Gene Serums

**Jiuhu Shopping District. Wild Wolf Materials.**

Lu Yuan passed a knot of street thugs brawling with knives, stepped around the heaps of garbage lining the alley, and wrinkled his nose against the stench. He pushed open the shop door.

The owner was exactly where he'd been last time — wedged into his chair behind the counter, loud-patterned shorts, oversized shirt, sunglasses firmly on, phone in hand.

"—*God*mn it, you're all trash! Brother's been carrying this whole lobby single-handedly and we're still losing?! Go home and do your homework, you little punks! Woof woof! Argh~~"

The owner glanced up.

"Boss," Lu Yuan said. "I'm here to sell."

"Oh, it's you." Recognition landed, and he tucked his phone away, face breaking into a grin. "You actually came back alive from the Land of Origin? *Again?* Two runs back-to-back and walking away both times — respect, bro. You've got something going for you."

"Got a lot of stuff this time," Lu Yuan said. "Mind if I just put it on the floor?"

"Go ahead."

Lu Yuan reached into his battle-mark space and emptied everything at once.

A mountain of materials nearly two meters high erupted out of thin air and swallowed every open inch of the cramped shop floor.

The owner stared at it, jaw hanging open.

"Holy — bro, did you seriously kill *all of this* yourself?!"

Lu Yuan found a small stool nearby and sat down. "How much? Did you tally it up?"

The owner snapped back to himself and started counting. He couldn't seem to stop talking while he worked.

"Gray stone carapaces, gray stone carapaces… wait." He picked up a small object. "*This* is a Stone Man's Heart? You're already hunting Stone Men?! Damn, bro!"

He kept working through the pile. A few pieces later his breath hissed sharply. "These are scorpion tail stingers?! Potent venom in these, real good material — how do you have *this many*?! You didn't blow your savings on antidotes, did you?!"

Then he reached the bottom.

"Oh — *wow.*" His voice jumped half an octave. "This is — this is a *black-striped carapace* — from a Black-stripe Gray Rock Beetle — you can already take down *elite creatures?!*"

It took him over ten minutes to work through everything. He stood up and looked at Lu Yuan, shaking his head.

"One day apart, bro. One day, and you've doubled in size."

"How much?" Lu Yuan asked again. "Did you count right?"

"Do you know who you're talking to?" The owner rattled off the breakdown without blinking: "Gray stone carapaces, 189 pieces at 150 each; Stone Man's Hearts, 124 at 300 each; scorpion tail stingers, 87 at 400 each; scorpion giant claws, 87 pairs at 250 each; one black-striped carapace at 3,000 — total comes to 115,100. Fair price. No tricks."

Lu Yuan frowned.

He'd already run the numbers before walking in. Market value on all this was somewhere around 125,000.

He looked at the owner. Without a word, he reached down and started gathering up his things.

"I'll take it somewhere else."

"Hey — wait, wait, wait!" The smile froze on the owner's face. He shifted his gaze and cleared his throat. "Hmm… did I maybe miscalculate? Give me a second."

A beat of silence.

"Oh. My mistake — total is actually 125,100."

Lu Yuan smiled. He still said nothing. He turned for the door.

"Hey! Hey! Alright — *fine* — 130,000! My fault entirely, I'll make it right!"

Lu Yuan stopped.

"How do I know that first number wasn't deliberate?" he said. "You almost cost me 10,000 yuan. I want emotional distress compensation. Make it 130,000."

"You're *robbing* me!" The owner's expression darkened. "I thought we were brothers here!"

Lu Yuan's smile went cold. "Deal."

"..."

A silence stretched between them.

The owner cleared his throat and began packing the materials away. "I'll say this much — real talk — you're the fastest-improving Gene Warrior I've ever seen. One day, and you're already hunting elite creatures. That's genuine skill."

He watched the owner work. "Hey, boss — something I've been curious about."

"What?"

"Why are you wearing sunglasses in the shop?"

The owner's eyes slid sideways. He coughed out an awkward laugh. "Does that matter? Just a sec."

Lu Yuan saw he wasn't going to get an answer, shrugged, and let it drop.

A moment later, a notification chimed. "Sent the money — go check it. Woof~"

Lu Yuan pulled out his phone. The payment was there. A quiet flash of excitement crossed his eyes.

The owner gave him a dry cough and a dismissive wave. "Come back anytime, bro."

Lu Yuan smiled. "I will."

He walked back out into the same streets — the knife fight on the corner, the garbage piled against the walls, the smell drifting past — and noticed, with mild surprise, that his mood was considerably lighter than usual.

The excitement hit him all at once.

*Gene Warriors make* this *kind of money? 130,000 yuan in a single night. That's 3.9 million a month. That's over 40 million a year.*

*I never thought I'd actually be rich someday.*

The owner had coughed up 130,000 — 4,900 over market value. Four thousand nine hundred yuan — enough to cover months of living expenses. Even with how slippery that guy was, he'd still walked away ahead.

After leaving Wild Wolf Materials, Lu Yuan swung by a general store and spent just over 10,000 on basic supplies. Before, he'd bought whatever was cheapest and functional. Now that money wasn't an issue, he went straight for the best quality — no reason to settle anymore.

He even picked up seasonings and a small barbecue grill. Surviving on nothing but energy bars was getting old, and he'd heard creature meat was actually worth eating. After grinding this hard in the Land of Origin, he deserved a decent meal.

*Now that I have money, I finally have the nerve to think about getting out of this dump.*

Satisfied, he made his way back to the slum, his mood lighter with every step.

Back in his modest rental room, Lu Yuan sat down and opened Battle Net.

This time, he was here for gene serums.

The Battle Net ran an association-managed online marketplace where specialist Gene Warriors sold their goods — alchemists who brewed serums, armament smiths who crafted Gene Armaments. He pulled up the gene serum category.

First stop: treatment serums.

Treatment serums were tiered the same way Gene Warriors were — Trainee Rank, Warrior Rank, Battle Master Rank, Battle General Rank, Battle Venerate Rank — and within each tier, quality grades varied further: common, superior, and potent.

He tapped open the product page for a Trainee-rank common treatment serum and read through the description.

*Common treatment serum: effective against most external injuries. Severe wounds: recovery time typically thirty minutes or longer, with complete healing potentially requiring several hours.*

Several hours for a severe wound. For an ordinary person, that would practically qualify as a medical miracle.

For a Gene Warrior, it was brutally slow.

After the encounter with those three cat-kin Hunters, Lu Yuan had come to a conclusion: stockpiling serums wasn't optional. They were a last-resort insurance policy. His first two trips into the Land of Origin had been fortunate — Guardian-type combat techniques leaned heavily into defense, and he'd walked away without serious injuries both times.

But luck didn't hold forever.

Without a serum, a bad wound meant lying low and waiting — no hunting, no progress. And if something dangerous found him while he was down? He might not make it back alive.

Treatment serums were non-negotiable.

He closed the common serum page and opened the listing for the superior treatment serum.

The price loaded.

**30,000 yuan.**

His heart skipped.

*30,000 yuan. Do you know how many steamed buns that is?*

*What kind of serum costs* 30,000? *The common ones are only 8,000 — this is daylight robbery!*

He nearly closed the page.

Then he read the description.

*Superior treatment serum: approximately three times the efficacy of a common serum. Most severe injuries fully healed within ten minutes to one hour.*

His eyes brightened. *...This stuff is genuinely good.*

Lu Yuan stared at the listing for a long moment. Then, jaw set, he gritted his teeth and added one bottle to his cart.

It hurt. But something like this could save his life.

He couldn't justify buying more — every extra bottle was money he couldn't put toward other serums. He added one common treatment serum as a backup, for anything that didn't warrant burning the expensive option.

*Preserve the mountain, and you'll never run out of firewood.*

The plan was simple: hold the reserve until he ran into something he genuinely couldn't beat. If he couldn't win, he ran. And when running, faster was better.

Which brought him to enhancement serums.

Enhancement serums broke down by attribute: strength, speed, defense, and spirit power.

His first pick was speed.

He'd imprinted a Guardian-type Transcendent Gene. Defense was his strength. Speed was his glaring weakness. That trade-off was very real — in a fight he couldn't win, slow legs were a death sentence.

He opened the product page for a common-rank speed enhancement serum.

His heart almost stopped.

*I've got 120,000 left after supplies, and superior treatment serums are 30,000 a bottle — that's only four bottles. How am I still this broke?!*

He read the description anyway.

His eyes lit up. *...This stuff is really, genuinely good.*

But the math didn't care about his feelings. His budget only stretched so far, and he had other priorities.

With real reluctance, he closed the page.

He had to let it go.