Chapter 22: The Master Is Invincible!
The mother iron-eating beast suddenly scooped up her third cub, holding it tightly but gently in her jaws. She looked up at Su Wudeng, a final glimmer of conscious reason flickering in her eyes.
Amber remained positioned as a physical shield, staring intensely at the giant panda. The mother beast cast a wary glance at him, before slowly, cautiously backing away. The moment she reached what she deemed a safe distance, she whirled around, preparing to run.
But she had barely taken two steps before her massive frame collapsed heavily onto the grass. Perhaps because she had finally allowed herself to let out a long-withheld breath of relief, her chest stopped moving entirely.
The iron-eating beast struggled desperately to drag herself forward, her maternal instincts driving her to take her cubs away. But her physical trauma was far too catastrophic. The harder she crawled, the more fresh blood gushed from her torn abdomen. Her consciousness dissolved into gray shadows until she could no longer move a single inch.
“What’s happening?” Su Wudeng took two cautious steps forward.
Seeing that the giant panda offered no reaction, she moved completely to her side. Up close, the horrific, jagged gash carving through her torso was an absolute nightmare to behold.
“Don’t move, Aihua. Your injuries are far too severe.”
“It’s a literal miracle that you managed to hold onto life until now!”
This time, the iron-eating beast didn’t even possess the baseline physical stamina to lift a paw. Her eyes gradually lost their focus, her entire body shivering subtly as waves of agony wracked her nervous system.
Su Wudeng cast all caution aside, rushing forward to conduct an emergency visual evaluation. The closer she inspected the abdominal gash, the more she gasped in horror.
“This laceration is infinitely worse than it appeared from a distance!”
The mother sovereign seemed to understand her own terminal condition and stopped fighting. She simply fixed her wet, watery eyes onto Su Wudeng. It was an expression of pure, desperate pleading.
Su Wudeng’s instincts screamed that something was deeply wrong. Sure enough, when she calibrated her smart glasses to run a deep anatomical scan on Aihua’s torso, the data that flashed across her lenses struck her completely dumb.
“My God…” Su Wudeng whispered to herself.
“You actually have another cub trapped in your womb!”
“What kind of an absolute warrior are you?!”
“You engaged in a brutal territorial war with an unborn cub inside you, and you won!”
“Then you dragged your bleeding body for miles, stood your ground to threaten me, and didn’t allow your frame to collapse until this exact second…”
She was the absolute definition of an apex mother.
The smart glasses finished processing the biometric telemetry, rapidly determining that Aihua was suffering from severe dystocia—a critical, life-threatening obstructed labor. It wasn’t that her body refused to deliver; she physically lacked the muscular energy to push. Her life was hanging by a literal thread, and the unborn cub needed to be extracted via emergency surgery immediately. If the labor remained obstructed for another few minutes, the infant would suffocate to death inside her.
But the coppery stench of fresh blood in the clearing was growing suffocatingly dense. Amber’s large ears twitched as he caught the distant, echoing howls of approaching predators.
“The ambient environment here is completely hostile. I can’t perform an emergency cesarean section in the dirt,” Su Wudeng realized. Aside from lacking sterile surgical equipment, she couldn’t guarantee their safety for a single minute.
Amber paced frantically in circles, sniffing the damp air before fixing a highly vigilant gaze on the dark treeline.
“What do we do? Do we extract her from the map?”
It was their only tactical path to survival.
On the other side of the monitor, the millions of viewers locked onto the broadcast went completely wild:
“HOLY CRAP! There’s still a baby trapped inside her?!”
“This mother panda is a legendary hero!”
“Shopkeeper, please save them! You can’t just stand there and watch them die in the dirt!”
“The radar blips show predators closing in from all sides! It’s too dangerous! Move, move, move!”
Su Wudeng looked down into Aihua’s fading eyes, speaking with absolute, gentle clarity. “I want to save your life. But to do that, I have to transport you back to my shop.”
“Are you willing to trust me? Once we leave this forest, I can’t give you an ironclad guarantee that I can reverse this trauma, but I will give you everything I have.”
A sudden spark of desperate hope ignited within the iron-eating beast’s eyes, before rapidly dimming. “Then… the baby in my womb… can it still be saved?”
Aihua seemed to fully comprehend that the human standing before her harbored zero malice toward her litter. Looking at Amber maintaining his guard beside her, the defensive walls surrounding her consciousness relaxed a fraction. She wanted to save her unborn child, and for that single sliver of a chance, she was willing to cling to any ray of hope.
Su Wudeng hadn’t anticipated that even on the brink of death, the panda’s sole focus would remain her unborn offspring. “The infant’s vitals are still registering; it should survive a normal delivery. But… your hemorrhaging is the true crisis here!”
Amber barked urgently through the mental link, “Don’t panic! My master is an omnipotent goddess! She can definitely pull you back from the edge! If she can’t reverse this trauma, then no one in the galaxy can! Stop wasting precious seconds, do you hear me? I can sense the proximity signatures of multiple apex beasts. If you hesitate for another moment, you’re going to die here, and your babies will die with you!”
A brief struggle flashed through the iron-eating beast’s fading consciousness before she made her final, indomitable decision.
“Fine!”
“Thank you…”
Su Wudeng let out a massive breath of relief. She had been terrified that the stubborn sovereign would reject her intervention out of wild pride. If that had happened, even the gods couldn’t have saved her, and she would have been entirely powerless to help. Thankfully, the panda had recognized the absolute gravity of her situation.
She quickly stepped forward, carefully wrapping her arms around the massive, bleeding form of the iron-eating beast to support her weight.
“Amber! Scoop up the two newborns immediately! We are exiting this sector right now!”
“System… EXIT!”
Following a violent wave of spatial vertigo, Su Wudeng and her cargo vanished from the clearing.
Almost the exact same microsecond they dematerialized, an earth-shaking, deafening roar tore through the forest. An exceptionally swift terrestrial predator had tracked the coppery scent of fresh blood, violently bursting into the clearing.
Unfortunately for the hunter, when it scanned the grass, it found nothing but pools of fresh blood and a fading residual scent matrix. It unleashed a furious, frustrated roar into the canopy, forced to abandon the sector empty-handed.
The exact second Su Wudeng exited the Great Prosperity Era, the live video feed cut to absolute black. The millions of viewers who had been watching with bated breath were instantly left staring at a dead monitor.
“AHHHH! WHAT THE HELL?! Why did the feed just go black?!”
“Oh my god, I need to see the shopkeeper perform the emergency surgery!”
“What happened to the mother panda?! My anxiety is breaking the charts, turn the camera back on!”
“Shopkeeper Su, you have to pull them through! Please!”
But regardless of how frantically the live chat scrolled, the broadcast channel remained firmly offline. Su Wudeng had zero time to worry about her metrics or internet clout now.
The moment she materialized back inside the laboratory zone of Pet Love Home, she immediately initiated emergency trauma protocols.
She barked out rapid instructions to her assistant: “Huihui! Take the two newborns and secure them inside the high-tier incubator immediately!”
Without losing a fraction of a second, she used her administrative clearance to push Aihua’s massive frame straight into the primary surgical suite.
“System! Access the Star Mall interface!” she commanded frantically, her fingers blurring across the translucent holographic console.
Thanks to the viral explosion of her live stream, her Hope Point reservoir had been flooded with astronomical amounts of currency. The baseline medical diagnostics pre-installed in her shop were severely inadequate to handle a major surgical procedure on a wild sovereign; she needed to aggressively purchase premium clinical infrastructure from the system store right now.
Her Hope Points drained at a terrifying velocity as a succession of state-of-the-art medical modules materialized inside her suite: a heavy-duty hydraulic operating table, advanced multi-parameter biometric monitoring arrays, high-capacity anesthesia ventilators… everything required for a world-class trauma unit. In a matter of seconds, her humble pet testing counter was structurally upgraded into an elite surgical suite.
Amber poured every ounce of his muscular strength into hoisting the unconscious Iron-Eating Beast onto the operating table, his own silver-blue coat heavily stained with her blood.
“Hang in there, Aihua!” Su Wudeng urged, her hands moving with rapid precision as she scrubbed in, disinfected her forearms, and snapped into sterile surgical scrubs.
On the other side of the glass, Zhong Huihui deftly settled the two blood-stained newborns into the incubator. The tiny creatures curled into a tight pile, letting out faint, raspy whimpers.
The heavy reinforced doors of the surgical suite sealed with a pneumatic hiss. Left outside, Amber and Zhong Huihui could only watch through the observation window, their nerves wound incredibly tight.
“Extraction first!” Su Wudeng took a deep, stabilizing breath, her fingers tightening around a high-frequency surgical scalpel.
The exact millisecond the blade incised the skin, a fresh torrent of blood welled up. She meticulously navigated the abdominal layers, executing every single incision with flawless, cautious precision. In an operation this volatile, a single millimeter of error could easily sever a major maternal artery or slice straight into the hidden cub.
Thick beads of sweat rolled down Su Wudeng’s forehead, the frantic, deafening thumping of her own pulse echoing in her ears.
Finally, her hands reached into the womb, carefully extracting a wet, slick miniature figure. The cub had been trapped inside the birth canal for far too long; its tiny skin had turned a dangerous shade of cyanotic blue, its respiratory system completely flat.
She turned the infant over, gently patting its back before rapidly securing a specialized neonatal respiratory filter over its tiny muzzle. Fortunately, the biological resilience of the Iron-Eating Beast line was legendary. After a agonizing second, the tiny cub’s chest violently rose, and it let out a weak, high-pitched cry.
“Yes!”
Su Wudeng let out a ragged breath. The infant was officially stable.
But looking down at Aihua’s exposed abdominal cavity, her heart plummeted. The trauma was far more catastrophic than her initial diagnostics had suggested. The deep, jagged lacerations had severed multiple muscle groups, exposing fractured skeletal structures and leaving her internal organs completely vulnerable.
The system console immediately projected a comprehensive treatment algorithm, but the procedural steps were immensely convoluted and laden with critical failure risks. A single misstep during the vascular ligation would trigger immediate, exsanguinating hemorrhage or systemic organ failure.
But she didn’t have the luxury of waiting for an elite team of veterinary surgeons to arrive. She was the only line of defense between this mother panda and the grave.
Su Wudeng tightened her grip on her surgical instruments, her eyes turning deadly sharp. “Alright, Aihua. Let’s drag you back from the jaws of death!”
Initiating closure.
Minutes bled into hours. Throughout the grueling procedure, the mother panda’s vital signs plummeted into the red zone multiple times, her cardiac rhythm flatlining completely on one occasion.
Whenever the monitors blared, Su Wudeng would lean close to the comatose sovereign, her voice fierce with encouragement. “Aihua, look at me! You have to fight! Your three babies are sitting right outside that glass waiting for you to wake up!”
As if her mental voice was penetrating the darkness, the massive panda’s ears would subtly twitch, letting out a weak, almost imperceptible rumble through the ventilator.
Realizing the operation was stretching too long, Su Wudeng quickly prepared a high-density cellular nutrient solution, carefully threading an IV line into the giant panda’s cephalic vein.
“Your digestive tract cannot tolerate oral intake right now,” she explained softly to the unconscious beast. “We need to avoid any risk of aspiration or tracheal blockage. We are routing pure cellular energy directly into your bloodstream, so don’t worry.”
Truth be told, Su Wudeng’s practical medical skills were limited to basic injections. But the system’s surgical overlay was phenomenally advanced, projecting hyper-detailed, step-by-step visual markers directly onto the patient’s anatomy to guide her hand. At the start of the operation, she had been paralyzed by self-doubt, but four hours deep into the procedure, her mind had gone completely numb, operating on pure, mechanical focus.
Outside the sealed doors, Amber paced back and forth across the floorboards, his claws scratching restlessly against the wood. His blue eyes darted toward the observation glass every few seconds, his large ears pricked high to catch any shifting frequency from the machines inside.
Who could have ever predicted that his legendary, mortal enemy would end up broken on an operating table under his master’s blade? They had once fought a savage, no-holds-barred war over a single piece of scavenged marrow bone. Back then, Aihua had been a chaotic, chubby juvenile, her massive round eyes constantly plotting to plunder his hard-earned food.
Yet here she lay, her life flickering like a dying candle.
“How on earth did you let yourself get broken like this?” Amber rumbled under his breath. “You disappeared into the forest for a minute, and suddenly you’re a mother running around with three runts, completely destroying yourself.”
Right then, the side door of the neonatal suite hissed open. Zhong Huihui stepped out, carefully cradling the newly delivered third cub. The tiny life looked terrifyingly fragile, its breathing shallow, its miniature limbs completely motionless. Amber immediately trotted after her, slipping into the nursery room next door.
Inside the incubator, the first two rescued pandas were fast asleep, completely oblivious to the life-or-death struggle unfolding across the hall.
Zhong Huihui expertly administered a dose of high-density neonatal nutrient solution, running a final diagnostic check over its tiny frame. The cub’s vital signs were dangerously low. She smoothed her fingers over its back, murmuring soft words of encouragement.
“Come on, little one. You have to fight for your life. Look at the monitors—your mother is currently fighting with everything she has right across the hall!”
“…You carry the blood of a wild sovereign. You are going to pull through this.”
“Your mommy… your mommy is going to be completely fine.”
The tiny panda let out a weak, raspy whimper, as if acknowledging her voice.
Amber stared down at the fragile, pink-skinned creature behind the glass. “She’s so incredibly tiny,” he thought. “Nowhere near as robust as her older siblings.”
Staring at the infant, his mind suddenly drifted back to his own past. Once upon a time, had he been just like this helpless runt—frail, abandoned, and entirely alone in a brutal world? Had his own mother endured a catastrophic trial just to bring him into existence?
When he was a defenseless pup, he had spent countless nights crying quietly in the dark recesses of the wilderness. He had never understood why his frame was born so much smaller than the breed baseline. Why did the other puppies have massive, protective mothers to groom them, while he was left to scavenge in the dirt? Whenever he had witnessed wild sovereign hinds licking their cubs, Amber would slink into the deepest shadows, using his paws to fiercely wipe away his tears.
But looking at the mangled, dying panda inside the surgical suite, a sudden truth hit him. The fact that he had survived to adulthood wasn’t a given—it was an absolute miracle.
If he and his master hadn’t crossed paths with this litter today, the first two cubs might have survived a few hours on their own, but the alpha mother would have undoubtedly bled out and died alone in the forest.
He whirled around, sprinting back to the main observation window, his blue eyes locked onto the closed surgical doors.
“You have to survive this,” he muttered relentlessly into the neural link. “I haven’t even gotten the chance to rub it in your face how magnificent my new lifestyle is.”
“I don’t ever have to fight for a single scrap of meat out here anymore.”
“My master is insanely generous to me.”
“Whatever my heart desires, she drops it right into my bowl.”
“Don’t you want to live long enough to see your own three runts experience a life of luxury like that?”
His mind flashed back to the days when they had clawed at each other’s throats just to fill their bellies. The memory of bone-deep hunger and existential uncertainty felt like it had occurred only yesterday.
“Survive,” Amber whimpered softly, his paws restlessly treading the floorboards as time slowed to an agonizing crawl. “The good life is standing right in front of you. You can’t just die in the dirt now.”
The grueling operation lasted for four hours.
When the final internal suture was secured, Su Wudeng practically collapsed onto the floorboards of the suite, her entire uniform completely saturated with sweat. She tilted her head back to look at the master monitoring console. Every single biometric indicator tracking the iron-eating beast had finally stabilized, locking into a steady, green waveform.
The pneumatic surgical doors hissed open, and Amber’s tense face immediately filled the gap, his eyes searching hers with profound anxiety. Su Wudeng gave a slow nod, a tired but deeply relieved smile breaking across her lips.
Amber’s eyes ignited. He charged into the suite, his tail thumping wildly against her legs as he extended his tongue to gently lick her cheek. “You are an absolute goddess, Master! Aihua is alive!”
Though the surgery had concluded successfully, Aihua’s road to recovery would be exceptionally long and arduous.
“The structural damage is sealed, but she requires deep, uninterrupted metabolic rest,” Su Wudeng noted, stripping off her bloody gloves. “Her internal trauma was so extensive that she’ll likely remain bedridden for weeks.” There was no shortcutting biological healing.
She looked down at the sleeping sovereign. Aihua’s broad abdomen was encased in thick medical compression bandages. Though her respiration remained shallow, the rhythm was beautifully steady and strong.
“Crucially, she cannot nurse her litter during this initial recovery phase,” Su Wudeng sighed, mapping out the logistics. “We will have to handle the nutritional needs of the triplets manually. Especially that third newborn—she’s incredibly frail and requires constant, high-density monitoring.”
“We focus on stabilizing the cubs first, and wait for Aihua’s system to regenerate before we reintroduce them.” She would require at least a month of clinical confinement. But against all statistical odds, every single life had been pulled back from the grave.
Four hours of suffocating, high-threshold concentration had drained Su Wudeng’s physical reservoirs completely. Now that the adrenaline had cleared her system, an overwhelming fatigue crashed over her consciousness, her eyelids turning as heavy as lead.
She turned to Amber and Zhong Huihui. “I’m leaving the monitoring shift in your hands. My brain is officially shutting down; I need to sleep.”
Zhong Huihui nodded firmly. “Relax, Shopkeeper. I’ve got the console logs covered. Go get some rest.”
Su Wudeng dragged her leaden limbs out of the suite, pushing open the door to her personal living quarters. The familiar, comforting scent of her bedroom washed over her face, instantly relaxing her frayed nerves. She practically stumbled onto the mattress, collapsing face-first without even possessing the coordination to unlace her boots. The second her head hit the pillow, her consciousness dissolved into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When she finally blinked her eyes open, the sky outside her bedroom window had already dissolved into pitch-black night. Su Wudeng was violently awakened by a sharp, agonizing growl radiating from her stomach. She stared blankly at the ceiling for a long moment, her brain slowly rebooting as she reoriented herself.
She stumbled into the bathroom, splashing ice-cold water onto her face to clear the remaining brain fog. The fatigue lifted instantly, but the raw hunger in her gut intensified. Hurrying out into the shop’s break area, she grabbed a bottle of premium cellular nutrient solution, popped the seal, and inhaled the contents in a single gulp. She didn’t care about the bland taste; her only priority was resolving her caloric deficit.
Once the nutrient fluid settled in her stomach, a comfortable warmth returned to her limbs. Wasting no time, Su Wudeng pushed open the heavy doors of the monitoring suite to check on Aihua.
Zhong Huihui was standing reliably beside the primary console, her eyes fixed on the data readouts. Su Wudeng peered through the observation glass. The massive panda was sleeping peacefully, her broad chest rising and falling in a slow, powerful, and deeply rhythmic pattern. She had entered a deep state of metabolic sleep, and every metric on the master display was perfectly stable.
The tight knot of anxiety in Su Wudeng’s chest finally dissolved completely. It had been over four hours since the final stitch. Maintaining a flat, stable metric line for this long meant the sovereign had officially cleared the acute post-operative crisis window.
She caught Zhong Huihui’s eye, and the two women quietly stepped out of the monitoring bay into the corridor to speak.
“She’s doing remarkably well,” Zhong Huihui reported in a hushed tone. “The vitals haven’t fluctuated a single millimeter.”
“Her sole objective right now is to maximize sleep and process nutrients. Deep metabolic slumber is the absolute best catalyst for cellular reconstruction,” Su Wudeng noted, checking the digital logs. “But we maintain a strict, 24/7 watch schedule on her console.”
Zhong Huihui nodded solemnly. “Understood. I’ll run the diagnostic checks hourly. But… Shopkeeper, this female sovereign’s internal injuries were horrific. What on earth did she clash with out there?”
Su Wudeng provided a brief, clinical summary of the blood-stained clearing where she had discovered the newborns and the subsequent standoff with the bleeding alpha. Zhong Huihui listened, her jaw dropping in absolute shock.
She refrained from prying into how the shopkeeper possessed the terrifying power to seamlessly extract an apex predator from the heart of an endangered wilderness; she had already accepted that her boss operated on a completely different paradigm of authority. But the raw, indomitable fortitude displayed by Aihua deeply moved her.
“Maternal devotion truly defies physical limits,” Zhong Huihui marveled, her eyes shining. “To successfully deliver a triplet litter in the middle of a territorial war of attrition against an equal predator… those babies only survived because she was willing to tear herself to pieces to shield them. And thank goodness you were there, Shopkeeper. Because of your intervention, she actually survived the aftermath.”
It was a statistical miracle.
“But…” Zhong Huihui paused, a trace of professional worry clouding her expression. “With trauma that catastrophic… won’t her biological foundation suffer permanent, irreversible sequelae?”
Su Wudeng let out a heavy sigh. “There’s no avoiding it. The lacerations penetrated too deep, and delivering a triplet litter simultaneously drains an immense amount of a beast’s life force. For a high-tier terrestrial predator, a triplet birth is an exceptionally rare, high-risk biological event, let alone executing it in a hostile wilderness. Factor in that brutal, blood-soaked battle before labor, and the damage to her system is unimaginable. Though I didn’t witness the clash, the sheer depth of the claw marks speaks volumes about the ferocity of her opponent.”
“I’m deeply concerned that her core biological origin has suffered permanent structural compromise,” Su Wudeng analyzed grimly. “Going forward, achieving a one hundred percent recovery to her prime combat metrics will be exceptionally difficult. Scurrying around the wild trying to defend three runts with a fractured foundation would have been a death sentence for her. Of course, this is merely my preliminary assessment; the final parameters depend entirely on how her system responds to our cellular therapy over the next month.”
Zhong Huihui nodded silently, her gaze drifting back to the observation window with a trace of lingering worry. She thought of the three tiny lives currently locked inside the nursery. “Still, Shopkeeper, I actually think her baseline recovery rate is defying human medical logic. To absorb trauma that severe and stabilize her cellular pressure in a matter of hours… her baseline life force must be terrifyingly robust.”
Su Wudeng firmly agreed with that assessment. It was an absolute mistake to measure a wild sovereign using fragile human physiological metrics. Ever since the near-extinction of living animals, the advanced classification systems detailing a beast’s unique elemental tiers and cellular structures had been completely lost to time. Modern society was exclusively familiar with the Five Realms governing human-mecha synchronization. But the latent biological capabilities of an authentic companion beast—especially an apex terrestrial titan like the Iron-Eating Beast line—transcended the narrow imagination of modern tech developers.
“I just pray she pulls through completely,” Su Wudeng thought. Seeing the mother panda safe, she turned on her heel. “Let’s head into the nursery to check on the triplets.”
Inside the nursery suite, the environment was perfectly calibrated. The first two rescued pandas were in spectacular condition, their tiny bellies visibly rounded and stuffed with milk, completely unaffected by the trauma of their birth.
However, the medical telemetry tracking the final, delivered cub was nowhere near as optimistic. She was noticeably smaller than her older siblings, her frame looking painfully thin and fragile.
Curiously, Amber had developed a profound, intense obsession with this specific runt. The massive hound was currently curled tightly against the base of her incubator module, his blue eyes fixed unblinkingly on her tiny form. If an outsider walked into the room, they would have easily assumed Amber was the biological mother of the infant panda.
Su Wudeng chuckled at the sight. “What’s the matter? Are you nervous about her vitals?” She couldn’t resist teasing him through the link. “Amber, seriously, if someone walked in here, they’d think this little runt belonged to your bloodline. You haven’t monitored your own pack of husky puppies with half this much dedication, have you?”
Amber raised his massive head, letting out a soft, defensive huff. “Those brats are robust powerhouses, Master. They eat like monsters and sleep like stones; I don’t have to waste a single microsecond worrying about their survival.” Their childhood was infinitely more secure than his own had been.
“Look at how rapidly their mass is expanding; they’re growing so fast they look like they’re being inflated by a pump.” He paused, shifting his sharp blue eyes back to the tiny panda behind the glass. “But this little thing… she’s so incredibly frail. It feels like a sudden draft could completely snuff out her life force. It is an absolute miracle that you possess the infrastructure to provide her with a sanctuary this perfect.”
In Amber’s estimation, his master was an omnipotent entity capable of rewriting fate. In the savage wilderness of the continent, a runt this weak would have been instantly eliminated by natural selection. Yet here she was, safely breathing inside a high-tech cradle.
His thoughts drifted back to his own tribe, where physical vulnerability was a capital offense that resulted in immediate banishment. If a triplet litter had materialized within his old pack, the elders would have ruthlessly culled the weaker two to ensure the survival of the strongest.
Remembering his own puppies, Su Wudeng realized she hadn’t checked on the husky litter since her return. She stepped across the hall and slid the nursery doors open. A rich, sweet aroma of warm milk immediately hit her face.
The puppies were currently engaged in absolute, chaotic play. The sheer velocity of their growth was staggering; every single cub had filled out significantly, their frames becoming remarkably rounded and dense compared to the gaunt runts she had first encountered in the clearing. Their miniature paws had grown thick and plush, looking impossibly cute as they tumbled across the rug.
Su Wudeng squatted down, reaching out to gently stroke the nearest puppy. Beneath the thick, dense silver-blue coat, she could feel a remarkably firm, flexible, and powerful muscular structure developing. The cub’s paw pads were so squishy and thick she couldn’t resist pinching them affectionately.
The rest of the litter continued their intense wrestling match. The most hyperactive of the bunch was undeniably the puppy Shu Can had reserved. The tiny creature possessed a limitless reservoir of manic energy, constantly rally-charging its siblings to initiate fresh rounds of play. The second it caught sight of Su Wudeng, it let out a sharp baby bark and sprinted straight toward her, its tiny tail thumping a frantic rhythm against the floorboards, with the remaining four puppies forming a chaotic vanguard behind it.
She smiled warmly, patiently patting each of their heads as they swarmed her ankles. “Good puppies.”
One specific puppy remained completely detached from the chaos. It sat quietly in the corner of the room, its deep blue eyes radiating a level of calm, stoic wisdom that was entirely out of character for its age. It displayed absolute zero interest in the rowdy antics of its siblings, choosing instead to lounge peacefully on its own rug. But the wrestling puppies were completely oblivious to its desire for isolation, constantly tumbling into its space and colliding against its flanks. Severely annoyed by the disruption, the stoic little guy abruptly stood up, shook its silver-blue coat, and intentionally rolled itself into the center of the nursery rug to reclaim its peace.
Su Wudeng recognized that specific puppy instantly. It was the elegant one that had explicitly chosen Uncle Lan. Every single time Uncle Lan stepped into the shop, this quiet little guy would violently break its stoic exterior, wagging its tail like a maniac and aggressively leaning against his boots. Uncle Lan loved the pup with absolute devotion, but the profound self-doubt weighing on his shoulders had formed a massive psychological barrier. He remained locked in the belief that an ordinary grocery clerk like him lacked the resources to provide a high-tier combat beast with the future it deserved.
Naturally, his hesitation left the little husky feeling incredibly dejected, but the stubborn pup refused to abandon its choice. It couldn’t comprehend the complex socioeconomic anxieties plaguing its human; its primitive logic was beautifully simple: I like you, you’re my human, and I am going to sprint to the door every time you walk in.
And despite Uncle Lan’s vocal protests and self-deprecation, the man still religiously closed his grocery shop early every single day just to spend hours sitting by its enclosure.
Su Wudeng let out a soft sigh, rubbing her temples. Human emotional barriers were an incredibly tedious puzzle. The little husky was completely smitten with Uncle Lan, and she fully supported the match, but ultimately, Uncle Lan had to summon the fortitude to conquer his own insecurities. The puppy didn’t give a single damn about his financial brackets or social status; to a beast of the continent, having a full bowl of food and a human who loved them unconditionally was the absolute zenith of happiness. Whether it achieved legendary military glory or amassed millions of credits was entirely meaningless in its eyes.
Right then, Zhong Huihui walked into the room, holding a sleek translucent data slate. She handed the terminal to Su Wudeng, the display projecting a comprehensive diagnostic chart.
“Shopkeeper, look at the telemetry updates. The growth velocity curves for the husky litter have officially begun to plateau, and their volumetric caloric intake is dropping back to baseline metrics. If my analysis is accurate, they are on the verge of successfully clearing their evolutionary transition phase.”
Zhong Huihui let out a relieved breath. “We owe a massive debt of gratitude to Mr. Chu for mobilizing his R&D division to manufacture that specialized pet kibble; without that high-density nutrient fuel, their bodies could never have processed the evolutionary energy this rapidly.”
Su Wudeng scrutinized the data lines. Sure enough, the vertical spikes had flattened out into a stable horizontal baseline. She estimated that within forty-eight to seventy-two hours, the transition phase would conclude completely.
For the companion beasts of the continent, their lifecycle progressed from the baseline infant stage into the hyper-volatile transition phase, followed immediately by adolescence. Once they breached adolescence, their neural pathways stabilized completely, allowing them to forge formal soul-contracts with human tamers, undergo advanced tactical conditioning, and ultimately unlock their latent combat abilities. Correspondingly, the humans who bound with them would officially ascend into the ranks of elite beastmasters.
In other words, the litter was days away from unlocking full contract readiness. She needed to meticulously vet and secure excellent owners for the remaining cubs ahead of schedule. As of right now, two puppies had successfully locked down their placements—though Uncle Lan was still trapped in his own head. She needed to carefully deliberate how to allocate the remaining three; sourcing a reliable, ironclad buyer who cleared her strict ethical guidelines was an incredibly demanding task.
Suddenly, Zhong Huihui’s communicator let out a violent series of notification chimes, her voice rising in absolute, breathless shock:
“Shopkeeper! Look at the primary network console! Our account’s direct message backend is completely collapsing from the sheer volume of incoming traffic! You’ve completely broken the global trending search rankings!”
“The entire Star Network is going absolutely feral demanding an update on Aihua! Everyone is screaming to know if the mother panda survived the surgery!”
