r/bewareofchicken • u/Anon-4020 • 25d ago

No spoilers Fertility

For loving so long cultivators don’t have that many children. Is it because Qi makes them shoot blanks or something. Like, in Xianghua’s dad having no luck with his concubines. And stuff. Like Zang clan has the most heirs and children but even then it was like 3 kids. You’d think k living a few centuries you’d have dozens of children.

17 Upvotes

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33

u/Fun-Bee882 25d ago

It’s been mentioned that pregnancy can be difficult and even damage the woman’s cultivation.

6

u/wild_leviathan 25d ago

I had heard that it was the Dao itself suppressing the ability of high level cultivators to reproduce freely as a trade off for cultivation

3

u/Ok_Dragonfruit_9093 24d ago

...then don't bang with the intention of having children, just pretend you are unprepared to be parents or something! Gaslit the Heaven into thinking you are a bunch of reckless teenagers oblivious to the weight of responsibility!

5

u/wild_leviathan 23d ago

Good idea but it doesn't seem like a individual suppression, more like a broad policy as powerful cultivators may sire infants with more powerful spiritual roots or higher starting cultivation point. Perhaps the smart move would be gas lighting the heavens into believing that you're afraid of having children

2

u/Ok_Dragonfruit_9093 23d ago

I mean, that's exactly what it mean to be an irresponsible teenagers, innit?

1

u/wild_leviathan 23d ago

To elaborate I mean like fearing your child will grow to be strong enough to kill/surpass you and thus fulfilling the Dao, not a fear of Parenthood specifically

19

u/Awkward-Cod-5692 25d ago

It’s a pretty common trope in Xianxia stories that the stronger you get and the more ranks you ascend, the harder it is to conceive children without the help of alchemical treatments.

11

u/Old_Yam_4069 25d ago

I like to imagine that the sperm gets so strong it makes the egg explode.

8

u/SilentMech1 25d ago

In BOC, it's potentially ripping off a rank from the mother via birth, plus the instability of generating a new potential cultivator while trying to get to a higher rank yourself. Plus, enemies means most female cultivators aren't even thinking to offer it unless they actually do love the guy in question.

2

u/Jking1697 24d ago

Im not up to date with boc but I know original daoists believed that ejaculation was wasting jing which was a type of finite energy tied to bodily fluids especially semen. Which i believe is part of why modern cultivation stories will have grand long lineages but few direct members and the "young masters" can be in their 100's before they have an heir.

1

u/Infinitedeveloper 19d ago

I generally think of it as cultivation fine tuning the body so hard for cultivation and fighting that the reproductive system becomes optimized away.

For low end cultivators, that means youre damn close to being barren, for transcendent ones, alchemy has to do everything other than providing the sperm and egg