Chapter 71: Forbidden Zone
The preparation phase was finally complete.
Now...
It was time to start refining.
Time continued to pass without Cole realizing it.
Before he knew it, two months had already passed since he arrived in this world.
During these past few weeks, almost all of his time had been consumed by one thing: establishing Intelligent Potion Works. He had personally prepared the store’s inventory, filling its shelves with the three selected potions and making sure everything was properly arranged before opening for business.
He had even recruited several employees, most of them young boys and girls.
There was one requirement Cole had been particularly strict about when selecting them.
They were all orphans.
It wasn’t simply because they were easier to recruit or had fewer connections. Cole had already begun thinking several steps ahead. These children would become the first candidates for his Bloodline Potion in the future, allowing him to gradually nurture a force that belonged entirely to him.
After all, Cole wasn’t merely trying to survive.
He was quietly building a power in the shadows.
A power that could eventually support him on his journey toward the top.
The problem was that building this foundation had consumed far more time than Cole had expected.
For the past several days, he had been running between the potion shop, ingredient suppliers, employee management, and his own research. By the time everything was finally settled, he realized something rather unpleasant.
He hadn’t cultivated at all.
Cole couldn’t help but complain inwardly.
If I had known this would take so much time, I would’ve created an assembly line first...
The thought of automating potion production immediately appeared in his mind.
For ordinary potion masters, such an idea would be nothing short of blasphemy. Potion refinement involved countless delicate steps, and even a small deviation could ruin the entire process. Asking machines to handle such precise work was practically unimaginable.
But Cole wasn’t an ordinary potion master.
With the A.I. chip’s calculations and his own understanding of potion refinement, he was confident that he could eventually create an automated production system capable of refining potions with almost no human intervention.
Unfortunately, there was a problem.
To accomplish that, he needed to master two additional pathways.
The first was Formation Mastery.
The second was Treasure Refining.
Only by combining the two could he create the sophisticated equipment necessary to automate the refining process.
And both pathways required time.
Lots of it.
Time was precisely the resource Cole lacked.
After considering everything, Cole had no choice but to compromise.
He ultimately decided to limit the stock of each potion to one hundred pieces per month.
It wasn’t that Cole disliked money.
If anything, he liked money quite a lot.
But there was no point in earning mountains of mana stones if doing so left him with no time to cultivate.
Money could purchase resources.
It could purchase treasures.
It could purchase ingredients.
But it couldn’t directly purchase the strength he needed to protect everything he was building.
If managing the potion shop consumed all his time and prevented him from cultivating, then everything he had done so far would become meaningless.
Cole looked at the neatly arranged shelves inside Intelligent Potion Works.
For now, this was enough.
The store could generate a steady stream of income while he focused on becoming stronger.
Once his strength reached a sufficient level, he could return and solve the problems of production, automation, and expansion one by one.
There was no need to devour the entire cake in a single bite.
Even humans occasionally understood the revolutionary concept of pacing themselves.
One month later, stability had finally returned to Cole’s life.
The frantic days of establishing the potion shop, managing its employees, gathering ingredients, and dealing with endless trivial matters had gradually settled into a routine. Intelligent Potion Works was now operating smoothly, allowing Cole to finally devote himself to the matter that truly mattered.
Cultivation.
Inside one of the secluded rooms of the potion shop, Cole sat cross-legged on the floor with his eyes tightly shut. His breathing was slow and measured, while the mana within his dantian circulated through his body in steady cycles.
Yet his expression was far from relaxed.
A faint crease remained between his eyebrows, and a trace of pain could be seen across his otherwise calm face.
The problem wasn’t his lack of mana.
It was his body.
Although his dantian could continuously absorb mana from the surroundings, his veins and arteries were still fundamentally human. They were simply too narrow and fragile to withstand the increasingly dense mana flowing through his body.
Every time Cole attempted to increase the circulation speed, an uncomfortable tearing sensation would spread through his veins.
He had already pushed his body as far as he safely could.
Going any further without changing his physical foundation would be courting death.
A few breaths later, Cole’s eyes suddenly snapped open.
Zzzzt!
Faint arcs of lightning flickered across his pupils, illuminating the darkness of the room for a brief instant.
Cole slowly exhaled, his expression turning solemn.
"It seems I would need to make a trip to the Forbidden Zone..."
The words fell quietly into the room.
The Forbidden Zone.
Even hearing those words was enough to make most human warriors instinctively become cautious.
The Forbidden Zone referred to the vast lands outside human territory, regions where humanity’s influence rapidly diminished and the myriad races of the world held absolute dominance.
Those lands were filled with powerful monsters, ancient races, dangerous resources, and countless unknown threats.
For ordinary humans, entering such a place was practically the same as walking into the territory of a predator while announcing their presence.
If possible, Cole wanted to avoid going there altogether.
Unfortunately...
He no longer had that luxury.
His current cultivation had reached a bottleneck.
He needed more data.
More importantly, he needed to create a mana-breathing technique specifically suited to his body and Bloodline Path. The techniques used by ordinary humans weren’t enough. His Thunder Worm Leviathan bloodline, dantian, and transformed body created a completely different foundation.
He couldn’t simply copy someone else’s cultivation method and expect it to work perfectly.
He needed to build his own.
But that wasn’t the only problem.
Cole also needed a method to transform his veins and arteries.
They needed to become wider.
Stronger.
More capable of carrying the dense streams of mana produced by his dantian.
If he couldn’t solve this problem, his cultivation speed would eventually grind to a halt. Worse, forcing more mana through his current channels could cause serious internal damage.
Cole’s fingers slowly tightened into fists.
The Forbidden Zone was dangerous.
But remaining stagnant was even more dangerous.
After all, in this world, strength wasn’t something that waited patiently for someone to acquire it.
Cole rose from the ground, his eyes flickering with determination.
If he wanted to continue walking the path he had chosen, then sooner or later, he would have to step beyond humanity’s safe borders.
And this time...
He would be entering the territory of the myriad races.