YM778.TV Chapter 88: Artificial i
The “Southern Voyage of the Wind Bird” recounts the experiences of a cultivator named ‘Yan Shu’ who traveled south riding a Spirit Beast, the Wind Bird.
It is essentially a travelogue.
Among others, it includes encounters with the Demon Sect which turned peril into safety, a chance meeting with a beautiful woman, and a wonderful night spent together.
Wang Ba was completely engrossed in the story.
However, Yan Shu mentioned in the book that he once stayed in a place called ‘Wu State1, where he was welcomed by a local Beast Control Sect and had the good fortune to witness the Sect’s massive process of breeding poultry and birds.
Since Yan Shu also raised Spirit Beasts, he took special note and secretly recorded the methods the other party used to breed poultry.
This is what is referred to as the ‘Yuanyang Reversing’.
Wang Ba immediately took interest and straightened up to continue reading.
After all, Precious Chickens was also considered a Spirit poultry, it may come in handy.
After reading it, Wang Ba was left dumbfounded.
Isn’t this just artificial insemination for hens?
The key point is, he’s tried this method before!
When he was young in his previous life, he’d seen adults artificially inseminating hens, and the operation turned out to be quite simple.
The process was easy, and if practiced, could be done in the blink of an eye.
Later, he found the answer in a book from the collection of the Cultivator surnamed Shi.
It turns out that the body structure of Precious Chickens and many Spirit poultry is very unique.
“Strange, how does this Beast Control Sect do it?”
Curious, Wang Ba continued reading.
Surprisingly, he found that Yan Shu had also recorded a set of mana route operations and peculiar techniques.
“Could this be the ‘Yuanyang Reversing’?”
Wang Ba swiftly memorized the set of mana circulation route in his heart, he couldn’t help but dash out of his cabin, around to the back, and tried it on a mature male Spirit Chicken.
However, much to Wang Ba’s disappointment, the male Spirit Chicken simply wiggled its bottom, showing no reaction to the technique, and just looked at him curiously.
It was as if it was saying, “what the heck are you doing?”
He carelessly tossed the male Spirit Chicken back into the coop.
Wang Ba couldn’t help but frown:
“It doesn’t make sense, they’re all poultry, even if it isn’t specifically for Spirit Chickens, there should at least be some reaction, right?”
He squat down under the moonlight, stroking his chin in thought.
Feeling a bit hard-hearted, he grabbed another mature male Precious Chicken, channeled his magic in a special route into the body of the male Precious Chicken, and gently massaged its abdomen with his other hand.
But then, Wang Ba’s eyes widened.
Straight away, a wave of surprise surged into his heart.
This Yuanyang Reversing technique actually worked!
With no thought of sleep, he immediately fetched several male Precious Chickens and male Spirit Chickens, and tried the technique on each of them.
He found that the ‘Yuanyang Reversing’ was effective on Precious Chicken, but not so much on Spirit Chickens.
But for Wang Ba, he was more than satisfied.
Immediately, he channeled the collected Yuanyang from the male Precious Chicken into the reproductive system of the female Precious Chickens and Spirit Chickens.
He even released Jia 7, and while it was off-guard, he pried it open and channeled a male Precious Chicken’s Yuanyang into it.
Jia 7 swung its tail in annoyance.
‘Cluck!1
Wang Ba didn’t pay much mind, his heart filled with joy from finally solving the problem of breeding Precious Chickens.
He worked through the night and successfully imbued the Yuanyang from the male Precious Chickens into almost all of the mature hens.
But he was pretty worn out by it.
Mainly, his mana was too little, limiting his speed.
It was almost dawn when he returned to his wooden bed for some sleep.
The next day, he fed all the Precious Chickens and Spirit Chickens extra meals.
Especially the select few male Precious Chickens.
He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he faintly felt that these preciously nurtured male Precious Chickens seemed to have become thinner and more haggard.
Even their feathers seemed subdued.
“It must be my imagination,” he thought.
However, it wasn’t until the evening that he was pleasantly surprised to find that some of the female Precious Chickens had laid eggs!
He spent quite some time checking all the chicken coops and found a total of 260 eggs.
Among them, there were 245 Precious Chicken eggs and 15 Spirit Chicken eggs.
Among the Precious Chicken eggs, 96 were fertilized, but there were no fertilized Spirit Chicken eggs.
“The ratio of fertilized Precious Chicken eggs is approximately 40%.”
“There are no Spirit Chicken eggs, which could be due to too small a sample size.”
Wang Ba recorded this on the paper he had bought.
He didn’t try to inseminate these female Precious Chickens again.
The next day, he collected 290 eggs, of which 269 were Precious Chicken eggs and 107 were fertilized Precious Chicken eggs, but again there were no Spirit Chicken eggs.
The fertilization rate remained close to 40 percent.
The third day, the fourth day…
By the fifth day, the fertilization rate had suddenly dropped to just below 10%.
And by the sixth day, there were practically no viable Precious Chicken eggs left.
“So, apparently, the use of Yuanyang Reversing technique can last about five days each time.”
“It seems that even a Precious male chicken cannot lead the female Spirit Chicken to lay hatching eggs.”
In the following days, Wang Ba tried a few more times.
When the stockpiled fertilized eggs reached over 3,000, he dared not use the Yuanyang Reversing technique anymore.
The reason is simple, too many fertilized eggs, and the hens can’t incubate them all.
He only has about two hundred age-appropriate hens.
Although, in theory, a hen could incubate dozens of eggs at once, for the sake of long-term consideration, he chose to stop.
Nevertheless, seeing a group of hens silently lining up to incubate, he found himself feeling an unprecedented sense of satisfaction.
All these are added to his lifespan!
Along with the start of the hens incubating for about twenty days, the heap of chicken feed visibly dwindled.
A few days before hatching, Wang Ba started to worry.
Because on one hand, the chicken feed is running out, on the other hand, there will soon be over three thousand more beaks to feed.
“Breeding too many can be troublesome!”
“If I can’t solve the chicken feed problem, I better take it easy.”
Wang Ba felt somewhat helpless.
Surprisingly, perhaps owing to the recent warming weather, the Yellow Throat Spirit Turtles in the pool started laying eggs as well.
While he was cleaning chicken droppings by the pool, he inadvertently noticed traces of the soil by the pool having been dug up. He immediately dug it up curiously and found over forty white oval turtle eggs quietly lying in the moist sand.
He dared not touch them. According to “Everything About Poultry,” if turtles lay eggs, the eggs must not be jiggled or flipped for a while. They should keep the same orientation as they were laid.
If not, the eggs may scatter, leading to death in the shell, etc.
This is different from Precious Chickens. Their eggs need to be constantly flipped by the hens to maintain a uniform temperature.
Wang Ba carefully reburied these turtle eggs, marked the area to prevent accidental stepping.
Besides feeding chickens and cleaning up, he now had one more thing to do.
That is to eagerly wait for the arrival of Yu Changchun.
“I asked around my fellow disciples, and luckily, one of them in the Spiritnurturing Dao was willing to trade some discarded Spirit Insects and a considerable amount of Spirit Valley Bran.”
A few days later, just before they ran out of chicken feed, Yu Changchun eventually arrived.
He not only brought them another mound of chicken feed.
But also offered Wang Ba a choice:
“However…”
“He has a condition. He needs ten Spirit Chickens from us every month. Then he’ll figure out a way to get us chicken feed. If you think that’s troublesome, I can figure out another way…”
Ten Spirit Chickens, even if they are all males, are worth nearly twenty Spirit Stones at the recycling price.
Trading discarded Spirit Insects and Spirit Valley Bran for twenty Spirit Stones, this is absolute profit no matter how you calculate it.
Wang Ba frowned slightly, not because he was reluctant, but he was concerned about the reliability of the chicken feed supply.
“Elder Yu, can your fellow disciple continuously supply us with chicken feed? And how much can he supply every day?”
Hearing this, Yu Changchun confidently said:
“Don’t worry, I have confirmed with him. He owns nearly one hundred acres of spirit field in another station of our academy, which specialize in Spirit Rice. The Spirit Valley Bran he has stored up are more than enough to supply us with sixty to seventy thousand catties per month. As for the discarded Spirit Insects, it can also account for a thousand catties or so every month.”
“Sixty to seventy thousand catties per month?”
Wang Ba calculated quickly in his heart, Spirit Valley Bran is the main ingredient of chicken feed, the lack of other ingredients isn’t too harmful, it will only slow down the growth speed.
The daily food consumption of a Precious Chicken is about half a catty, and when a Precious Chicken is evolving into a Spirit Chicken, it can easily eat around ten to fifteen catties a day.
After becoming a Spirit Chicken, although the consumption decreases, it still needs around one or two catties a day.
Which means that the feed he provided could support about 4,000 chickens, even if they were all Precious Chickens.
However, if the numbers include Spirit Chickens or the molting Precious Chickens, that number could decrease significantly.
With this in mind, a distressed look spread across Wang Ba’s face:
“That….ten Spirit Chickens a month… that’s difficult!”
“Elder Yu, isn’t there any other way?”
Seeing this, Yu Changchun nodded in understanding.
It seems that supplying 20 Spirit Chickens in a month is his limit, so there is no need to push him any further.
Thinking of this, a smile appeared on Yu Changchun’s face:
“Haha, I was just joking with you. I’ve already negotiated with him. You only need to supply five Spirit Chickens a month. I reduced the amount by half. Is that okay with you?”
Wang Ba’s face looked somewhat astonished and distressed, he gritted his teeth and said:
“How about three? Five is too much!”
Well, it seems he really hit his limit.
Yu Changchun couldn’t help but congratulate himself on his wise scheme. After a moment of deliberate hesitation, he reluctantly nodded in agreement.
While nodding, he inwardly rejoiced.
He can profit three more Spirit Chickens every month!
Wang Ba also sighed inwardly:
“Old Yu is such an honest man!”
Both men, with their secret thoughts, beamed at each other.
But Yu Changchun brought another piece of bad news for Wang Ba.
The Tianmen Cult is about to issue tasks to Wang Ba and other Heresy Cultivators.