Beast Taming: My System is Bugged

Chapter 145 - 144: Capital’s Attention

"Manager, you mean..."

"I have someone in my family who can paint Visualization Images. We can partner up. A seventy-thirty split—you get seventy percent, we get thirty."

"If you have any doubts, feel free to ask your Teacher Zhang, or anyone for that matter. You’re definitely getting the better end of this deal."

With the Cyan Pine Skill being published in the journal, many people would surely want to purchase its Visualization Image in the future.

This would require a Beastmaster and a Painted Pet Beastmaster to collaborate on creating the Visualization Images.

This wasn’t some industrial assembly line; it involved genuine manual labor. Each image had to be painted, stroke by stroke, not just stamped out by a machine.

You have to understand that a photographed Visualization Image is vastly inferior to the physical object. At most, it might give someone a sense of the aesthetic of the Cultivation, but it wouldn’t even deliver ten percent of the actual experience.

Even high-star journals targeting a high-end demographic aren’t printed by machines. Instead, they use Painted Pets of an extremely high-star Level to do the painting on a massive scale.

They use Daoist Techniques to infuse the principles of the Great Dao into the paper itself.

There might also be a Pet Beast with an extremely high Skill Level, or the original creator of the technique, who would preach onto the paper of a top-tier journal, imbuing it with the sound of the Celestial Dao and leaving behind a lingering echo of the Great Dao.

This is how high-quality, high-star journals and Visualization Images are made.

For a Cultivation Technique like Cyan Pine, once it reaches the level of Tri-Colored Holy Light, the creation of its Visualization Images hits a threshold where they must be made by hand.

Ordinary Cultivation Techniques below the ’two-color’ level have less stringent requirements and follow a different production process.

This process primarily involves having Painted Pets create copies. The quality of these Visualization Images is far below the meticulously crafted ones for Tri-Colored Techniques, making them one of the mainstream products on the market.

The partnership Ruan Jing was referring to was not for these inferior copies, but one focused on premium products for the mid-to-high-end market.

"For a Tri-Colored Technique like yours, my family estimates that a single high-quality Visualization Image can sell for a hundred thousand. There’s no need to take the low-quality, mass-copying route.

"Besides, given the cultivation threshold for your technique, it would be difficult for a low-priced, mass-market Visualization Image to properly integrate the information about your array into the painting. You can’t even go down that road."

Having said that, Manager Ruan considered that Gu Ming had likely never encountered this type of partnership before, so she took a moment to explain what premium production entailed.

Visualization Images also have distinct quality tiers.

The reason the original Visualization Image is the best is that it’s intimately connected to the Cultivator. As the Cultivator’s Skill Level increases, the original Visualization Image improves as well. It is a gift from the Great Dao.

Below the original Visualization Image, you still have to differentiate them based on the Skill Level they correspond to.

A Visualization Image for the Quasi-Path Realm has a Quasi-Path Realm price, and one for the Master Level has a Master Level price.

The key is, these prices are dynamic.

At this stage, "Cyan Pine" has only just emerged. The highest Skill Level reached is only Master Level, not even Great Success. So, the price it can command certainly won’t be that high.

But what about when Gu Ming reaches the Great Success stage of his Cultivation?

At that point, the price for a Visualization Image won’t be a mere hundred thousand.

After analyzing the Cultivation Technique, the Ruan Family discovered that it could actually be modified to use different array patterns.

For now, however, everyone would play it safe and stick to the Old Deng’s Health Array that Gu Ming had developed.

Looking to the future, however, many Beastmasters would surely research other Brain Arrays, expanding the ecosystem of the Cyan Pine Skill.

Once that ecosystem expanded, the number of customers needing its Cultivation Visualization Image would also grow. All of that was potential money.

It was precisely because the Ruan Family recognized this that they had Manager Ruan bring the matter to the table, using the offer to waive his work duties as an opening.

If he was going to partner with someone on the Visualization Images, he would definitely have to cooperate with capital.

He couldn’t supply many Visualization Images by himself. Furthermore, Gu Ming didn’t have a contracted Painted Pet; he had even needed a Painter to help create his own Visualization Image.

In short, as the Cyan Pine Skill was promoted, this would become a continuous source of wealth.

However, the Ruan Family had still greatly underestimated this Cultivation Technique’s potential applications.

Gu Ming, on the other hand, had direct knowledge from thirty-two years in the future.

He knew that in the future, this very Cultivation Technique would become a mandatory Spiritual Technique for all high school students across the country.

For a Cultivation Technique aimed at every high school student in the nation, the sales volume for its Visualization Images would be simply unimaginable.

Because of this, the Ruan Family’s assessment of the Cultivation Technique’s market was nowhere near as clear as Gu Ming’s.

If this technique could be implemented nationwide in the future, the sales from its Visualization Images alone would be enough to make Gu Ming incredibly rich.

After Manager Ruan proposed the benefits of the business partnership, Gu Ming mulled it over for a moment without giving an immediate reply.

The previous offers had just been minor perks, but this involved real money. It had to be considered seriously.

Teacher Zhang also secretly gave Gu Ming a look, signaling him to remain calm and not give a rash answer.

A seventy-thirty split. At first glance, it really did seem like the best deal for Gu Ming. Many Beastmasters who created Cultivation Techniques only received a cut of ten to twenty percent; a better deal would be thirty to forty percent.

The top-tier masters of Cultivation Technique creation started at a fifty percent cut. The stronger they were, the higher their percentage, with the very best reaching ninety percent or handling everything themselves and taking all the profits.

But who was Gu Ming?

A high school student whose Pet Beast was only One-star. In the face of real capital, that amount of power wasn’t worth a damn. He wasn’t even qualified to sit at the main table.

For the Ruan Family to propose such seemingly sincere partnership terms... it looked too good to be true. Teacher Zhang’s first instinct was that there might be a hidden trap.

The trap was just likely very well-hidden, so much so that Gu Ming wouldn’t be able to see it.

As for Teacher Zhang, he had only heard about the mainstream market splits for Visualization Images. When it came to the various schemes and intricacies involved, he was still a novice.

After all, he had only truly created a Breathing Technique this year by collaborating with Gu Ming.

Recently, some people had taken an interest in the market for the Green Treasure Breathing Technique’s Visualization Images, but Teacher Zhang had turned them away on the grounds that he didn’t want to distract his student.

The reason was simple. The investors who came knocking first weren’t planning on a true partnership. They were just trying to stake an early claim. If it really took off in the future, they could develop it directly. If it didn’t, it was no great loss to them.

After all, many Beastmasters who create Cultivation Techniques are late bloomers. Furthermore, because they’re so focused on creating the techniques, their instincts and judgment regarding the market aren’t particularly sharp.

Besides, a person’s energy is finite. It’s impossible to be creating a Cultivation Technique while simultaneously diving deep into the world of business.

That’s why so many creators of Cultivation Techniques are easily taken advantage of by capital.

So, when the other party offered such a bold split, it completely shattered Teacher Zhang’s expectations, making him subconsciously wary.

Gu Ming noticed that his system’s on-screen commentary had updated.

[Although your iterated Cyan Pine Skill has yet to gain the approval of all mainstream Beast Taming media, the Ruan Family has already noticed this Cultivation Technique’s future market. After all, it’s an iterated version of the Cyan Pine Skill, and the previous version of the technique was promoted nationwide. As long as your technique carries that "iterated" title, you won’t have to worry about attracting casual buyers. To secure this huge market, they’ve aggressively proposed a seventy-thirty split. They know everyone will come—all the capitalist crocodiles will be scrambling to snatch up this juicy piece of meat. The simple fact that it’s a Cultivation Technique every student in the country is cultivating is the best sales gimmick you could ask for.]