Chapter 1026: A Breeder's Fate
Lu Chengxue, as a core disciple of the Lu family, was indeed exceptionally popular.
In the few hours that Li Fan had been secretly observing him, a total of thirty-seven people had crossed his path. Without exception, they all greeted him with warm smiles and courteous words.
Moreover, Li Fan could tell that the smiles on their faces were not feigned. They were expressions of genuine happiness.
After a busy few hours, Lu Chengxue finally returned leisurely to his residence.
Li Fan followed, slipping inside just as easily.
To the current Li Fan, the residence's defensive formations were practically nonexistent.
He moved without a sound, completely unnoticed by anyone within.
"My husband, you're back!"
The moment Lu Chengxue entered, eleven female cultivators—a collection of beauties from slender to curvaceous, all of stunning appearance—came out to welcome him.
Faced with such a grand welcome from so many lovely women, Lu Chengxue merely gave a slight, indifferent nod.
He walked straight to the largest room in the deepest part of the residence.
The eleven women followed, giggling.
The great doors of the room boomed shut, and soon after, the faint but fierce sounds of passion could be heard from within.
Li Fan observed the scene inside the room, his brow slightly furrowed.
It wasn't that he was envious of Lu Chengxue's situation.
Rather, it was because throughout the entire affair, Lu Chengxue's face remained utterly devoid of expression.
It didn't look like he was enjoying himself; it was more like he was fulfilling a duty.
And from his conversations with the eleven women, Li Fan learned the full story.
It turned out that producing as many offspring as possible was the most crucial method by which the Lu family maintained its prosperity.
After all, being a great philanthropist in the Xuanhuang Realm was no easy feat.
Sometimes, in the course of helping others, one could even lose their own life.
The reason the Lu family could maintain its charitable image for so long was simply because there were so many of them.
So many, in fact, that the family would not hesitate for a moment to trade the lives of its disciples for an increase in its reputation.
Aside from the family-assigned task of producing a certain number of heirs each year, every member of the Lu family was keenly aware of their fate. Knowing they might have to sacrifice themselves at any moment, they adopted a philosophy of seizing the day.
Almost every member of the Lu family had more than a dozen spouses.
Any spare time they had was dedicated to procreation.
Perhaps some could indulge in it endlessly and find perpetual pleasure, but it was clear that not everyone could maintain their enthusiasm for this day-in, day-out assignment.
Li Fan could sense the weariness and fatigue emanating from Lu Chengxue.
"A core disciple of the family, they call him, yet he cannot escape the fate of a prized stud. At best, the only difference is that his choice of mates is more pleasing to the eye."
"In that case," Li Fan mused, his expression unreadable as he watched from outside the room, "freeing you from this might not be such a bad thing."
He waited until the storm of passion had passed, and Lu Chengxue and his eleven beauties were all deeply asleep.
Only then did Li Fan flash into the room.
Lu Chengxue was at the Soul Transformation stage, while the women were Nascent Soul at most.
Li Fan placed a hand on Lu Chengxue's head, pulling the completely defenseless man into his personal grotto-heaven.
He didn't even disturb the other women before vanishing as phantom-like as he had appeared.
When they awoke, even if they didn't see Lu Chengxue, they would simply assume he had grown tired and left early.
It would likely be several days before they finally realized he was missing.
Inside a secret chamber in the Spirit Wood Realm.
Without waking Lu Chengxue, Li Fan gave him a quick, painless end.
He let him die peacefully in his sleep.
The celestial phenomena that accompanied a cultivator's fall were concealed by Li Fan's formations, ensuring no one in the Spirit Wood Realm would notice a thing.
Soon, a high-grade Dao Transformation Stone, glowing with a crystalline white light, appeared before Li Fan.
Currently, the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance possessed one fragment of the Stone Mother, three supreme-grade Dao Transformation Stones, and sixteen high-grade ones.
Li Fan hadn't expected any of his three targets to possess a supreme-grade stone or a fragment of the Stone Mother.
A high-grade Dao Transformation Stone was more than enough for him.
With constant fusion and enhancement in each life, he was confident it would eventually reach the level of the Dao Transformation Stone Mother.
This particular high-grade stone still held Lu Chengxue's memories.
Instead of erasing them immediately, Li Fan began to browse through the scenes within.
"He received this Dao Transformation Stone when he was just a child. And as part of his father's legacy, no less. He obtained it without lifting a finger."
Lu Chengxue's father had sacrificed his life to save someone. Overwhelmed with gratitude, the rescued individual presented this Dao Transformation Stone as a gift of thanks.
As Lu Chengxue was young at the time, the person worried the Lu family would seize the stone, so they delivered it to him in secret.
Therefore, no one in the Lu family knew that Lu Chengxue possessed a Dao Transformation Stone.
With the stone, Lu Chengxue began to exhibit "astonishing talent." He was gradually nurtured as a core disciple, right up until his unfortunate demise at Li Fan's hands today.
Overall, Lu Chengxue's life was rather unremarkable.
Aside from fathering a total of sixteen children, there was nothing else worth mentioning.
After carefully watching all the scenes, Li Fan shook his head slightly. "A mundane and pathetic life. Even my days in the Great Xuan Kingdom were more exciting."
"He completely wasted such a treasure."
With his current perspective, Li Fan naturally looked down on such a life.
However, he didn't delete Lu Chengxue's memories, merely storing them away in a corner.
Then, he began the fusion with his own Dao Transformation Stone.
It was less a merging of two equals and more an absorption and strengthening.
After all, the dominant entity was the one already in Li Fan's sea of consciousness, the one that had achieved Divine Unity of the Dao Transformation.
As the Dao Transformation Stone that carried Lu Chengxue's entire life dissolved into a river of starlight and flowed endlessly into Li Fan's sea of consciousness, a metamorphosis began to occur within his own stone.
In what felt like an instant, the heavens seemed higher, the earth vaster, and the entire world grew brighter.
Details from all his past experiences—those he had noticed and those he had overlooked—replayed in his mind with perfect clarity, down to the most minute particular.
Even information, techniques, and other data he had only glimpsed once were now perfectly sorted and retrieved from the sealed archives of his memory.
...
"High-grade and mid-grade. A single word of difference, yet worlds apart. I truly wonder what realm the supreme-grade, or even the Dao Transformation Stone Mother, must represent."
A vision of worlds endlessly being born and dying flickered in Li Fan's eyes as he sighed with emotion.
He tested his new capabilities by using the Final Dissociation Disc to deduce immortal-grade arrays.
Aided by the enhanced Dao Transformation Stone, Li Fan's ability to handle data redundancy had improved dramatically.
The feeling of being overwhelmed he had previously experienced while studying—a thousand loose ends with no idea where to begin—was gone.
Now, he no longer felt lost. A mere glance was enough for a general research direction to immediately emerge in his mind.
Li Fan then tested the Measuring Heart Ruler.
"The number of scenes I can monitor simultaneously has skyrocketed tenfold..."
With this quantifiable result, Li Fan was thoroughly satisfied with his gains.
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