Family Stealing System: your wife, mother, sister, all mine now!
Chapter 23: Growthing

Chapter 23: Growthing

From the living room came another burst of muffled laughter, followed by what sounded like a cushion hitting a wall. The sisters were still at it.

Kian opened his eyes, his expression calmer now.

Good.

Let them talk, let them tease each other about him, let the tangled mess of their feelings about their brother sort itself into something they could live with.

Kian sat up and reached for the gem stones under him, counting by feel.

’How long has it been? 3 minutes?’

[Qi Sparks +90. Current: 270/1000.]

Kian exhaled, and the stone in his palm crumbled to fine grey powder that drifted down between his fingers and scattered across the bedsheet like dead snow. He didn’t pause to brush it off.

For now, he gave them the name mid-quality spirit stones and high quality.

’A mid quality spirit stone takes about 7 minutes to absorb and gives me 30 sparks. A high-quality spirit stone gives me 90 sparks in 3 minutes. Incredible!’

Was this how really rich people cultivated?

Or were his stones an anomaly?

Kian did not know.

But compared to the normal spirit stones, this was a game changer.

His hand was already reaching for the next mid-quality gem as his thoughts churned.

Take them, then transform them into High Quality.

He didn’t let himself stop to marvel at it. The pile of mid-quality stones was still there, three hundred and fifty-six of them now that he’d used two for the test, and two for the earlier high quality stone.

He looked at the next two, thumbs pressing into their cool surfaces, and triggered Twin Heart again.

He reached for two more before the first had even stopped rolling.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

His Qi reserves dipped lower with each fusion, but since his cultivation had improved, it did not even affect him.

He kept going.

The pile of mid-grade stones shrank at his right hand; the pyramid of high-grade stones grew at his left, each one filled with that strange liquid, their collective energy making the air cooler.

He didn’t know how much time it took before he finished.

One hundred and seventy-eight high-grade spheres sat in a neat cluster. His desk looked like a dragon’s throat had coughed up a small fortune.

Kian wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a grey smear of stone-ash across his eyebrow, and let out a murky breath.

The cost had added up, he was tired, but the math made him want to laugh out loud.

One hundred and seventy-eight stones, each yielding ninety sparks in three minutes.

Even if he might not be able to absorb them all in one sitting without his meridians screaming at him, even if he lost a few to inefficiency or distraction, the number was still absurd.

In the end, he now had 178 high grade stones!

Without stopping, Kian grabbed two high grade stones and tried using Twin Hearts on them.

His eyes were wide and bloodshot as he failed to trigger the ability whatsoever.

"Ah, that’s the limit?"

But still, it was enough.

Just as he was immersed in thought, someone knocked on his door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"It’s me."

"Mia?"

"Can I come in?"

Mia stood outside the door, her face flushed. She had been trying to sleep in her own room, but she couldn’t fall asleep at all. Yesterday’s comforting sleep kept echoing in her head. And her promise to him, that was, of course, important.

Kian looked around and noticed that it was already well into the night.

Had he been working for that long?

Mia, huh?

He felt it a pity, but for now, he couldn’t be distracted.

He said: "Mia, sorry, but I am really deep into cultivating. Even if you come in, it would just become a hindrance to me right now."

"Oh... Then I will go back to my room."

"Keep the door of your room open."

A reply didn’t come for a while, then a suppressed voice said: "Yeah. Jia is also sleeping there, by the way."

He heard hurried footsteps of the girl running away.

Shaking his head, Kian closed his eyes and began cultivation.

Take one stone, absorb it.

Once finished, take the next stone, absorb it.

Repeat.

Time passed and his Qi Sparks kept increasing.

1 stone. 2 stone.

9 stones.

In between absorbing his tenth stone, a message from the system woke him up.

[Qi Sparks +827. Current: 1007/1000.]

’Ready to breakthrough?’

He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and gave the mental command, the one that felt like flexing a muscle he hadn’t known he had.

Break through.

The qi sparks in his body went white-hot, all thousand sparks igniting at once like a kicked campfire, and the pain was so sudden and so total that his spine snapped straight and his jaw locked and every tooth in his head sang with it.

The sparks didn’t just burn—they flickered, drawing inward toward a single point in the center of his lower abdomen that grew denser and brighter and hotter.

It moved through his entire body, opening meridians that had never existed before.

He felt his bones creak, felt something behind his eyes pop softly, felt his skin flush fever-hot and then ice-cold in a wave that left goosebumps running down his arms like tiny startled soldiers.

And then it was over.

The sparks settled into a steady pulse, thick as honey and twice as sweet, and the system panel flickered:

[Qi Building Stage 4 achieved.]

[Qi Sparks: 1007/10,000.]

Kian opened his eyes and the room was different.

Not visually—the lamp still burned low, the bed still glittered with high-grade stones, the ash from the spent ones still dusted his sheets—but every surface had a faint depth now.

The wood of the desk hummed faintly with tree-depth, slow and deep. The spirit stones on it were not just glowing—they were singing, each one a slightly different note depending on its purity, a chorus of cold blue sound that brushed against his eardrums like distant bells.

He turned his head and could feel the breath of the sisters in the living room without seeing them. It seems they hadn’t gone to sleep yet and were talking.

Mia’s heartbeat, steady and a little fast; Jia’s slower, sated, the edges of her Qi signature soft and untrained but distinctly there, a candle flame compared to his new bonfire.

He hadn’t known he would be able to sense them like this.

The cultivation manuals the previous owner had read all said Stage 4 was a qualitative leap, but reading about it and feeling the world unfold its hidden layers right in front of you were two very different things.

He flexed his fingers, watching the faint blue-white nimbus of Qi that clung to them before fading, and laughed under his breath. "Stage 4? This was what they made such a big deal of?"

Easy as fuck.

He licked his lips, readying himself to test the unique ability of stage 4 cultivators!