As usual, Modican spoke to him in a loud voice with no scruples. After three months without much contact, Gu Ding was delighted to hear his voice again. “Teacher, I have been busy cultivating these few days. My communicator was set to automatically block calls.”
“I know you’re busy. Seeing how your bounty increases every few days, I know you’re not idle. You also probably don’t have much time to practice your medicine refining skills. However, seeing how you haven’t appeared on the news these past few days, I figured that you’d be taking a break. Hence, I thought I’d give you a five days notice. That’s why I dialed your number several times. Nevertheless, no one answered.”
“There are only three days left until this Newcomer’s Ranking Competition. You can join it if you have time to spare. Forget about it if you don’t.” Modican did not seem to care much about the competition.
“No matter what result comes from it, I feel the need to participate.” Gu Ding’s medicine refining skills were indeed pretty rusty, and it was not clear whether he could polish himself back up with just three days of practice. After all, it was not like the other participants stood by idly throughout the past three months.
“Never mind, let’s not talk about it. I’ve got good news for you. Your master was just promoted to become an S-grade pharmacologist a few days ago and is now conferred as National Treasure by the Lord. The first thing I wanted to do was tell you two baby apprentices, but I wasn’t able to contact you nor Parma. I finally managed to get in touch with you today.” Modican revealed the real purpose of him calling Gu Ding, which was to deliver the good news.
“Congratulations, teacher! I knew you’d succeed in achieving a breakthrough.” Gu Ding, too, was happy for Modican who was a genius when it came to refining medicine. Gu Ding also thought that it was only a matter of time before he was promoted to S-grade.
“Don’t flatter me, I’m still not as famous as you even though I was conferred as National Treasure. Just recently, you fought alone against eight members of Faye Cosmic Nation’s Hunter squad. Those videos went viral in Dragon Soar Cosmic Nation. You’re now the idol of almost every Interstellar Pirate in Dragon Soar Cosmic Nation. Not to mention, the Rose Tavern has become a tourist attraction because of you. The long queues extend out of the red light district each day. Moreover, many students have started to drop out of military and non-military schools to become Interstellar Pirates just like you…”
“Is it that dramatic?” Gu Ding felt that Modican was making fun of him.
“I’m not kidding. You can search Skynet for those videos later as well as other news stories,” Modican emphasized the authenticity of the matter.
“What is Senior Parma busy with these days?” Gu Ding changed the conversation topic.
“She’s working on a virus antidote and has gone to the Dark Star Sector. I haven’t been able to get in touch with her for the past five days, which is a bit worrying. If I still don’t receive any news from her after two days, I’ll ask my friend for help. However, you shouldn’t worry about this. Just take care of yourself, she shouldn’t have any problems…”
Just then, a hiss broke out in Gu Ding’s ear as if the communication signal had been cut.
“What happened? Why did I hear a hiss?” Modican had heard it too.
“It’s a precursor to an interstellar storm, an electromagnetic disturbance,” Neptune said in Gu Ding’s ear.
“It seems like we’re encountering an interstellar storm…” The call was cut off before Modican could finish.
Gu Ding’s brows furrowed slightly. In the event of interstellar storms, spaceships could not perform hyperspace jumps and other operations and could only fly in normal mode. Interstellar storms, on the other hand, usually covered large areas and lasted a long time. Based on the situation at hand, the Pharmacologists Newcomer’s Ranking Competition was likely to fall through because he could not access Medicine King Valley at all during the interstellar storm.
Moreover, spaceships were often shaken and struck during interstellar storms; they were unsuitable to practice refining medicine.
“We’re in the outer reaches of the interstellar storm,” Neptune warned.
“Can we get out of the interstellar storm’s range first? After that, could we leave by hyperspace jumping?” Gu Ding proposed his idea.
“It would be a good idea to go through it laterally. This interstellar storm is widespread. It would take more than half a month to get across the affected area by retrograding through the storm. Not to mention, retrograding is risky. Nevertheless, it’ll only take five days to get through this area if we adopt a lateral approach.” Neptune agreed with Gu Ding’s idea.
“Is five days the fastest? Is there a better way?” At such a rate, Gu Ding would not be able to get to Medicine King Valley in time for the competition.
“No, I’ve done the math. The best way to save time is to cross laterally. In fact, a cosmic storm is like a river; we have to retrograde to reach our destination. Moreover, a river is much smaller in width than in length. Hence, crossing it laterally is the quickest way to get out of it.”
“Alright, let’s turn around then. We’re going to have to spend the next five days on the spaceship cultivating.” Gu Ding thought that he could also use the time to build a second big energy circulation in his body.
The Golden Eagle, under Neptune’s control, quickly changed directions. Except for Gu Ding and Neptune, none of the other crew members were aware of this.
Gu Ding quickly moved on to the next stage of his cultivation in his own room.
Throughout the past five days, there had been minor changes in his pace of life, but it quickly returned to its previous state.
On the first day, Gu Ding and Lilliath each ate egg fried rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, while the others did not leave their rooms. Tagore only stole a few steaks from the refrigerator in the middle of the night.
The next day, Elsa finally woke up from her cultivation and managed to achieve a breakthrough to Rank-11 from Rank-10. She accompanied Gu Ding and Lilliath for an egg fried rice dinner and raved about Gu Ding’s cooking. Biggie still had not waken up at this time. Tagore stole a few more steaks from the refrigerator again that night.
On the third day, early in the morning, Biggie finally woke up. He succeeded in reaching Rank-11. The first thing he did when he woke up was go straight to the kitchen and prepare breakfast for everyone. Everyone’s life finally returned to normal. After three days of egg fried rice, Gu Ding and Lilliath breathed a sigh of relief. In the middle of that night, Tagore once again entered the kitchen and stole some steak from the refrigerator while everyone was asleep.
On the fourth day, Gu Ding finally completed the second big energy circulation structure in his body. His Righteous Force was now much stronger than before, while his Cell Index was still the same. Not to mention, his Gene Level still remained at Rank-6. Gu Ding had tried injecting himself with cell enhancers and gene enhancers but none of them had any effect on him. Robert was still in his room. If Neptune had not said he was busy, Gu Ding and the others would have wanted to see if something was wrong with him. As for the others, they cultivated as usual, just not as hard as before. In particular, Biggie and Elsa did so. The moment one reaches their Gene Level, they’ll have a hard time breaking through without strong external support. Therefore, after achieving such a big breakthrough, they chose to consolidate their Gene Levels.
On the fifth day, their spaceship finally left the interstellar storm’s area.
Gu Ding immediately dialed Hermean Alliance’s Skyriver Sector Division’s chairperson–Anthony’s number. He apologized for his absence and explained why he had been absent from the competition. Gu Ding did so because Anthony was the one who had invited himself to the newcomer competition from the beginning, and he had high hopes for it.
Anthony was slightly surprised to receive a call from Gu Ding. That was because he had already heard from Modican why Gu Ding did not show. He did not want to see such a thing happen, but there was nothing he could do about the interstellar storm. Besides, with Gu Ding’s bounty, he really did not care about the competition’s prize. Therefore, after receiving Gu Ding’s call, Anthony immediately showed empathy.
Having ended the call with Anthony, Gu Ding dialed another number which had no numbers. It was just a set of strange unreadable codes that had been left by X.
Neptune immediately decoded them, trying to find X’s position, but failed to get his location.
After Gu Ding dialed the number, the prompt tone rang twice before the call connected.
“You encountered an interstellar storm?” X asked in his first sentence.
“How do you know?” Gu Ding wanted to tell him that there was a chance he would be five days late. Gu Ding was not expecting X to already know that he had encountered an interstellar storm.
“Of course I know. Just by looking at your spaceship’s previous location and the Golden Eagle’s steady sailing speed, I can easily calculate your position. You were right in the interstellar storm’s area.” X explained easily. “The fact that you’re able to call me now means that you are already out of the interstellar storm’s reach. You only took five days which means you chose to cross laterally. In other words, you are now further away from Probrand than you were five days ago. Then the purpose of your call should be clear. You want to let me know that you’ll arrive at Probrand at least five days later than expected.”
“That’s right!” Gu Ding did not deny X’s speculations.
“Well, I have good news and bad news for you.” X paused as if he was expecting to receive a reply from Gu Ding. “The good news is that the ship of the man who was supposed to give you your welcome gift is now broken; he won’t be able to get to Probrand on time. The bad news is that we’re not sure when his ship will be fixed. His ship is a very collectible old model, and it’s a limited edition model. Some of its materials are hard to find.”
“So we have to go straight to the planet where he plans on repairing his spaceship?” Gu Ding asked.
“Er… About that, I must admit that some members of our organization are not that easy to talk to. The guy refuses to reveal the location of the planet he has docked on and told me to go to hell with all the welcome gift stuff until his precious spaceship is fixed. So…” X sounded a little helpless.
“Alright then, we’ll reach Probrandfirst and wait a bit. If we find ourselves unable to wait any longer, we’ll leave first.” Although Gu Ding was looking forward to the so-called welcome gift, he did not want to take up everyone’s time for the matter.
After hanging up, under Neptune’s control, the Golden Eagle began to head straight for Probrand…
