Teacher Lu's livestream had been forwarded to Jiang Xing by Su Muli.
He went in, watched for a while, sent a rocket gift, and quickly left.
And the content of Teacher Lu's stream was exactly the kind of scene Jiang Xing had hoped to see—
Pet Beast talents, attributes, moves, and similar things could only be considered the fundamentals.
The reason Beast Tamers could contract Pet Beasts was never merely because of the contract itself. Their ability to uncover a Pet Beast's potential, train its strength, pair it with suitable partners, and build tactical systems around it—those were the real reasons they earned the recognition of countless Pet Beasts.
If a Pet Beast's base strength was worth 10, then a top-tier Beast Tamer could make it perform at 50—or even beyond 100!
'Azure Light Dragon paired with Substitute-Protect-Toxic, Lake Light Dragon paired with a rain team...'
'I wonder what other tactics can be developed for the other Light Dragons.'
The move pool and Pet Beast pool of the Beast Taming World were several orders of magnitude larger than those of the Pokémon world, offering far more possibilities.
Many tactical masters devoted their entire lives to exploring them.
Although Jiang Xing knew many Pokédex entries and moves, he wasn't a Beast Tamer. He had never studied that field in depth, so he naturally couldn't claim to have any particular insights.
As a result, he simply watched with curiosity and anticipation, hoping those tactical masters could uncover the potential of the Light Dragon family from a different perspective.
As for Jiang Xing himself, he only needed to keep being a wheelchair manufacturer.
Back to the main topic.
The Light Dragon family had already been made public, and Jiang Xing had completed another research project.
Although the researcher title award ceremony was the day after tomorrow, and he could take the opportunity to rest for a couple of days instead of rushing into new research...
After being busy for so long, suddenly having free time felt a little strange.
So he decided to first organize the resources and tasks currently on hand. It would also serve as planning for his next research project.
First were the two main quest lines.
The Fairy quest wasn't urgent. Jiang Xing had already cultivated two Fairy-type Pet Beasts.
Later, he could work on the panda population and see whether he could produce another two panda fairies... The greater the number of species, the larger the system rewards.
The other quest, related to Contest Appeal, could be moved up the priority list.
Through his cultivation and research of the Abyssal Water Phoenix Fledgling, Jiang Xing had already refined and formally proposed the concept of Beauty, publishing the relevant paper as well.
Next, all he needed to do was make use of Pokéblock technology and spend some time cultivating Pet Beasts.
Using the resulting data, he could refine the other values and ultimately establish the complete Contest Appeal Theory.
And that led to several extremely interesting research topics—
In the Pokémon world, Contest Appeal was actually a concept that had nearly been abandoned.
Aside from Contests, which were essentially Pokémon beauty competitions, there was only a single Pokémon whose evolution depended on Beauty.
Namely, Milotic.
As for Cute, Clever, Cool, and Tough—the other values similar to Beauty that also belonged to the broader category of Contest Appeal—they existed purely for Contests.
Which raised an interesting question.
The Beast Taming World was not the Pokémon world. It possessed more than a million Pet Beast forms.
In an environment like that, how could a value like Beauty possibly exist solely for the evolution of an Ugly Waterfowl?
The Ugly Waterfowl alone could evolve into two different "beautiful" Pet Beasts.
There had to be many more Pet Beasts in the Beast Taming World that contained untapped potential related to Beauty!
Following that line of thought...
What about Cute, Clever, Cool, and Tough?
Did Pet Beasts exist in the Beast Taming World whose latent potential corresponded to those qualities and could achieve evolutions related to them?
And if such evolutions existed, what would those forms look like?
A Pet Beast that was cute to the absolute extreme?
A Pet Beast that was cool to the absolute extreme?
Or tough?
Or clever?
Just imagining the possibilities filled Jiang Xing with curiosity.
For a Pet Beast scholar, curiosity was the greatest driving force behind research.
So Jiang Xing headed to Beijing.
While taking Little Qilin, the Rainbow Dragon Hatchlings, Inky, and the other Pet Beasts sightseeing at landmarks such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in preparation for the upcoming title-awarding ceremony, he also pondered what kinds of Pet Beast forms corresponded to those Contest Appeal concepts—if they truly existed, what would they look like...
And if they did exist, which Pet Beasts would they appear in?
At first, Jiang Xing genuinely had no ideas.
After all, concepts like these were nothing like Beauty.
With Feebas and Milotic as references, plus the system personally confirming it on the spot, it had been like having wallhacks enabled—he could immediately pick out a thoroughbred from a herd at a glance.
Without any clues and relying purely on speculation, it was extremely difficult to identify targets with the corresponding potential from among millions of Pet Beasts.
Yet difficult as it was, Jiang Xing didn't give up.
The system's assistance had its limits.
Whether it was Friendship, Beauty, or even the "dragonization aptitude" of Gyarados, Jiang Xing refused to believe that after encountering so many Pet Beasts, only three possessed comparable forms of potential.
Setting everything else aside, he had already seen plenty of Pet Beasts capable of Friendship-based evolution.
Yet the system had only pointed out the very first Undead Guardian Hound, calling a dog a rabbit and claiming it was a Lopunny.
That meant the system would only provide a single identification for any given category of potential.
After that, even if another Pet Beast with similar potential appeared, it wouldn't provide any further prompts.
Heh. What a fickle thing, always chasing the new and abandoning the old.
Because of that, Jiang Xing couldn't treat the system as some omnipotent cheat.
He couldn't simply pat a Pet Beast on the head and instantly know whether it possessed Friendship potential, Beauty potential, or some other kind of potential.
He couldn't rely entirely on the system.
He needed ideas of his own.
At that moment, while traveling and sightseeing with his Pet Beasts, Jiang Xing suddenly had an inspiration when he saw Inky fly above the Great Wall and perform an impromptu routine.
It was true that there were no examples in the Pokémon world of evolution forms tied to values such as Clever, Cool, Tough, or Cute...
But who said the Beauty examples couldn't be used as references?
After all, all five values belonged to the category of Contest Appeal.
They were values of the same type.
Unlike Friendship, which was an entirely unrelated concept.
Since they belonged to the same category, it was only natural to draw parallels and learn from one another.
That line of thinking was certainly better than stumbling around in the dark and relying on pure imagination.
So what insights could Beauty provide as a reference case?
Jiang Xing answered without hesitation.
"Change."
Yes.
At first, Jiang Xing had wondered whether the Honey Attendant might be a Beauty evolution. After all, it possessed inner beauty.
The facts proved he had been completely wrong.
The Honey Attendant had absolutely nothing to do with Beauty.
Summarizing that experience, and combining it with the Ugly Waterfowl's evolution into the Abyssal Water Phoenix Fledgling, as well as Feebas and Milotic from the Pokémon world, Jiang Xing arrived at a new hypothesis—
Could it be that only ugliness could evolve into beauty?
After all, conditional evolution was different from natural evolution.
It often represented a Pet Beast's yearning.
It represented a Pet Beast's transformation.
Those Pet Beasts that were naturally beautiful had no need to use Beauty as a condition for evolution.
Wouldn't they naturally become even more beautiful simply by growing?
They had neither that concern nor that yearning.
And perhaps they therefore lacked the potential for such a transformation.
What if that idea could be extended to the other four Contest Appeal values?
For example, clumsy Pet Beasts and clever Pet Beasts.
Weak Pet Beasts and strong Pet Beasts.
Ferocious or ugly Pet Beasts and cool or cute Pet Beasts.
Because they lacked those qualities, they could achieve transformation by acquiring them...
That was what evolution should be.
That was what Evolution truly ought to be!