Chapter 343: Make A Friend
Gu Jianbo was a little tempted by his wife’s words.
He had spent ten years of his life on his research. His best friend had sacrificed his life for it, while he had given up on his youth. Now that he had finally developed the Ultimate Style, it was only natural that he wanted to set up his own school and let the Ultimate Style shine in glory.
And if he wanted to “set up his own school”, the most important thing was to have a lot of people!
If the hundreds of thousands of broken-star superhumans in the city learned the Ultimate Style, Zong Ye’s soul would definitely be happy in heaven.
However, it would definitely not be easy to execute this matter swiftly in the system of Agricultural University’s martial arts course.
After all, they were talking about expanding the refresher course within a year and a half from hundreds of people to thousands of people, maybe even tens of thousands of people. This would require various things like teaching resources, equipment, and location.
But they could do it outside the system of Agricultural University’s martial arts course if they acted in the name of the Broken Star Club. And it would also make it much more suitable for them to give full support.
As they continued talking, their topic of conversation moved to Meng Chao.
Even now, both of them still found all that happened unbelievable. Meng Chao was basically a blessing from heaven. Ever since he came to Agricultural University, the Ultimate Style’s research and Gu Jianbo’s relationship with his wife improved by leaps and bounds; he had achieved substantial breakthroughs in both areas.
It had just half a year, he had obtained unexpected results with the Ultimate Style, got back together with Li Yingzi, and the Broken Star Club was starting to show signs of a great club.
Now, Meng Chao’s declaration of challenging Dragon City University’s martial arts course no longer sounded like conceited words.
Who knew where in life Meng Chao would be in five years’ time?
“You’ve earned a good deal by taking in this true disciple,” Li Yingzi’s commented.
“Of course. Your husband has a good eye for talented people, you know?”
Gu Jianbo smiled so widely that his eyes turned into slits. He completely erased the fact that he had hidden his identity from Meng Chao in the beginning.
Since his true disciple was so capable, Gu Jianbo naturally had to give him full support. Agricultural University was known as Monster University. Its comprehensive power was second only to that of Dragon City University. The martial arts course was also a powerful course, so when Gu Jianbo and Li Yingzi decided to use their resources, the results were rather shocking.
With the two of them protecting Meng Chao along the way and helping him in all aspects, the day the Broken Star Club’s headquarters held its inauguration ceremony, many powerful fighters whose names shook Dragon City came to attend the ceremony. The media also showed up. Thousands of broken-star superhumans also came to pay tribute, so the atmosphere was really lively.
Gu Jianbo’s status rose from supervisor-in-name to leader-in-name. He was the one who personally cut the ribbon.
Dean Zong Yue of Agricultural University’s martial arts course might not have attended personally, but the Black Tortoise had decided to carve the words Broken Star Club in bold strokes on a signboard. He also asked Gu Jianbo to hand them to Meng Chao to encourage him and all broken-star superhumans to work harder so that they could walk further on their road as superhumans. Then, they could contribute more to Dragon City.
Black Tortoise Zong Yue was a Deity Realm fighter.
The three words he wrote were carved into a signboard made of high-grade crystal. When it was hung at the entrance of the headquarters, the place immediately looked really high class.
With Gu Jianbo, Li Yingzi, Qin Hu, Yan Hengbo, Lu Siya, and the others gathering sponsors all over the place and the mysterious person behind the abnormal beast research department donating one million Supernatural Coins and one hundred cultivation cabins, the Broken Star Club did not lack money for the time being.
To a certain degree, Meng Chao was a person who got by with whatever he had at that moment. Even if he saved up millions, when the apocalypse arrived, all of them would end up gone.
It was better to change all that money into resources and turn those resources into fighting power so that even if the apocalypse arrived, they could fight it.
Hence, he threw in the money he earned through blood, sweat, and tears into the buffet in the Broken Star Club. He bought the freshest and best monster raw materials. As the young heir of Superstar, he was close to the raw materials of monsters, and he could get them whenever he wanted. It was much easier for him to get nutritious and spirit energy-filled monster meat compared to other people.
The mysterious person who donated the one hundred cultivation cabins did not cover the purchasing cost, which was the cost for every single time they used the cultivation cabins and the cost they needed to put in gene medicine and nutritional fluid into the cabins.
Meng Chao fulfilled his promise in this regard. Aside from taking the cost needed for the materials, he did not take an extra cent from the broken-star superhumans.
The Broken Star Club also prepared really comfortable recovery centers and medical centers for the large number of broken-star superhumans.
Meng Chao also often used his connections to invite Blade Dancer Gu Jianbo, Griffin Li Yingzi, other lecturers from Agricultural University’s martial arts course, and some of the really famous fighters in the society to organize lectures and on the spot practice sessions in Broken Star Club. All of that, of course, was free.
As for food, cultivation, recovery, business gatherings, team building exercises, and other services, the members only needed to pay a fee that was never more than 30% of what other clubs of similar standards asked. Meng Chao really only charged the prime cost, and he even paid for the electricity and spirit-energy-filled pipes on his own!
“Earning money is secondary. Our main goal is to make friends here,” Meng Chao said to the Broken Star Club members.
Those were his sincere thoughts.
Broken Star Club was not made to earn money, but it had a few rules the members had to obey.
First, the club members had to pay a membership fee. It was not much, but it would ensure their rights to enjoy the services in the club. They needed to pay from ten dollars to one hundred dollars a month. Once they ate two buffet meals at prime cost or enjoyed two hours of the newest Ultimate Style cultivation cabin at prime cost, they were able to earn their money back.
“It’s not that we lack that bit of money, but if we take membership fees, the broken-star superhumans will understand that they’re part of the Broken Star Club. This is a way for us to increase our unity and acknowledgement of the place,” Meng Chao told Qin Hu.
This was something he had learned from the training courses in Ghost Tribe.
He had also learned how to make uniforms and all sorts of commemorative medals to increase an individual’s acknowledgement of an organization and their sense of glory toward it. He could even use it to increase their bravery in a fight.
Of course, to the current Broken Star Club, uniforms would have been too much.
Instead, Meng Chao asked Qin Hu to print a batch of culture shirts. They came in two styles. One of them had the words Broken Star Club written in bold strokes in the front, which would definitely attract attention, but it was not suitable for people to go out wearing them.
The other one was then made from the best fabric. At first glance, it seemed like it had nothing to do with the Broken Star Club, but there was a small Broken Star Club emblem at the chest area. Those who did not know about the club would not be able to tell, but those who could would all be members of the same club.
The two culture shirts alone were already worth the membership fees.
Next, Meng Chao showed all the members the daily expenses of the club, the donations they received, and the cost of all the various expenses.
Many of the members had taken advantage of the club services, and now, they felt embarrassed.
“You don’t have to be shy about using the facilities. Broken Star Club is a public welfare organization, but it’s not a charity organization. If we want to maintain our current services, we will need all of you to work together with us.”
Meng Chao told the people that the membership fees and cost to use the facilities in Broken Star Club would definitely not increase, but to maintain operations which help broken-star superhumans cultivate, they would need to work together with various forces of power, businesses, and powerful organizations.
Broken Star Club would meticulously choose a batch of products that were related to cultivation and provide them to the members at prime cost. The club did not mind if the members did not want to buy them, but they hoped that the members would spend some time and energy to try them out and provide feedback. The feedback and data of usage could then be exchanged into real money, which could be used to maintain the operations of the club.
Peerless elites were rather sensitive when it came to their own cultivation data. They would not readily reveal them to third parties.
But broken-star superhumans had a hard time even being acknowledged as one-star superhumans. At most, they were half-star superhumans. There was just no need for them to hide the data of their cultivation nor did they have the idea to hide their cultivation data.
Their money would remain in their pockets since the club did not plan to force the members to buy the products, so they decided to see what Meng Chao would bring.
He spent a lot of effort to make sure that the first group purchase in Broken Star Club would go off with a bang.
As he thought about it, he decided to look for Broken Soul Saber Luo Wu’s son, Luo Hai, and talked to him about using Surging Lightning to be the first item in this project.
Surging Lightning, a saber personally designed by Soul Breaking Saber Luo Wu, had Meng Chao as the spokesperson and Luo Hai as the person in charge of selling it. It had already been in the market for a few months.
This saber might not have any sort of advanced technology that surpassed the current era, but it did not slack off in terms of materials used to create it. It was also designed based off of Meng Chao’s Future One Hundred Saber Techniques, so the cost-performance ratio was second to none in the market. It could be considered as a hot-selling item of the season.
Luo Hai mentioned to Meng Chao that he was not against the idea of adding a Members Only version of Surging Lightning for Broken Star Club so that they could sell something else aside from the youthful version and flagship version.
But when Meng Chao told him the purchasing price, Luo Hai was so shocked that he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Meng Chao, you have shares in Surging Lightning as well. You’ve seen the entire production process right from the start too. The simple and crude materials we use and the way we win against other sellers through our cost-performance ratio already means that the price we sell our products is the lowest in the market!
“We already don’t earn a lot of money from this, and you still want to give them such a discount? That’s basically us losing money with each saber. We’ll also face the risk of throwing the low-end market into chaos. If this price goes out, the channel vendors will spit at us, and I’ll end up drowning in their spit. We can’t conduct business like this!”
Meng Chao said nothing. He just handed Luo Hai a set of data.
Luo Hai frowned. “What is this?”
“This is the data of the project from Lab 1024 of Agricultural University’s martial arts course,” Meng Chao said. “You can just look at the final conclusion. I swear on my life that the data is real. Look at the upwards curve of this fighting strength increase. The research shows that the broken-star superhumans who use the Ultimate Style cultivation cabin every day for two hours to cultivate their branch meridians gain a lot of benefits in terms of repairing their main meridians and increasing their fighting strength.
“Recently, one hundred volunteers showed different degrees of increase in their punching force, 100 m-dash speed, reaction speed, and even mental strength index after they practiced the Ultimate Style for a month. The overall strength of the one with the highest increase is 29%, and the median is 11%. Do you know what this means?”
Luo Hai instinctively asked, “What does it mean?”
“This means that in less than a year and a half, most of the broken-star superhumans’ fighting strength might reach the average mark of one-star superhumans,” Meng Chao said. “If they become stronger, they will be able to take up missions that are even more dangerous.
“If they’ll want to complete dangerous missions, they’ll have to get more powerful equipment, and if they can really complete those missions successfully, they will be able to earn more money, get promoted, receive higher salaries, marry the people they fancy, and reach the peak of their lives.
“This is purchasing power! They can’t just live with a single saber their whole lives, right? Once the Monster War becomes more intense, normal sabers will become consumable items. Even the supreme-grade sabers might not be able to last a few intense fights. If you give up on some bit of profit from the Members Only version, perhaps in a few months, these broken-star superhumans will come back to buy a few flagship versions, because their strength had already increased by leaps and bounds.”