Lu Chengxue truly lived up to his status as a core disciple of the Lu family; he enjoyed remarkable popularity.
During the half day Li Fan spent shadowing him from the shadows, thirty-seven people crossed paths with Lu Chengxue. Every single one greeted him with deference and warm smiles.
Furthermore, Li Fan could tell that the smiles on their faces were not feigned. Their delight was entirely heartfelt.
After a busy half day, Lu Chengxue finally returned to his cave dwelling at a leisurely pace.
Li Fan slipped in right behind him.
Before Li Fan at his current level, the defensive arrays guarding the dwelling were practically nonexistent.
He moved in total silence, unnoticed by anyone within.
"Husband is back!"
The moment Lu Chengxue stepped inside, eleven female cultivators—some slender, some voluptuous, each exceptionally fair—came forward to welcome him.
Three among them were visibly pregnant.
Faced with such an escort of beauties lining his path, Lu Chengxue merely gave a slight nod, his expression cold.
He walked straight toward the largest room situated deep within the dwelling.
The eleven women followed him, giggling and chatting.
The heavy door slammed shut, and before long, the muffled, vigorous sounds of passion began drifting out from within.
Observing the scene inside, Li Fan frowned slightly.
It was not out of envy for Lu Chengxue's fortune.
Rather, throughout the entire process, Lu Chengxue remained completely devoid of emotion.
He did not seem to be enjoying himself in the least; it looked more like he was merely completing a chore.
And from his exchanges with the eleven women, Li Fan grasped the full story.
As it turned out, siring as many descendants as possible was the foremost means by which the Lu family preserved its enduring prosperity.
In the Xuanhuang Realm, playing the great philanthropist was by no means an easy feat.
Sometimes, lending a helping hand could cost a person their very life.
The Lu family managed to maintain its reputation for benevolence precisely because there were so many of them.
They were so numerous that the family would not hesitate for an instant to sacrifice a disciple's life in exchange for greater prestige.
Beyond the mandatory reproductive quotas handed down by the clan, every member of the Lu family was acutely aware of their own fate. Knowing they could be called upon to sacrifice themselves at any moment, living for the pleasure of the day had become their standard way of life.
Almost every Lu cultivator kept double-digit numbers of partners.
Virtually all of their spare time was spent producing descendants.
Perhaps some people could lose themselves in such indulgence and never tire of it. Clearly, however, not everyone could maintain enthusiasm through a daily grind of mechanical duties.
From Lu Chengxue at this moment, Li Fan felt only weariness and exhaustion.
"Hailed as a core disciple of the clan, yet unable to escape the fate of a breeding stud. At most, the partners he gets are a bit more pleasing to the eye."
"In that case, helping you find release isn't such a bad deed."
Lurking outside the room, Li Fan wore a calm, unreadable expression.
He waited until the skirmish finally ceased and Lu Chengxue and the eleven beauties had all drifted off into exhausted sleep.
Only then did Li Fan flicker into the room.
Lu Chengxue possessed Soul Formation cultivation, while the women were at most at the Nascent Soul realm.
Clamping a hand over Lu Chengxue's crown, Li Fan swept the defenseless cultivator straight into his grotto-heaven.
None of the other women were disturbed as Li Fan withdrew swiftly like a ghost.
When they awoke and found Lu Chengxue gone, they would simply assume he had departed early out of exhaustion.
By the time anyone finally realized Lu Chengxue was missing, days would have passed.
***
Inside the secret chamber within the Spirit Wood Realm.
Without waking Lu Chengxue, Li Fan gave him a swift end, letting him pass quietly in his sleep.
The death phenomenon of the falling cultivator was promptly concealed by Li Fan's arrays, leaving no trace for anyone in the Spirit Wood Realm to detect.
Soon, an upper-grade Dao Transformation Stone radiating a crystalline white glow appeared before Li Fan.
At present, the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals possessed only one Mother Stone fragment, three supreme-grade Dao Transformation Stones, and sixteen upper-grade ones.
Li Fan had never expected that among the three targets he locked onto, any would hold a supreme-grade stone or a Mother Stone fragment.
An upper-grade Dao Transformation Stone was more than sufficient for his needs.
By continuously fusing and strengthening it across lifetimes, he would inevitably reach the realm of the Dao Transformation Mother Stone.
This upper-grade stone still retained Lu Chengxue's living memories.
Instead of wiping them immediately, Li Fan browsed through the scenes within.
"He actually obtained this Dao Transformation Stone when he was still a child. And it came from his father's legacy—effortless, like a windfall."
Lu Chengxue's father had laid down his life to save another cultivator, who later presented the Dao Transformation Stone as an expression of immense gratitude. At the time, Lu Chengxue was still young, and the benefactor, worried the stone would be seized by the Lu clan, had sought the boy out in secret.
Consequently, not a soul in the Lu family ever knew Lu Chengxue possessed a Dao Transformation Stone.
Armed with the stone, Lu Chengxue demonstrated astounding "talent," gradually earning grooming as a core disciple until his untimely demise at Li Fan's hands today.
On the whole, Lu Chengxue's life had been utterly mundane.
Aside from siring sixteen descendants in total, there was practically nothing worth noting.
After examining all the scenes, Li Fan shook his head slightly. "A mediocre, pathetic life. It wasn't even as thrilling as my mortal days in the Great Xuan."
"A complete waste of such a treasure."
With Li Fan's current vision, he naturally held nothing but disdain for such an existence.
Even so, he did not erase Lu Chengxue's memories, merely stowing them away in a corner.
Then he commenced the fusion with his own Dao Transformation Stone.
Rather than a union of equals, it was more an absorption and empowerment.
After all, the core remained the stone within Li Fan's sea of consciousness that had already attained Spirit Unity with Dao Transformation.
As the stone bearing Lu Chengxue's lifetime dissolved into a river of starlike radiance and poured steadily into Li Fan's sea of consciousness, a metamorphosis began to unfold within his own stone.
In an instant, heaven and earth seemed to expand, and everything in the world turned noticeably brighter.
Every minute detail of his past experiences—what he had noticed, what he had overlooked, big and small alike—replayed itself vividly in his mind.
Even information, cultivation methods, and documents he had merely glanced at in passing were unearthed from the dusty recesses of his memory and neatly categorized.
...
"A difference of a single word between upper-grade and mid-grade, yet worlds apart. I wonder what height the supreme-grade or even the Dao Transformation Mother Stone reaches."
Scenes of worlds ceaselessly rising and falling seemed to surface in Li Fan's eyes as he let out a quiet sigh.
He then tested the deducing of an Immortal-grade array using the Terminal Dissociation Disc.
With the aid of the upgraded Dao Transformation Stone, his capacity for handling data redundancy had improved dramatically.
No longer did he feel swamped by endless tangled threads or at a loss for where to begin, as he had during previous studies.
Now, confusion was gone; with a mere glance, a broad research direction formed immediately in his mind.
Li Fan also tested the Heaven-Measuring Ruler.
"The number of viewpoints I can monitor simultaneously has surged tenfold..."
Having obtained measurable results, Li Fan was thoroughly pleased with the harvest.
Chapter 1026