Monster Pet Evolution

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After deciding on the True Dragon Fruit, Gao Peng wasn't in a hurry to leave. He wandered for a bit around the warehouse. He let out a long breath. The White Dragon Tribe had collected a lot of valuable stuff for themselves over the years.

It was a shame that he didn't have much use for some of these things, as most of his familiars had already reached the Legendary grade. Gao Peng went over his familiars' stats inside his head. Formerly an Eternal-grade familiar at its prime, Fatty Big Sea had reverted back to Legendary-grade.

Da Zi, Dumby, and Goldie had reached the Mythical grade, while Flamy, Stripey, Desolion, White Paper, and Silly were all Legendary-grade. On the other hand, Flowing Light and the seven little ones were only Epic-grade.

The next stage after Legendary was Mythical. Gao Peng had found a couple of ingredients that could potentially raise a familiar's grade to Mythical in the warehouse. However, there wasn't a lot of them, and most of them weren't compatible with any of his familiars.

Using an ingredient on an incompatible familiar could give rise to disastrous results. In the worst-case scenario, it could even cause a familiar to drop down a grade.

Gao Peng had memorized all the ingredients Flowing Light needed for its promotion. As for Moneymaker, due to it being a Mystic-type, the ingredients for its promotion to the Legendary grade had proven difficult to find. Gao Peng couldn't find any material in the White Dragon Tribe's warehouse that could potentially be of use to Moneymaker.

As for the seven little ones... Gao Peng had his own plans for obtaining their evolutionary materials.

...

Back on the high priestess's island, Gao Peng brewed up a concoction using his newly obtained materials. When he was done, he asked Bai Yin to send the concoction back to the Southern Sky Group through his connections.

He then took a few days off on the island. During that time, Bai Yin would come over to visit Gao Peng. Sometimes, he would even bring Gao Peng around to meet some of the gifted youngsters in the White Dragon Tribe.

Even though Gao Peng didn't like socializing with others, he knew that there would be times when he had to interact with other people. After being among the White Dragon tribespeople for quite some time, Gao Peng realized that the level of these top tribes was higher than he had initially imagined.

The black dragon that had appeared beside the high priestess that night was a Pseudo-Legendary entity. Excluding it, Gao Peng had seen at least five Saint-tier monsters so far.

And this was merely the level of power the White Dragon Tribe had shown on the surface. No entity would willingly display the full breadth of its power to everyone, especially a top-tier tribe such as the White Dragon Tribe. Just seeing the tip of the iceberg that was the White Dragon Tribe was enough to make Gao Peng's blood go cold.

"Brother Gao, there's a message for you from one of your grandfather's men," said Bai Yin, handing a memory card to Gao Peng.

Gao Peng took the memory card from Bai Yin and plugged it into his tablet computer. Bai Yin turned around to let Gao Peng read his message in peace. The message on the screen was from Gao Peng's grandfather.

"White Dragon has been promoted to Legendary-grade; you can rest easy now. Also, moving preparations are underway. We are now working together with the government to move the people of the Huaxia region to the Black Fog World." This was his grandfather's message all right, simple and concise. Gao Peng was used to this.

Work was already underway on his grandfather's side... What he needed to do now was buy them more time. Suddenly, Gao Peng noticed that "1/12,000" was displayed on the right bottom corner of the document. He frowned.

Hesitating for a moment, he glanced back at Bai Yin, who still had his back to him. Gao Peng then slid his finger across the screen to the left.

The same message was written on the next page: "White Dragon has been promoted to Legendary-grade; you can rest easy now. Also, moving preparations are underway. We are now working together with the government to move the people of the Huaxia region to the Black Fog World."

Gao Peng was about to close the document when he suddenly thought of something. He began flipping through the pages, all of which displayed the same message over and over again.

After some thought, Gao Peng pressed on the search bar, then keyed in the page number 12,000. The screen flickered for a moment before revealing the last page, on which was written one single line: "Be careful with your words and actions."

When Gao Peng read that last line, the entire document began to blur as it initiated its self-destruction process. Seeing the now empty folder on the screen, Gao Peng began to ruminate on what he had just read.

…

Today was the ancient tribes' meeting, which would be held on the Blue River Plains. Since the Blue River Plains were approximately 450 miles away from the White Dragon Tribe, it wouldn't take long for anyone from the tribe to reach them.

A medium-sized tribe existed on the plains: the Blue River tribe. The native tribe had settled by the banks of the Blue River. Their blue-white buildings were built on an expansive plain where the Blue River meandered through the village.

The guardian familiar of the Blue River tribe was an Overlord-tier, Legendary-grade Eight-Armed Roaring Abominable Snowman.

There were a lot of trainers in the Blue River tribe with Abominable Snowmen as their familiars, ranging from Normal-grade ones to the Legendary-grade Eight-Armed Roaring Abominable Snowmen that guarded them.

By contributing to the tribe in some way, one would be rewarded with the ability to upgrade one's own familiar. The Overlord-tier Eight-Armed Roaring Snowman was a Legendary-grade familiar, which automatically put it on the top of the Abominable Snowmen hierarchy.

The level of a tribe's guardian familiar would determine a tribe's strength as a whole. The Blue River tribe was only second to the seven king tribes in terms of power. Its guardian familiar was at a level that was just right—not so high as to be feared by others, and not so low as to be incapable of maintaining order during the meeting.

The top three tribes all had their own Quasi Gods. However, none of them could leave their posts in their respective tribes without permission. In truth, these pseudo-divine familiars were no more than deterrents and wouldn't be put into action unless it was absolutely necessary for them to act.

It was best to think of them as weapons of mass destruction. None of the members of the hundred-country assembly would in their right mind bring nuclear warheads with them to the tribal meeting. If any of them did... the weak-hearted ones would be the first to piss their pants.

It would only be a matter of time until one of the top tribes ordered its Quasi God to rain down hellfire on the whole world. Not even a Saint-tier familiar could withstand such an attack.

A number of Saint-tier familiars had shown up for the meeting. Besides the top three tribes, the seven king tribes all had their own Saint-tier familiars. Their combined powers resulted in a tenuous, asymmetric balance of power.

The stronger tribes always wanted more authority. Naturally, they needed a way to keep the weaker tribes in line.

In theory, Gao Peng, who was now in possession of a Saint-tier familiar, was on the same playing field as the seven king tribes. This was his trump card. With a Saint-tier familiar at his disposal, there was almost nothing that could strike fear in him. Without it, Gao Peng wouldn't even have dared to join the tribes' meeting with such swagger.

The White Dragon Tribe had sent Bai Yin's second oldest brother, Bai Kun, to participate in the tribal meeting. Bai Kun was supposedly the most qualified person to become the next White Dragon Tribe chief. On the other hand, Bai Yin's oldest brother was a bloodthirsty madman whose only interests were raising his familiars and hunting other monsters. He simply had no time to care about anything else.

However, this was only speculation, as Bai Yin's father was obsessed with keeping his position as chief of the White Dragon Tribe. Despite being chief for close to 700 years, he had no intention of stepping down any time soon.

Most of the chiefs before Bai Yin's father had lasted at most two to three hundred years before resigning. Some had only lasted for a hundred years as chief before retiring early and letting someone else take their place.

Still, even though the current White Dragon Tribe chief had been in power for so long, he still did a good job of keeping the entire tribe in order. The tribe had prospered under his power.

It was a few years ago that the White Dragon Tribe chief seemed to finally start thinking about passing on the mantle to the younger generation. He had started relegating some of the more important responsibilities in the tribe to Bai Kun. Letting Bai Kun represent the White Dragon Tribe in the tribal meeting was also proof of that.