Inside the heavenly curtain, the footage lingered on the pigs: ropes snapped, bodies transformed, the stunned silence after the night of howls. The image struck everyone watching with the same thought—if decades of whale gelatin could do this, what might a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years' worth accomplish?
At the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile School, Ning Fengzhi's reaction was immediate and decisive. "All pharmacies under the school are forbidden to stock whale gelatin—no ten‑year bottles, no exceptions." His orders came fast and cold: buy every vial available, hunt down thousand‑ and ten‑thousand‑year specimens regardless of price, and assemble an elite whaling fleet at once. The secretary scrambled to dispatch teams; Ning finally let out a long breath and sipped his tea, the weight of the decision settling on him.
Bone Douluo and Sword Douluo exchanged looks. Ning Fengzhi's mind raced ahead—if whale gelatin could raise a cultivator's physique and thus the age of spirit rings they could absorb, the Seven Treasure Pagoda might be pushed toward a Nine Treasure evolution. The possibility made their faces harden. Yet the cost and the risk—what it would demand of a child like Ning Rongrong—gave them pause. "Can Rongrong handle it?" Sword Douluo asked, voice low. Bone Douluo's expression was equally reluctant. For the sake of the sect, Ning Fengzhi would have been willing to let his daughter try, but he could not force the two masters who doted on her. He sighed and ordered her recalled; the continent was changing too fast to leave her out.
Across the White and Black Worlds, the reaction was the same: frantic, greedy, terrified. Whale gelatin had been a party indulgence, a rare luxury; now it was a lever on destiny. Pharmacies were emptied in hours. Orders flew from every major force: gather whale gelatin, secure supply chains, prepare fleets. To many, the vial represented the future of a Spirit Master. To miss out now was to accept permanent inferiority.
At Shrek Academy, panic and opportunism tangled. Flender returned from the city, face grim. "All the pharmacies in Suotuo City are sold out," he reported. Dai Mubai's jaw dropped. For him, the news was personal: without whale gelatin, his chances against his brother Dai Weisi narrowed further. The despair in his eyes was raw. Ma Hongjun, Oscar, Tang San—each felt the same cold squeeze of urgency. If whale gelatin determined who could reach higher‑age spirit rings, then those who could not buy it would be left behind.
Flender cursed the missed opportunity to profit; Zhao Wuji and his old scheme to stockpile herbs had come to nothing. Now the market had vanished, and with it, the chance to turn a tidy profit. For the disciples who could not command resources, the only option was to watch others surge ahead.
Back in Blue Lightning City, the scene at Thunder Dragon Hall had set the whole chain in motion. Ye Hengchuan and Yu Xiaogang had tested the tonic on pigs—force‑fed, bound, and left to the medicine's work. The night had been a chorus of screams; the morning, a stench that made even seasoned Spirit Masters retch. Pride and habit made the summoned masters reluctant to obey a boy they considered talentless, but Ye's quiet authority cut through their resistance. They entered the sty and found several pens empty of ropes—snapped clean, not frayed. The pigs that had been fed whale gelatin aged in decades had broken free.
Ye checked the records: the freed animals had consumed whale gelatin aged twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years. Whale gelatin, he explained, was a rare secretion from Spirit Beast whales, graded by age—ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years. Nobility prized the thousand‑year variety; ten‑thousand‑year jelly was almost myth. Yet even decades‑old samples had produced measurable physiological changes in the animals. If decades could do this to pigs, what might centuries do to a human body prepared to absorb it?
The discovery spread like wildfire. Ning Fengzhi's orders, the scramble for supplies, the panic in academies and clans—all followed from that single, terrible possibility. Whale gelatin was no longer a luxury; it was a strategic resource. Every faction recalculated: fleets were planned, merchants hunted, whalers recruited. Families argued, sects debated, and young cultivators who had once relied on talent alone now faced a new reality—one where resources, timing, and risk could rewrite destiny.
Yu Xiaogang watched the continent's reaction with a steady, cold clarity. He had moved from theory to experiment, from statistics to practice. The pigs had not proven a miracle—whale gelatin's effects depended on age, dosage, and the host's capacity—but they had revealed a lever. It was dangerous, expensive, and morally fraught. It could maim or kill if misused. Yet it offered a path where none had existed.
He thought of the mocking glances at his Awakening, of the whispers that had followed him. The memory hardened his resolve. If changing fate demanded risk, he would accept it. If evolution required sacrifice, he would pay it. The Douluo Continent had always been a place where power and chance intertwined; now, with whale gelatin on the table, the balance had shifted. Ambition would accelerate, and the cost of falling behind would become painfully clear.