for a genius pharmacist of this level to come from within the Federation itself.
Naturally, they could not afford to push her toward another country.
Otherwise, it would be a huge blow to the Federation.
After all, Lin Wu was not merely a genius pharmacist.
When Tao She had been at the front lines, he had been unable to contact the outside world privately.
But his mother, Tao Wan, had been keeping a close eye on A-Wu.
Although she had never managed to contact her, she had not missed a single new medicine released by A-Wu.
The more Tao Wan followed A-Wu’s progress, the more amazed she became.
From Enchanting Fragrance to Cleansing Pills…
What kind of genius was this young girl?
At such a young age, she had already overcome problems that many master pharmacists had spent their entire lives failing to solve!
As the president of the Federation Pharmacists Association, Tao Wan absolutely could not allow such a talent to leave the Federation.
So while she continued trying to contact A-Wu through every possible channel, she also reported A-Wu’s situation to the Federation’s Supreme Commander, Qi Kou.
At that exact moment, Qi Kou had just received a report from the Citizen Center.
The Federation had produced its first S-grade talent of the year.
It was Lin Wu from Azure Star!
He compared the two reports in his hands.
Once he confirmed that they were referring to the same person, his hands began to tremble slightly.
His wife was an eighth-level pharmacist.
Because of limitations in her mental power, she had been stuck at level eight her entire life and could never advance further.
It had always been one of the greatest regrets of their family.
No one understood better than Qi Kou what an S-grade talent meant.
A future ninth-level pharmacist!
A treasure belonging to the entire interstellar world!
He immediately summoned the chairman of the Federation Council, the president of the Pharmacists Association, and the commanders of the legions currently stationed on Capital Planet.
They held an emergency meeting to discuss the future ninth-level pharmacist.
The Federation currently had only three ninth-level pharmacists.
The Empire had only two.
There was only one ninth-level pharmacist wandering independently through the interstellar world without belonging to either side.
In other words, there were only six known ninth-level pharmacists in the entire interstellar world.
Compared with the Federation’s population of hundreds of billions, that ratio was frighteningly small.
The meeting group immediately reached a unanimous decision.
Protect her first. Seek cooperation. Under no circumstances could they allow such a talent to leave the Federation!
That was how the Vanguard Corps received its mission.
As long as A-Wu gave the word, the Vanguard Corps could immediately escort her to the central district of Capital Planet and arrange a residence for her.
She would receive the highest level of treatment the Federation could offer.