NOVPUB
Chapter 984: Chapter 961: Resolution
The development of the Li family in recent decades has been remarkably rapid, with significant enhancement in strength. Apart from Li Chengsheng, there are also the Dragon Carp and Qingniao among the three Spirit Beasts contracted by Jiang Fengwu, with Feng Peng - Xiaoqing’s Dao companion - having successfully achieved a breakthrough a few years ago.
The remaining Dragon Carp and Qingniao are also expected to break through to the Seventh Rank within thirty years.
The reason for Feng Peng’s swift cultivation progress is not only that her contract was established earlier, but also because Xiaoqing often dual cultivates with her, harmonizing Yin and Yang, leading to a rapid increase in Mana.
Whereas among the Cultivators who have reached Divine Transformation and Nascent Soul, it is as if a year of explosive growth has arrived; in just a few decades, the number of those who have reached Divine Transformation has doubled, and Nascent Soul has surged by one and a half times.
As for Golden Core and Foundation Establishment, the lower-rank Cultivators, their growth rate has been even more astonishing.
It seems as if, after coming to the Primal Spirit Realm, many bottlenecks have vanished, and the power of Thunder Tribulation has also weakened.
So much so that now there are clan members proposing population control and selective breeding, otherwise, sooner or later, problems will erupt due to excessive population in the family.
But no sooner had this proposal been voiced than the person was secretly taken away, with no one knowing their whereabouts.
Any clan member with a bit of sense would not touch upon this issue again.
The person behind this is, of course, the handiwork of the current Clan Leader, Li Hongshi!
This young man, who appears to be a frail scholar, is extremely decisive and ruthless in his actions. At the start of his tenure, he cracked down on factions within the family to establish his own authority. Later, through a series of reforms and developments, he took complete control of the family’s power, leaving no room for the various factions to have a say.
He took this seemingly ordinary private chatter among a few clan members so seriously, and even overcorrected in handling it, because Li Hongshi realized that the situation was not so simple; there were factions behind it fanning the flames, trying to reduce the proportion of Cultivators born from Secular Clansmen!
That’s because most of the family’s current Cultivators are born from Secular Clansmen, while the births of new Cultivators from the various houses are becoming fewer and fewer.
Ultimately, this is because since arriving in the Primal Spirit Realm, the progress of clan members in cultivation can be described as leaps and bounds, leading many Cultivators to become engrossed in cultivation, and inadvertently breaking through to Golden Core and Nascent Soul with the help of various Cultivation Spirit Pills from the Li family.
As is well known, the higher the Cultivation, the lower the probability of bearing offspring!
Furthermore, the rich and high-quality Spiritual Energy pervasive in the Primal Spirit Realm is increasing the chances that the offspring of Mortals will have Spiritual Roots.
As such, the strength of the various houses has increased significantly, but the births of offspring have become fewer and fewer.
Of course, there are solutions, such as treating some clan members with lesser aptitude as breeding stock, allowing them to produce offspring en masse.
But setting aside whether the Li family would allow such a matter, the clan members being used as breeding stock would not be willing either! This could even lead to conflicts within the houses.
It is known to all that possessing Yuan Yin or Yuan Yang makes it easier to achieve Core Formation, and being used as breeding stock would not only result in the loss of Yuan Yin and Yuan Yang, but also extract one’s potential and, in severe cases, even damage the foundation.
Given such immense costs, who would be willing to give up hundreds or even thousands of years of lifespan for the sake of being forced to produce children?
As for why the various houses do not seek out those Mortal descendants? Because they simply cannot be found!
This goes back to a very old story.
Back when they were still in the Profound Origin Realm, Li Mingzi, as the Clan Leader, noticed that the strength of the family factions was somewhat overpowering. In order to prevent them from enhancing their own power, she issued an order.
All offspring of Cultivators, if they did not manifest a Spiritual Root by the age of five, not only had to leave the clan grounds and be raised in villages among Secular Clansmen, but they also had to be sent away by the family, with their identities concealed, thus severing all ties with their biological parents!
Anyone who dared to make private contact would face very severe punishment.
This resulted in the Cultivators not recognizing their own offspring, and the Mortals not knowing their biological parents.
Although it might seem excessively unkind, this practice greatly restricted the growth of the houses’ strength and numbers so that most Cultivators did not originate from the individual houses.
Looking back now, Li Mingzi’s decision seems to have been strategically insightful, removing many troubles for the successors.
Faced with significant hidden dangers within the houses, they are also racking their brains trying to find a way out, so as not to fall into decline after many years.
"Why not be ruthless and compel some younger members with poor aptitude to take more wives and concubines? As for the cultivation concerns they worry about, let them be compensated by the public treasury, ensuring they can break through to Golden Core," an elder frowned and said.
"Not appropriate, if the public treasury funds it, there will be objections from others," another elder shook his head and said: "I think it’s better to encourage the younger members to reproduce and then issue rewards to maintain fairness."
"You think the public treasury is still ample?" the elder seated at the head of the table said coldly: "Don’t you have an idea of what state the public treasury is in?"
The public treasury of the houses is ostensibly for all Cultivators within a house to contribute certain resources, to be compensated in situations such as sacrificial deaths in the line of duty or as a reward for breakthroughs to Divine Transformation.
But in fact, there are many underhanded dealings going on inside, and it is essentially divided up by several old clan members to nurture their own outstanding descendants.
What to do when the public treasury needs to pay out? Just casually take out some Spiritual Objects, put on a show, and that’s it.
In any case, this matter has already become an unspoken agreement among everyone.
