"I’m all set over here."

"Okay, thank you, Teacher."

Hanging up the phone, Lu You clutched her cell, her fingertips trembling slightly.

The tips of her ears were red, but the corners of her lips couldn’t help but lift into an expectant smile.

Even the Sunflower Seed-eating Hamster squatting beside her, nibbling on sunflower seeds, noticed something was different about its master.

Though her face beneath her glasses held a hint of shyness, her eyes were astonishingly bright.

It had long since seen Lu You staring blankly at competition videos.

Her fingertips would trace the phone screen, her gaze following the young men and women competing in teams on the display. It was clear she was filled with longing.

But she was too timid. Every time she wanted to ask Gu Ming, ’Do you need a teammate?’

The words would reach her lips and turn into, "Should we adjust today’s Earth Shifting Technique training?"

Thankfully, Teacher Zhang’s call was a saving grace, extinguishing the unease in her heart.

But now, another problem weighed on her chest like a stone. ’How am I going to explain this to my family?’

In truth, Lu You had decided to act first and report later.

When she received the invitation to compete, she had agreed with almost no hesitation. But her parents... Recalling the clumsy lies she had told on weekends a few weeks ago to attend special training, she felt a pang of guilt.

Back then, in order to train her Pet Beast with Gu Ming, she had lied about having a part-time job to help with family expenses.

Her parents hadn’t been suspicious, simply assuming she was really working a temporary job.

As for whether she’d actually earned any money, that was another matter entirely.

After all, when you went out looking for work, there was no guarantee anyone would hire you.

Every week when she came home, Lu You would fob them off with excuses, saying the boss wasn’t hiring, or that jobs were hard to find, or that she’d been let go from the short-term gig she had last week.

Or she’d claim she only earned a little money that day. She dragged things out like this again and again, allowing her weekly special training to proceed smoothly.

Now that the earnings from the Visualization Image had arrived, she could reasonably bring money home and stop her parents’ questioning.

But this competition couldn’t be so easily fudged.

After all, competing required leaving the city and going into seclusion at the competition venue.

Based on the competition’s schedule, if everything went smoothly, the event would last at least forty days.

If it didn’t go well, she would be back within a week or two.

’How should I break it to my family?’

This problem made Lu You’s brow furrow with worry.

’What if I’m honest with my parents and hope for their support?’

Honestly, she felt her parents would absolutely, one hundred percent, not agree.

’Looks like I’ll have to expand on the "part-time job" excuse.’

Lu You clenched her fists, her mind made up: she had to go to the competition with Gu Ming.

’This might be the only chance I’ll ever get.’

’If for no other reason than to repay him for all his effort and help.’

No one had ever extended a helping hand to her so genuinely and selflessly.

She still remembered his words to this day: "Lu You, don’t give up!"

Aside from a relatively happy childhood, her memories of middle and high school were not pleasant; she had constantly been under silent pressure.

This was one of the reasons she had developed social anxiety.

She had closed herself off, afraid to interact with people, living in her own little world.

She always felt like a mouse in the shadows, unworthy of basking in the light.

Only Gu Ming was like the sun, shining a beam of light into her dark world, opening a window for her.

A Spiritual Power called "Courage" welled up in her heart unknowingly, stirring up a tempest in her Sea of Consciousness.

Gu Ming once said.

The Divine Sense Sword Body in his Sea of Consciousness was the manifestation of his own Ultimate Thought. It was a sword born after he discovered his family’s deception. His spiritual world had trembled, and from within the chaos, he had severed all turmoil to forge it anew.

His sword was sharpened for his family and his Pet Beasts, unsheathed for his own future.

If a person doesn’t know their reason for living, they can’t condense the ultimate intent of that sword.

Lu You also wanted to condense her Divine Sense. Relying solely on the Shrinking Array wasn’t dependable, and it would be difficult to form it at her current stage.

’What is an "Ultimate Thought"?’

Before, she would have been lost for a long time, with no idea how to answer.

But right now, she had an answer.

Lu You put down her phone, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

Within her Sea of Consciousness, a gleam of sword light condensed beneath the tempestuous waves.

She named it "Courage"!

The courage to fight against her own fate, to stand up and reject oppression, and the courage to advance bravely toward the beauty in her heart.

She had lacked this courage so much before.

She had a faint feeling that if she gave up this chance to compete, it would become the biggest regret of her life.

’I absolutely cannot give up!’

VMMMM—

A clear sword cry erupted from the center of her Sea of Consciousness.

The fur of the Sunflower Seed-eating Hamster standing beside her stood on end.

’Master cultivated Divine Sense?’

This powerful Spiritual Fluctuation actually made it silently shed tears.

For some reason, the aura emanating from its master was extremely similar to the "courageous" temperament Gu Ming had recently.

’Perhaps it was the result of his subtle, unconscious influence.’

It was deeply moved. It could feel that its master’s mentality and Spiritual Power had grown the moment she agreed to compete.

Lu You opened her eyes, the sword light in their depths flashing for a moment before disappearing.

She was already quietly formulating a plan. Now that she had money, she could hire an idle Beastmaster off the market to pose as a fake boss or department manager and call her family.

She would lie and say there was a research project on Sunflower Seed-eating Hamsters that required her participation.

The project would last forty days, or as short as a week.

The work involved testing a Pet Beast, with the Green Treasure Breathing Technique and the Earth Shifting Technique being strict requirements.

Knowing her family’s temperament, as long as she made the project sound incredibly impressive and reinforced its authenticity, they would surely nod vigorously and tell her to go ahead.

’I’ll just leave this to the professionals.’

As long as she could convince her parents, she could free up forty days to compete with Gu Ming.

As for how far she could go in the competition, she had never considered it.

Even if she was just the green leaves making the red flower stand out, she was happy to play that role.

「The next morning.」

"These are questions from previous Cultivation Technique Creation Competitions. You two take a look. First, try creating a minor Cultivation Technique for a Pet Beast to solve the problem inside."

Teacher Zhang brought out a test paper from a competition five years ago.

The question read:

"Create a Body Technique from scratch that allows a Pet Beast to walk on water, but without using any Water Element Spiritual Qi."

"There is no restriction on the Pet Beast used to demonstrate the technique; you may use your own Pet Beast as an example."

That morning, Gu Ming and Lu You arrived at a riverbank.

After the two of them registered for the competition, the school approved them to skip classes for outdoor training.

At this stage, Gu Ming had already learned all the basic knowledge from the textbooks and the fundamentals of a Beastmaster. All that remained was continuous memorization, training, and systematically raising his Pet Beasts.

Therefore, Teacher Zhang had deliberately chosen this particularly relevant problem to let the two of them get in sync outdoors.

The problem wasn’t exactly simple, as it restricted the use of Water Element Spiritual Qi.

But it wasn’t exactly difficult either, since Body Techniques for Walking on Water weren’t uncommon in the field.

For example, a Wind Attribute Pet Beast that had reached the level of Wind-controlling Second-star could condense a light breeze under its feet, simultaneously reducing its body weight and allowing it to walk on the water’s surface.

As long as its feet didn’t sink and the water didn’t go past its ankles, it was considered a success.

Pet Beasts of other Attributes had similar methods, but they required a bit more ingenuity and weren’t as easy to accomplish as with a Wind Attribute Pet Beast.

From this perspective, the competition placed more emphasis on a Beastmaster’s understanding of various Attribute Cultivation Techniques and their proficiency in creation methods.

And as the assistant, Lu You needed to utilize her observational skills, gather data, and help observe the week-long, or even longer, period of cultivation and testing.

Actually, Wang Teng’s Dumb Flower could have also offered advice and help in this area.

But Wang Teng, under his family’s guidance, had already decided to focus on the college entrance exams and didn’t plan to participate in a high-pressure event like the competition.

Gu Ming had invited him, but the reply was disappointing.

Gu Ming didn’t force the invitation. Now, with the two of them partnered up, it worked out perfectly. Her coordination with Mouse Treasure was excellent.

"’Walking on Water’... I wonder if the Earth Shifting Technique would work," Gu Ming muttered to himself.