Chapter 336: Broken Star Club
Meng Chao and Lu Siya turned around and saw Ye Xiaoxing searching through his drawer. It took him a while to fish out a rumpled envelope, which contained a stack of doc.u.ments. He took a few glances at it before he said, “I heard that you and your friends formed a club called Broken Star Club. Is that true?”
Meng Chao was a little surprised.
They had formed the Broken Star Club at the start of the year.
When the Ultimate Style was just born, the main volunteers of the experiment were Meng Chao and the students working in society from the refresher course of Agricultural University. Ma Hong, the scout from the Red Dragon Army, was the one who led the team.
Most of the people in the refresher course were broken-star superhumans.
This meant that when they awakened to their superpowers, they used too much strength and their spirit energy went out of control. Most of their main meridians were burnt, and they were pseudo-superhumans.
Their cultivation speed was slow and they did not have a high upper limit. It was difficult for them to go past being one-star superhumans, and they were often considered to be at the bottom of the superhuman circle.
The birth of the Ultimate Style coincidentally solved this pressing matter for them.
They could rapidly increase their fighting strength through cultivating the branch meridians and nourish their main meridians by repeatedly stimulating and expanding their branch meridians. This gave life to their shrivelled up main meridian.
Hence, Ma Hong and the other broken-star superhumans joined the Ultimate Style experiment with 120% gusto. They obtained different levels of improvement from it.
Later, the northern offense began, so Ma Hong and the other soldiers had to return to the Red Dragon Army and go to the northern frontlines.
The powerful fighters working under various mining companies, resource companies, and construction companies also had to return to their companies and become active at Shattered Starlake in their various occupations.
Their comrades and colleagues knew well just how strong they were.
When they saw how their strength had grown by leaps and bounds after a few months at the university’s refresher course and how they seemed to be completely different people, many of the broken-star superhumans who were in the same situation as them and sympathized with them were surprised.
Most of the refresher courses were just places for people to get a cert without doing anything. They could not help broken-star superhumans change their fighting power in essence.
No one had expected that Agricultural University’s martial arts refresher course would be the real deal, so they were envious as well as tempted into joining it.
Ma Hong and the rest told them the truth and said that it was all thanks to the Ultimate Style.
Around the same time, Meng Chao also revealed his brilliance at Shattered Starlake by organizing the Ultimate Style Exchange every night and leading the alliance of the five universities to victory against Dragon City University during the inter-university tournament. It imprinted the name of Meng Chao and the Ultimate Style in countless broken-star superhumans’ minds.
In the end, before the northern offense even ended, the door to the Agricultural University’s martial arts refresher course was almost destroyed by broken-star superhumans because of how often they visited the place.
The power of an example was indescribable. After being spurred on by Ma Hong and the rest, many of the broken-star superhumans wanted to learn from Gu Jianbo and Meng Chao.
Originally, the refresher course did not have any requirements for results for enrollment. As long as the student could fork out money, they would be taught indiscriminately. No student was ever rejected.
A problem with this popped up when countless broken-star superhumans applied for the course. There was a limit to the number of Ultimate Style’s cultivation cabins in the lab of Project 1024. Even if they were used twenty-four hours a day, they could not support the simultaneous cultivation of more than one hundred broken-star superhumans.
Hence, Gu Jianbo, the lecturer of the refresher course; Ma Hong, the course rep of the refresher course; and Meng Chao, who was not part of the refresher course but was Gu Jianbo’s one-and-only true disciple and was also the one who pushed the Ultimate Style forward, ultimately allowing it to be born, discussed with each other for a long time before they came to a conclusion. They asked the university to expand the scale of the refresher course while they formed the Broken Star Club to help with the immediate situation.
Just as the name implied, it was an organization for broken-star superhumans to exchange experience and become friends with each other.
The main reason behind it was for them to tell each other of their experiences practicing the Ultimate Style and healing the shrivelled main meridians. It could also help them coordinate the time they spent in the cultivation cabins to practice the Ultimate Style.
Of course, through the Broken Star Club, they could also gather more experiment data, so the Ultimate Style could evolve continuously and become the strongest cultivation and fighting model.
There were not many requirements to join the Broken Star Club. As long as a person was a broken-star superhuman and was willing to share his or her experience in cultivation, they were welcome to join.
Since Gu Jianbo was not a broken-star superhuman, he was not in the club. He was just a supervisor in name.
Ma Hong was the course rep of the refresher course, and he also had a lot of connections in the Red Dragon Army and society. Many of the broken-star superhumans joined because of his recommendation, so he naturally became the club leader.
As for Meng Chao, everyone strongly suggested that he should be the vice-leader. He was Gu Jianbo’s true disciple and the person who brought forward the birth of the Ultimate Style. He was also doing everything he could to spread the Ultimate Style in the northern battlefield. It was something hard to do and a great contribution to the Ultimate Style.
Besides, he became a broken-star superhuman when he killed a b.l.o.o.d.y Moon Wolf King during his national college examination. This was a hair-rising feat, but also very touching.
There were few broken-star superhumans in the city who did not know Meng Chao’s name.
Meng Chao originally wanted to reject it. After all, he was just a freshman, and aside from cultivating, he also had to harvest monsters. After lectures, he spent most of his time looking for and riding the coattails of various powerful people to solve the Mystery of the Supernatural Ent.i.ties. He simply had no time to become a vice-leader, and he had no experience in this field either.
But Ma Hong told him that the Broken Star Club was built for the sake of everyone learning the Ultimate Style. Mr. Gu Jianbo could not join because of his ident.i.ty and could only be a supervisor in name. But as the one disciple who would inherit Big Brother Bo’s legacy, if Meng Chao did not take up the position, it would not make sense.
Besides, there were only hundreds of people in the Broken Star Club, and the main purpose for it was to help everyone book the time to use the Ultimate Style cultivation cabins. This was basically the same as online queuing and appointment systems. Regardless of whether someone was the club leader or the vice-leader, their positions did not mean much. They did not need any experience to take them up.
Meng Chao thought about it and found it true, so he agreed to it.
Since then, the Broken Star Club had not done anything major. It hired a person to design a website and set up an appointment system for the cultivation cabins, which solved basically all problems.
They had a few groups on the club website. They had thousands of people and were almost full.
The admin was very responsible, so the broken-star superhumans in the groups just cracked jokes all the time, boasted, sent emojis, or captioned gifs. Meng Chao ignored them most of the time.
Ma Hong had a lot of work in the Red Dragon Army, so he seldom had time to come to the refresher course. He did not pay a lot of attention to the Broken Star Club either.
Besides, investments had been piling up for the creation of new Ultimate Style cultivation cabins, which solved the problem of broken-star superhumans lacking resources to cultivate, and hence, the Broken Star Club lost its main purpose for existence.
Then, one day after Superstar Resource Recovery Company merged with Prosperous Resource Recovery Company, Qin Hu had suddenly run over to tell Meng Chao that he wanted to become the director of the Broken Star Club.
Ever since he received the dual attack from the Red Radiance Jades and Blue Origin Crystals, Qin Hu’s problem of his spirit energy going stagnant did not go away. His strength had plummeted, and he was in an even worse state than broken-star superhumans.
Due to him contributing to stopping the White Spirit and indirectly saving Meng Chao by discovering the Blue Origin Crystal cave in his previous life, Meng Chao introduced Qin Hu to Gu Jianbo in hopes that the Ultimate Style could solve his problem.
Qin Hu cooperated well. He gritted his teeth and endured a lot of incredibly painful experiments.
Gu Jianbo wanted to use the Ultimate Style to help a veteran fighter who lost his strength reach Heaven Realm and gain more valuable experiment data.
He tried his best to treat Qin Hu and used every trick up his sleeve.
Unfortunately, he did not manage to achieve what he intended. After hundreds of attempts, Qin Hu’s spirit energy did not recover in the slightest.
With Qin Hu’s state, he could not even be considered a broken-star superhuman.
But the Broken Star Club was not some high-end, grand, and high-cla.s.s organization. If he wanted to join out of respect for Meng Chao, then Meng Chao let him join. It was good for him to get rid of his gloomy feelings by chatting with the numerous broken-star superhumans.
And somehow, he seemed to have discovered some sort of treasure in the Broken Star Club. He was constantly chatting up a storm with the broken-star superhumans. He often even went out and treated those broken-star superhumans to meals.
Qin Hu had been quite famous in society before this. He was the vice-captain of Frenzied Saber, after all.
In the eyes of Heaven Realm elites who were born in powerful families like Lu Siya, he was nothing, but most of the broken-star superhumans came from poor families. They didn’t have much of a background and not a lot of resources. Otherwise, they would not have gone out of control when they awakened and gotten injured.
Qin Hu, however, had been at the peak of Earth Realm and could sympathize with them. He also came from a poor family, but had gotten quite a lot of it from the expedition under Raging Waves. He was now quite rich and when he gathered together with the broken-star superhumans, he treated money as if it was nothing, so almost in no time, the broken-star superhumans had a great impression of him.
Hence, when he told Meng Chao that he had gained the support of many broken-star superhumans, including Ma Hong, Meng Chao did not suspect his words.
However, Meng Chao could not understand it. The Broken Star Club was not some mega corporation that could earn a bucket of gold every day. It was not a powerful organization that could do whatever it wanted either. It was just a loosely organized social welfare organization.
There was not even the position of a director. Why was then Qin Hu being so pa.s.sionate about getting involved in the club? Was he really just contributing to the large number of broken-star superhumans?
“Look at you. Are you the only one allowed to contribute? Am I not allowed to contribute to the public for once?” Qin Hu said sadly, as if he had been wronged. “Right now, I lost all my power, and I’m basically useless. I no longer have any hope of becoming a hunter, and no superhuman squad will take me in. After you took my company, I don’t have any interest in fighting for control with your father, either. You have to let me look for entertainment and how to spend my time, okay?
“I know that I have money, but my wife keeps a tight leash over it, so even if I’m rich, I can’t spend any of it. Mr. Gu tried treating me hundreds of times from top to bottom with methods that are basically torture, but there’s no signs of me recovering my strength. What if I’m going to stay like this for the rest of my life? It’s depressing, man!
“The Broken Star Club itself isn’t much, but those broken-star superhumans? Heh, they’re from everywhere and are part of all sorts of industries. They tell me insider information from all sorts of industries, including a lot of secrets from the streets of Dragon City.
“They even tell me amazing stories from decades ago, which are really interesting and addictive. If I were the director and managed the club, we could often gather together and eat as well as boast about our achievements. There’s nothing wrong with that, right?”
Meng Chao remembered himself saying this at that time. “It’s precisely because there’s no problem that there’s a problem.
“Mr. Hu, you’re the type of person who won’t wake up early unless it benefits you. It’s not as simple as eating together and boasting about each other’s achievements, right? How much money would you have to spend to manage the club?”
“What the heck? Are you suspecting that I want to get money from this? I already got money for the mining rights of the Red Radiance Jade mine from Lu Siya. Why would I want that bit of money from the club?”
Qin Hu found himself not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Besides, the Broken Star Club isn’t a company or an organization. It doesn’t have a single cent in its account. Where am I supposed to get money even if I want it?
“I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t want a single cent from this. I’ll be using my own money to manage the club and contributing to the large number of broken-star superhumans. Is that good enough for you?”
Meng Chao had been really puzzled at that time.
Even though he felt that Qin Hu was definitely aiming for something because there was no way he would be so pa.s.sionate about it if there was nothing for him to gain, half of Qin Hu’s wealth came from the former Prosperous that had merged with Superstar. Meng Chao had a tight control over the money Qin Hu could get.
The other half of his wealth came from Lu Siya’s Red Radiance Jade Mine mining rights. That money was not something he could take just because he wanted to.
Even if Qin Hu did something wrong, no matter where he ran, he could not escape. If he really had some sort of ulterior motive, Meng Chao would have ways of dealing with him.
If he wanted to become the director of the Broken Star Club, then so be it. Meng Chao was okay with it as long as he did not use the name of the Broken Star Club to go out and deceive people. But even if he did, it was fine, Qin Hu was definitely rich enough to pay the people he deceived. Besides, Meng Chao believed that Qin Hu would not be that stupid, especially after he lost his strength.
In Meng Chao’s eyes, the director of the Broken Star Club could not even be considered a proper position that held any significant meaning in society.
But Qin Hu was really gungho about it. He went everywhere all the time without telling anyone what exactly he was doing.
By the looks of it, he could not get used to life of a normal human and was doing something completely unnecessary.
There were a few times when he even seriously came to Meng Chao to report his work, because Meng Chao was the vice-leader.
But it was during the case of the murderous pets in Blessed Paradise, so Meng Chao was occupied with the thoughts of the Mystery of the Supernatural Ent.i.ties and did not have the time nor energy for talking nonsense.
That is why he did not expect that he would hear the Broken Star Club’s name from Ye Xiaoxing, and his heart clenched.