Sea Cultivation: Giant Ships and Heavy Artillery Knock on the Door to All Races

Chapter 34: Reproductive Isolation, Two New Ships (4.5 in k)

(I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive, so I'm combining two chapters into one today, so that the chapter number is still an even number, but the word count is still enough.)
"What are you talking about, you damn kid?"

Lin's mother had exchanged for a breakthrough pill at cost price before, but her five spiritual roots had poor talent and a big bottleneck. As a casual cultivator, her foundation was too superficial, so she failed to break through.

Although the family had some spare money later, it was all intended to be used to help her younger brother Lin Limao and son Lin Qianfan build their foundation at a critical moment. She had long given up the idea of advancing to the middle stage of Qi Refining.

"It's already bought, so just take it. It's all the child's love. A hundred or so spirit stones won't affect the foundation building process."

Although Mr. Lin is usually controlled by Mrs. Lin, he has more ideas at critical moments.

"cocoa…"

"My son has really made it!"

Lin's mother was not a pedantic person and she figured it out quickly.

This thing has already been bought, and selling it will hurt her son's feelings. She has been in the third level of Qi Refining for many years and is very confident of breaking through. After the middle stage of Qi Refining, her treatment and status in the plantation will increase, so it is not a loss in the long run.

She just felt sorry for her son who had spent nearly half of the spirit stones he had earned by risking his life at sea. It was like cutting his mother's flesh.

"Don't spend money so quietly in the future. You will have many more places to spend money in the future."

"I understand. I promise I won't do it again! I have a piece of Ziyang Warm Jade here. You can use it to warm yourself."

Mother Lin has been married for forty years and has only had a stable life. She has not enjoyed much happiness. Lin Qianfan also remembers how busy she has been for the family over the years. Fortunately, the desire to be filial to her parents is still there.

As parents, we are naturally proud of our promising and filial son. However, Father Lin felt a little jealous when he saw that Lin Qianfan did not take any follow-up action. So he prepared two gifts for your mother but there was no share for me?

"Dad, what's with that expression on your face? How could I possibly let you down? Here, this piece of Ziyang Warm Jade is for you. Soaking in seawater all year round is bad for your health. You don't want to die early, do you?"

"What about you, little bastard?"

"Of course I do!"

...

There is an island named Taohua to the west of Yanglong Bay.

This Peach Blossom Island is very close to the main island of Yanglong Bay and has a second-level spiritual vein on it, so the Lin family did not rent it out or sell it. Instead, it was used as the Lin family’s own forest farm and orchard, where various spiritual trees and spiritual fruit trees were planted. It is one of the family’s very important resource-producing industries.

In addition, Taohua Island is one of the main islands used by the Lin family to accommodate mortals.

There are 20,000 to 30,000 mortals living on the island, most of whom have the surname Lin. The rest have had close ties with the Lin family for generations and are all tacitly acknowledged as the source of the Lin family's immortal descendants.

In the center of the island, in Taohua Town, the peach blossoms are in full bloom.

Today, the annual spirit-testing ceremony begins.

"Master, I have brought all the children aged eight and nine from Peach Blossom Island. Please give me your instructions."

It was very awkward to see a hunchbacked old mayor with completely white hair and beard being so respectful to the young Lin Qianfan.

"No need to be polite! Then let's start the spirit test."

Generally, a healthy child can be tested to see if he or she has spiritual roots at the age of eight, but it is not ruled out that there may be omissions or developmental delays due to various reasons, so the test can be repeated in the second year.

Is it possible that it was missed twice?

Of course, this possibility cannot be ruled out!
However, the path of cultivating immortals also requires luck and coincidence. Those who miss it every time are not destined to succeed. It is his/her blessing to be a mortal for the rest of his/her life.

"quiet!"

Lin Qianfan's voice, imbued with spiritual power, was majestic and powerful. When it reached the ears of mortal children, it sounded like divine power, and immediately silenced the chattering little kids.

They may not quite understand what a cultivator is, nor do they know who this young big brother is, but they all understand what it means to be untouchable. In their eyes, Lin Qianfan, who is dressed in a spotless light blue robe and is extraordinary, is the standard of someone who cannot be messed with.

Because there is no one with this kind of aura on the island, not to mention the old mayor who keeps nodding and bowing to Lin Qianfan.

"Everyone line up and come up one by one to touch this spirit-testing plate. No noise, no argument!"

Soon, about 400 little kids lined up one by one to have their spiritual roots checked.

Children who come to have their spirits read for the first time only know that today is important. After all, their parents burned incense and kowtowed before taking them out. But those who came once last year are very nervous. They have already vaguely understood that this is the most important opportunity in their lives to change their destiny.

If you have spiritual roots, you will become a high and mighty immortal cultivator, rising high and high, and your blessings will spread to generations. If you don't have spiritual roots, you will continue to farm and cut wood on Peach Blossom Island, and your descendants will continue to be endless for generations to come!

"No spiritual roots, next one!"

The old mayor, who was already very old, was in good spirits, with sharp eyes and a voice that kept moving without any signs of fatigue, but every time he recited this sentence, it hurt a child's heart.

Finally, when there were nearly a hundred people, a child finally made the spirit-telling plate light up, which made the old mayor breathe a sigh of relief and completely dispelled the possibility that the children thought the spirit-telling plate was broken.

"I have spiritual roots! Immortal Master..."

The old mayor was a little excited, and there were many reasons for his excitement.

"Well, continue testing."

The child with spiritual roots was dressed in brocade clothes. He was white, plump, and had a chubby face. Except for not daring to look directly at Lin Qianfan, he was quite arrogant. It seemed that having spiritual roots was something expected and natural for him.

Outside the venue, a couple wearing brocade and jade hugged each other excitedly. The child they gave birth to had spiritual roots, and his parents benefited greatly.

"Next…"

This kind of open-air spiritual testing only tests whether there are spiritual roots, but not the specific conditions of the spiritual roots, so as to avoid encountering natural spiritual roots and leaking the news.

An hour later.

All four hundred or so children were examined, and only two of them had spiritual roots, and both of them were eight years old.

Apart from the young man in brocade clothes, the other child was dressed in clean but coarse linen. He was small in stature and his words and actions were very respectful and even a little awkward. It was obvious that he came from an ordinary family.

The child in hemp clothes was a little surprised after being chosen. He wanted to get close to the young man in brocade clothes but the young man deliberately avoided him.

"Not bad, this year the ratio is close to one in a hundred."

Afterwards, Lin Qianfan rewarded some of the mortals on the island as usual. These rewards were not valuable to the cultivators, but they could obviously improve the lives of mortals.

According to historical statistics, this ratio often falls short of even one in a hundred. It's even possible that one year, the entire island failed to find any spiritual roots. The probability of a mortal and their children possessing spiritual roots is low. This is only possible with the Lin family's mortals, who are blessed with favorable weather. In places with harsher natural conditions, this ratio is far lower, and it might take thousands of mortals to find just one spiritual root.

However, due to the limited area, even if the conditions provided by the Lin family are good, it is still difficult to significantly increase the mortal population.

Therefore, the Lin family does not rely entirely on the spiritual roots of mortals. These mortals are gradually developed from the bloodline descendants left by generations of cultivators, and are now approaching the peak density, unless the Lin family obtains a larger and better habitat.

A more stable source of spiritual root cultivators for the Lin family is the direct descendants of the cultivators, such as Lin Qianfan and Lin Qianbao.

The probability of a child born from a Qi-refining cultivator and a mortal containing spiritual roots is much higher than that of a mortal and another mortal, but there are not many cultivators willing to marry mortals, and even those who take concubines are not many. After all, there is a difference between immortals and mortals, and it is not easy to get pregnant.

The probability of monks and their children having spiritual roots is much higher, and there may be one with spiritual roots among several children.

There is no average for this data, because the higher the realm of the parents, the greater the probability that the child will have spiritual roots. It is even difficult for high-level cultivators to give birth to children without spiritual roots. After all, the essence of life is different.

However, there are also various limitations. For example, the realm gap between the man and the woman cannot be too big, otherwise fertilization and implantation will not be possible. The higher the realm, the more likely it is that only monks of the same realm can conceive normally.

After all, Foundation Establishment cultivators and Nascent Soul cultivators are creatures from two completely different dimensions. Even if higher-dimensional creatures can briefly mate with lower-dimensional creatures, there is still terrible reproductive isolation.

Perhaps it is not ruled out that there are some magical spiritual objects that can eliminate this reproductive isolation, but there must be a price, and this price will not be low.

It is difficult for high-level monks to find suitable Taoist partners of the same realm, so high-level monks often have very few children. The main source of monks in the Storm Ocean is still the children born to Qi Refining monks.

Yanglongwan General Affairs Hall.

Lin Qianfan and several other people who were responsible for running errands and testing spirits brought back a total of six children of mortal origin. In addition to them, there were six direct descendants of cultivators on the main island of Yanglong Bay.

"Next!"

The twelve of them conducted further spiritual testing here to detect their specific spiritual roots and whether they had any special spiritual bodies.

This process is kept absolutely confidential and is personally presided over by the family's general affairs elder. The specific details of the children's spiritual root testing are often only known to the elder and the children themselves.

This can avoid disasters caused by the leakage of confidentiality when a family has a natural spiritual root or some extremely special spirit.

Although the family has not encountered a natural spiritual root in the past two thousand years, we must be on guard and the procedure must be followed.

A quarter of an hour later, the twelve people completed the spirit test one after another.

There were no children with two or three spiritual roots, three with four spiritual roots, and nine with five spiritual roots. The two children Lin Qianfan brought back both had five spiritual roots.

Among them, the child in sackcloth clothes had lost some of his cowardice and was somewhat happy when he realized that he had escaped his original fate.

The young man in brocade clothes was at a loss. Although he had become an immortal cultivator, he was the one with the worst qualifications. His future fate would be exactly the same as that of the child in sackcloth clothes beside him. This made him, who had lived a life of luxury since childhood, very unwilling.

So sometimes having high expectations is not necessarily a good thing. Being ignorant and fearless can actually help you avoid a lot of troubles.

Next, they will accept new generational rankings, change their names, recognize their ancestors, be trained and taught by the clan school, and receive systematic education in immortal cultivation knowledge. They can only have a brief reunion with their families during the storm season and winter break every year.

"Qianfan, this is your contribution value."

"Thank you, Fourth Elder!"

The fourth elder is the family's general affairs elder and criminal law elder, in charge of many matters, and is roughly equivalent to the patriarch of other small clans.

"You don't have to do this. You deserve it."

The work of spirit testing is very easy, but the contribution points given are quite a lot. I can get ten contribution points in less than a day of running errands, which is equivalent to the work of an ordinary tribesman for half a month.

But not everyone can take on this kind of task.

Lin Qianfan's performance in the past six months has been very outstanding. He has been developing towards the direction of building a foundation seed. That is why he has been noticed by the top management of the family and has been chosen to go to the bottom level to gain insights and accumulate experience.

Although Lin Qianfan had extra memories, he was not made indifferent by those memories. Instead, he cherished the present more, especially after seeing an environment that was much more difficult than that of his family's "Five Spiritual Roots for Generations", he cherished the current conditions even more.

A few days later,
After calming down for a while, Lin Qianfan received a notice to go out to sea.

Dock area.

A medium-sized monster hunting ship converted from a medium-sized pirate ship stood tall. Its outer armor had been completely replaced, the original black paint had turned into light blue, and it was equipped with a large number of fishing and hunting tools.

"Wow! This is so impressive! I won't be laughed at by the people of Yulong Fairy City anymore. Hahahaha~"

Myna had heard Lin Qianfan reveal the data of the new ship before, but he was still overjoyed after seeing it with his own eyes. This new ship was exactly what he had imagined in his mind.

The New Sea Hunter was a major modification of the original pirate ship while retaining the two main materials: the power core and the keel. A large amount of manpower and material resources were consumed during the process, and even a second-level formation master was invited to help.

The end result is a beautiful, almost new boat.

The Xinhai Hunter's formations had all been upgraded to mid-level 2nd-grade. The defensive formations had a higher shattering threshold, the detection formations had a wider detection range, and the psychic cannons had a stronger attack capability. Even if they encountered a mid-level 2nd-grade demonic beast, they would be able to retreat safely.

The new ship has a psychic cannon installed at the bow and stern. The damage of a single shot from this psychic cannon is limited and not as good as a full-strength attack from a cultivator of the same level, but the ballistic speed is extremely fast, and even a Qi-refining cultivator without divine consciousness can have a good hit rate when operating it.

The old ship only had one psychic cannon at the bow, so it had a lot of blind spots for shooting and lacked attack capability; the new ship had a psychic cannon at the bow and stern, which largely solved this problem.

In addition, a high-lethality second-level monster-hunting fork is also installed on the front and back. This weapon is more used to deal with large sea beasts. Once it hits, the opponent can be "fished" by the chain. It is a more powerful weapon than the psychic cannon.

The old ship has limited power core power and limited hull volume, resulting in limited carrying capacity, so its main method of marine operation is trawling; now the new ship is equipped with a large purse seine on this basis. This purse seine can be used in conjunction with another monster hunting ship to carry out purse seine operations, and can easily deal with large schools of fish.

Toot~
A continuous whistle sounded, and a brand new monster-hunting ship emerged from the dock area.

This monster-hunting ship is naturally not the Third Master’s Hunter. The Hunter was not seriously damaged in the last naval battle and has already set sail again.

"Qianfan, what is this ship?!"

The starling, who was happily observing the new ship, was surprised.

"Could it be..."

"That's right. Under Third Master's persuasion, Eighth Master has also decided to go it alone. From now on, Eighth Master is the new captain of the Dolphin."

This small monster-hunting ship is not the original Sea Hunter, but a small pirate ship refurbished with some materials discarded from medium-sized pirate ships. Its condition is better than the old Sea Hunter and can be considered a half-new ship.

"So who's the second-in-command of the Hunter now? A ship like that, specializing in hunting second-tier monsters, couldn't do without a second-in-command. Could it be a recruited freelance cultivator?"

(End of this chapter)