Lin Yunyi was inspecting the chicken farm when Lin Yunxiao came running over excitedly.
Lin Yunyi asked, “What's the rush?”
Lin Yunxiao said, “Third Brother, Father's back!”
Lin Yunyi replied, “Finally!”
Lin Yunxiao said, “Father hunted a green wolf at the sixth level of Qi Refining and brought it home.”
Lin Yunyi asked, “He wasn't hurt, was he?”
He felt a little worried. The family's income was limited, and the ancestor seldom acted because of his hidden injuries.
Their father occasionally went hunting in the nearby forests to supplement their cultivation resources, but hunting was extremely dangerous.
Lin Yunxiao shook his head. “No. Father's amazing. He's at the seventh level of Qi Refining, after all.”
Lin Yunyi replied, “True. Father's fighting strength isn't bad. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to rescue a beauty like a hero and trick Mother into coming home with him.”
He sighed inwardly. Hunting demonic beasts earned spirit stones faster than chicken farming, but the higher the potential reward, the greater the danger.
A green wolf at the sixth level of Qi Refining ought to be worth around three hundred spirit stones.
After thinking for a moment, Lin Yunyi asked, “Do you know where they're processing the wolf's carcass?”
Lin Yunxiao answered, “On the back mountain.”
Lin Yunyi said, “All right. Let's go.”
Lin Yunxiao asked, “Where?”
Lin Yunyi replied, “The back mountain. Bring a wooden worm-breeding box.”
Lin Yunyi had been considering how to improve the feed for his earthworms so they would grow into better-quality spiritual worms, but he hadn't had suitable materials.
The brothers went to the back mountain, dug up the wolf demon's discarded organs along with the soil, chopped and scattered them, mixed in dead leaves and wood shavings, and placed the mixture inside a breeding box. They planned to check the results a few days later.
…
That evening.
The entire Lin family gathered around the table, eating stewed wolf meat and chatting about everyday matters.
Lin Yunyi refined the energy in the meat as he ate.
The wolf meat was extremely rich in vital blood energy. After swallowing a piece, he felt as though a flame were burning inside his chest.
Spiritual chicken meat also left his body pleasantly warm, but its effects were nowhere near as powerful.
Lin Yunxiao shook his head disapprovingly. “This wolf meat doesn't taste as good as chicken. It's a bit dry and gamey, and it even smells bad.”
Lin Yuanqiao gave him an irritated look. “Be grateful you've got meat to eat.”
He was speechless. This was spiritual wolf meat, yet Little Fourth had the nerve to complain about it.
Lin Yunyi glanced at Lin Yunwen. Eldest Brother seemed to have reached a bottleneck and was on the verge of advancing to the fourth level of Qi Refining. Father had probably gone hunting to provide him with additional nourishment.
The family's spiritual chickens were nourishing too, but they were relatively low-grade. They were useful for steadily nurturing spiritual energy, but weren't especially effective for breaking through bottlenecks.
Lin Yunxiao ate several pieces of wolf meat in quick succession, and half the platter vanished in an instant.
Lin Yuanqiao stared at his fourth son, at a loss for words. For someone who claimed the meat didn't taste good, the boy certainly wasn't eating any less.
Lin Yuanqiao said, “Little Fourth, don't eat so much. Be careful you don't get burning indigestion.”
He wasn't reluctant to let his son eat the meat; he was simply worried the boy wouldn't be able to digest it.
Lin Yunxiao waved the concern away. “That won't happen.”
Seeing his attitude, Lin Yuanqiao didn't press the matter.
As the saying went, hard work could bear fruit all at once. Ever since Little Fourth switched to a fire-element technique, his cultivation had advanced rapidly. Only a few months had passed, yet his spiritual energy had already grown considerably, and he seemed close to breaking through to the second level of Qi Refining.
Lin Yunyi glanced at Lin Yunxiao. Fourth Brother had progressed with startling speed lately. If he kept it up, he might overtake Lin Yunyi before long.
Before he succeeded in drawing spiritual energy into his body, Fourth Brother had been doing quite well with body cultivation.
His strong physique had laid a firm foundation for cultivating spiritual energy.
Even after succeeding, Fourth Brother hadn't neglected his physical training, and his small frame was growing sturdier by the day.
Growing boys could eat their fathers out of house and home.
Lin Yuanqiao and Shen Qingtang had barely touched their chopsticks before their three sons finished all the wolf meat.
Looking at his three boys, Lin Yuanqiao felt both gratified and troubled.
…
Life continued much as before. Although Lin Yunyi worried that the family might follow the fate laid out in the novel, all he could do for now was cultivate diligently and improve his strength as much as possible.
“Third Brother! Third Brother! The chickens in the enclosure are fighting!” Lin Yunxiao shouted as he burst through the door.
Lin Yunyi replied carelessly, “Then let them fight. It's normal for so many chickens to squabble. They fight all the time.”
Lin Yunxiao said, “Is that all right? They're fighting especially fiercely this time. If we leave them alone, some of the unlucky ones might be killed.”
Lin Yunyi was busy cultivating and didn't pay much attention. “That's fine too. If they kill each other, we can add the dead ones to the menu.”
Lin Yunxiao perked up immediately. “Really? Excellent! I'll go see if any have already kicked the bucket.”
Lin Yunyi glanced at him, suspecting that Fourth Brother had been fishing for exactly that answer from the beginning.
Then a thought struck him, and he straightened up. “Wait. Which chickens are you talking about?”
Lin Yunxiao scratched his head. “The ones you told us to watch especially closely.”
Lin Yunyi said, “Those ones? So they've started fighting after all.”
Seeing his reaction, Lin Yunxiao sensed that the chicken meat he'd almost had was slipping away. He sounded crestfallen. “Third Brother, did you know they'd end up fighting to the death?”
Lin Yunyi replied, “I had my suspicions.”
The wolf meat their father brought home had contained enormous amounts of blood energy. For several days after eating it, Lin Yunyi had felt his blood surging and had been overcome by the urge to fight someone.
Lin Yunxiao nodded. “These chickens aren't just fighting fiercely. They're also laying eggs more often, and their eggs are better quality than before.”
Lin Yunyi had recently raised a batch of spiritual earthworms using the wolf's blood and organs, then fed those worms to some chickens.
Because the worms were of higher quality, he had worried that something might go wrong and selected a few especially gentle spiritual chickens as test subjects.
Unexpectedly, even those normally placid birds had developed a taste for fighting after eating the special worms.
Lin Yunyi stood up. “I'll go have a look.”
Lin Yunxiao replied, “All right.”
The spiritual chickens were fighting furiously. Brightly colored feathers flew in every direction, and each bird seemed more ferocious than the last.
Lin Yunyi summoned the chicken-farming team to separate them.
Several team members had been eagerly awaiting an extra meal, so they were deeply disappointed to hear his orders.
Disappointed or not, the team followed Lin Yunyi's instructions and separated the chickens.
Thanks to the nourishment provided by spiritual chicken meat and eggs, the team's strength had grown steadily.
In the beginning, they had needed outside help to catch chickens. Now they no longer did. The team was full of capable youngsters, including plenty of skilled chicken catchers.
After observing the birds, Lin Yunyi discovered that feeding them the special worms made them extremely irritable. Switching back to ordinary worms quickly calmed them down.
The special worms were more nutritious, and regularly feeding them to spiritual chickens could produce stronger, healthier birds.
The difficulty was that, although the chickens grew stronger, they also became much more troublesome.
Even so, the advantages clearly outweighed that drawback.
Lin Yunyi said, “Spiritual earthworms raised on demonic-beast organs seem much more nourishing. Perhaps we could collect discarded organs from spiritual beasts and use them to breed more worms.”
Lin Yunxiao replied, “Demonic-beast organs probably aren't worth much. I'll ask Dad!”
Lin Yunyi nodded. “Good!”
Following Lin Yunyi's suggestion, the clan quickly sent cultivators into nearby areas to buy up discarded demonic-beast organs.
The organs had little other use, so the family acquired a large batch for very few spirit stones.
The earthworms raised on them were much higher quality than before. Thanks to those worms, the spiritual chickens' egg production increased substantially.
The Lin family's chicken-farming venture continued to flourish, and both the birds and their eggs sold quite well.
