Time flashed by like a white colt passing a crack in the wall. In the blink of an eye, half a year had passed.
During those six months, Lu Changsheng's fifteenth and sixteenth children were born.
Neither had a spiritual root, which made Lu Changsheng look forward all the more to the child in Qu Zhenzhen's belly.
Meanwhile, thanks to his efforts over the past six months, another five of his wives and concubines had become pregnant.
Apart from Qu Zhenzhen, who was still carrying her first child, his original three wives and six concubines were all on their second pregnancies.
The sisters Lu Zi'er and Lu Qing'er had already begun their third pregnancies.
One day.
After finishing his daily meditation and cultivation in the practice room, Lu Changsheng went to his study and began drawing talismans.
These two activities had become part of his daily routine.
With his cultivation now at the chain qi third layer, mid-grade talismans no longer posed any difficulty for Lu Changsheng.
He could successfully draw one with a casual flick of his brush.
As for high-grade talismans, they remained quite challenging because his magical power and mental stamina were limited, his talisman brush was a little lacking, and his talisman paper and spirit ink were only of average quality.
He could only risk failure and force his way through drawing some of the simpler high-grade talismans.
Thus, only a small portion of the advanced talisman paper and advanced spirit ink he had bought on Ox-Head Mountain had been made into talismans, which he kept against unexpected trouble.
He planned to wait until his cultivation advanced further and he bought a good talisman brush before turning the remaining materials into talismans.
In any case, even if he made them now, he had no way to sell them. Having enough for his own emergencies would do.
After drawing two mid-grade talismans, Lu Changsheng set down his talisman brush and prepared to relax with his wives and concubines.
He had only just left the study when a servant handed him a letter.
It was a letter from Hong Yi.
In it, Hong Yi reminisced a little and mentioned that he had been doing well lately, so his father, the Ruyi Marquis, had entrusted him with more household affairs.
He then asked how Lu Changsheng had been doing recently.
This was not the first letter Lu Changsheng had received from Hong Yi.
It was the third since his return to Green Bamboo Mountain, and Lu Changsheng naturally knew why Hong Yi was doing this.
Now that I have spare talismans to sell, even if the Lu Lineage finds out, they shouldn't hold it against me.
Lu Changsheng thought to himself.
The reason he had never sold talismans to Hong Yi before was simple.
He was worried that the Lu Lineage would discover he was privately trading talismans with Hong Yi.
If the Lu Lineage found out and saw that he had a large stock of talismans to sell, that would be trouble.
But so much time had passed, and he had been a Ranked Talisman Master for over a year. Given the proficiency he usually displayed, it was perfectly normal for him to have some spare talismans to sell.
He promptly wrote back that he did indeed have some talismans for sale and could sell them to Hong Yi if he needed them.
He also asked how they would conduct the transaction.
Naturally, he would not leave Green Bamboo Mountain just to sell a few talismans, so he left it to Hong Yi to find a solution.
After finishing the letter, Lu Changsheng handed it to a servant and told him to take it to the postal station.
The Lu Lineage had a postal station for sending letters to the mortal world, though it was rather slow.
A letter like this would probably take a month, or even longer, to reach Hong Yi.
For anything truly urgent, he could only use a message-transmitting talisman.
Afterward, Lu Changsheng went to the rear courtyard to spend time with his wives, concubines, and children.
This, too, was something of a daily routine for him.
Seeing Qu Zhenzhen's swollen belly reminded Lu Changsheng of her older brother.
He made another trip to Green Bamboo Manor and asked Li Feiyu whether the Red Whale Gang had any news of Qu Zhenzhen's older brother, Qu Changge.
However, Li Feiyu said the Red Whale Gang still had no news of Qu Changge.
More than half a year had passed without any news of Qu Zhenzhen's brother, Qu Changge. Lu Changsheng even began to wonder whether something had happened to this brother-in-law he had acquired.
After all, according to Qu Zhenzhen, her brother was only an ordinary scholar.
The journey to the capital to sit the examinations was ten thousand li long. If he encountered danger along the way, it was entirely possible that he would lose his life.
Lu Changsheng decided that if there was still no news after a while, he would ask Hong Yi to help investigate as well.
After all, the Red Whale Gang was merely a gang of the martial world. Beyond Tianshui Prefecture, its influence was limited.
Meanwhile.
At the border between Azure Province and Ji Province in the Jiang Kingdom stood a sheer cliff amid treacherous peaks and jagged rocks.
Thick mist shrouded the cliffs, making it difficult to see the other side. The valley between them, veiled in mist, seemed bottomless. Anyone who approached and glanced down could not help feeling their heart quail.
At that very moment, within the boundless, unfathomably deep valley.
"Whoooo-"
"Woooo-"
Gray mist spread everywhere, and sinister winds howled like ghosts wailing and wolves crying.
In the center of the valley lay a blood-red pool a little over ten square meters in area.
Piles of white bones surrounded the pool, a sight that made the skin crawl, but the blood-red pool was worse still.
The blood within was dark and murky, steeped in an indescribable evil, demonic quality. Bloody bubbles rose with a "glug, glug, glug."
Every bursting bubble was accompanied by a strange, barely audible shriek.
Within this pool of blood was a large cocoon, thin as a cicada's wing and gleaming with a crystalline bloody light.
The cocoon bobbed in the blood, its crimson glow brightening and dimming as though it were breathing. It seemed to ensnare the soul, utterly eerie.
A closer look would faintly reveal a man enclosed inside the blood cocoon.
The man seemed about to open his eyes, but in the next instant, a blood-red lotus resembling a crescent moon appeared between his brows. His eyes, just beginning to open, squeezed shut again, and he sank into slumber.
Three months later.
"Peak of the chain qi third layer!"
"But who knows how much longer I'll have to grind away before I can break through to the chain qi fourth layer."
Sitting cross-legged in the practice room, Lu Changsheng opened his eyes, gently exhaled a breath of stale air, and murmured to himself.
Each of the first three layers of chain qi had taken him about a year.
But now that he had reached the peak of the third layer, he could clearly sense that advancing from the chain qi third layer to the chain qi fourth layer was different from his previous breakthroughs.
There was a bottleneck.
He could not break through without obstruction. It would still take a long stretch of patient effort, like water wearing away stone.
Lu Changsheng did not mind too much.
After all, with his lousy aptitude, being able to cultivate this quickly and reach the peak of the chain qi third layer so soon was already quite good.
He had a very clear understanding of where he stood.
A great vessel took time to complete!
Once he had more children and they grew older, things would improve.
"Zhenzhen should be giving birth soon, too."
Lu Changsheng rose, patted the nonexistent dust from his robes, and walked out of the practice room.
Eleven days later.
Qu Zhenzhen gave birth.
The instant the child was born, Lu Changsheng, waiting outside the delivery room, felt a mysterious sensation arise within him.
It was the stirring of his spiritual root.
He knew that this child of his possessed a spiritual root.
This filled Lu Changsheng with excitement.
He felt that his anticipation over these past several months had not been wasted.
Sure enough, I need to have children with women who possess spiritual roots.
Otherwise, if I'm the only one with a spiritual root, the odds of our children having one are far too low.
Little Seven having a spiritual root was purely a stroke of incredible luck.
Lu Changsheng took a deep breath, brimming with joy and excitement.
Seeing him like this, the wives and concubines beside him felt a twinge of jealousy.
Even though they were virtuous, gentle women, they still felt that Lu Changsheng favored Qu Zhenzhen somewhat.
Not only did he show her more concern in everyday life, but now that her child had been born, he was also much happier than he had been at the births of his previous children.
Still, they knew the reason.
Qu Zhenzhen possessed a spiritual root and could cultivate, so the children she bore with Lu Changsheng were also very likely to have spiritual roots.
Naturally, this made Lu Changsheng favor her a little more.
When Little Seven was born, the system gave me a congratulatory gift.
If I have ten children with spiritual roots, the system should give me another congratulatory gift, right?
Lu Changsheng did not notice his wives' and concubines' expressions. He was immersed in the joy of this child's birth.
When Little Seven, Lu Xianzhi, had been born, he had received a reward for fathering his first child with a spiritual root. That led him to suspect that, just as with his total number of children, reaching certain milestones would earn him rewards.
Before long, the midwife emerged from the delivery room with the child in her arms.
It was a boy.
Holding the child, Lu Changsheng entered the delivery room to visit Qu Zhenzhen.
Although Qu Zhenzhen had begun cultivating, she had become pregnant shortly after starting.
As a result, she had yet to complete drawing qi into her body and was still very weak.
Besides, the first few layers of qi refinement did little to improve one's physical constitution.
Seeing how weak Qu Zhenzhen was, Lu Changsheng soothed her to sleep, handed the child to the wet nurse, and went to the practice room to begin cultivating.
There was no helping it. He could not see the child's spiritual root, nor could he examine the changes in his own spiritual root in detail.
He could only use the simple, straightforward method of cultivating to determine how much his spiritual root had improved, then estimate the grade of the child's spiritual root.
Before you continue