Lin Fan's eyes had fallen onto the corpses of the Inferno Swan that were on the ground.
Most of these Inferno Swan corpses were in good shape, but there were two that had bite marks and holes in them. It was almost as if something had dug through them with their teeth.
As for what was missing from the Inferno Swan, it was naturally the beast core.
The beast core was the most important part of spirit beasts, it was where they stored their spiritual energy and allowed them to cultivate. It was their equivalent of a human dantian.
However, different from the human dantian, when beasts died, their beast core remained intact and could be taken out of them with all the spiritual energy that they gathered.
This beast core could be used for making artifacts or even helping with human cultivation since humans could absorb the spiritual energy gathered inside the beast core. The beast cores of beasts with higher cultivation levels even had enough spiritual energy to help lower grade cultivators break through right away.
Of course, this wasn't all that beast cores could do.
Beast cores naturally also helped other beasts since they were basically like pills that were filled with spiritual energy. Even animals that weren't spirit beasts would be able to start cultivating as long as they had the chance to absorb the beast cores of spirit beasts.
So the two missing cores had clearly been absorbed by the horse which had allowed it to evolve into a spirit beast.
Unlike humans that needed to prepare to absorb the spiritual energy in beast cores because of how wild that spiritual energy was, spirit beasts and animals could easily absorb the spiritual energy since they were beasts just like the ones that cores came from.
After seeing that Lin Fan had seen the two mangled corpses, the Gehenna Horse revealed a guilty look as it looked down.
Lin Fan saw this and revealed a faint smile as he came forward to pat the Gehenna Horse's head while saying, "It's fine. It's good that you could evolve."
The Gehenna Horse gave a happy whinny before licking Lin Fan's face again.
During this time though, Lin Fan also looked at the Snow Rabbit who wasn't far away who didn't look right at him.
He had already guessed that this was the Snow Rabbit's idea since the horse wouldn't have been brave enough to take these beast cores for itself.
Still, he didn't mind it since the horse evolving into the Gehenna Horse meant that he now had another pet that could fight with him when he needed it. That would certainly be helpful if he was ever in a dangerous situation.
Not to mention that since the horse had evolved into the Gehenna Horse, it was certain that it would run much faster compared to before. The horse had been Lin Fan's main form of transportation and if it could run even faster, that was good news for him.
After going over to the Snow Rabbit to pet it on its back to show that everything was fine, Lin Fan thought about it and went to pull out another beast core from the Inferno Swans to give to the female White Wolf.
She was the only one that hadn't received a beast core and the only one that hadn't broken through yet. If she did break through, it would definitely be good for Lin Fan in the long run, so he wouldn't be stingy with these beast cores. After all, the beast cores from the Inferno Swan weren't needed for his mission and even if he sold them, they wouldn't bring him as much benefits as using the beast cores to help the female White Wolf break through would in the long run.
So he decided to use the beast cores on the female White Wolf.
But before he could even do anything, there was a sudden cry from the female White Wolf.
All of them immediately turned in the direction of the female White Wolf and saw that she was crumpled in a ball on the floor with her face contorted in pain. There was a liquid that covered the floor where her bottom was.
Everyone was stunned, but Lin Fan was the first one to react in the end as he said, "She's going into labour!"
These words shook everyone out of their daze and they immediately went over to the female White Wolf, crowding around her. However, all this crowding just made her even more uncomfortable.
This time, it was Xiao Yue who reacted first.
She immediately saw the discomfort on the female White Wolf's face and drove everyone else away from her, other than the Snow Rabbit who she had create some ice that she also melted with the heat from the Gehenna Horse's flames. After that, she had the Gehenna Horse boil the water with its flames.
Once the water was boiled, she split it into two different portions.
One portion she let stay as boiling water and the other portion she had the Snow Rabbit cool down to room temperature.
She was from a farming village, so she had experience with animal births.
In situations like this, it was important to sterilize the area with hot water to give the animal a clean space to give birth to. At the same time, they should let the animal do its thing and just provide it with water and such to ensure it had the energy to go through with the birth.
So after preparing everything, Xiao Yue put a blanket down on the ground and then helped the female White Wolf to lie down on the blanket. After that, she turned and drove Lin Fan and the male White Wolf who were worried away so that the female White Wolf could have the space that she needed.
The female White Wolf gave Xiao Yue a look of gratitude before turning her attention back to her pregnancy.
The process was very slow, taking over an hour, but by the end of it, there were two furry little balls that fell onto the blanket.
As soon as they came out, Xiao Yue came forward without another blanket to help clean the birthing fluid off the two of them before bringing them over to the female White Wolf.
After bringing them over, the first thing that the female White Wolf did was help groom the two cubs with her tongue as they responded in turn, sticking out their tongues to reach out towards her.
By the end of it, the two cubs fell asleep there in her embrace, while at the same time, the female White Wolf also fell asleep.
Lin Fan had been monitoring the female White Wolf's status window the entire time to make sure that she wasn't in danger. While her HP had dropped a bit during the birthing process, it had never reached the point where she had been in danger.
After all, there was a natural regenerative power that was found inside of this Pet Storage Space, which had helped the White Wolf regenerate HP during the birthing process. This was the reason why the birth had gone so smoothly.
While everyone was gathered around the female White Wolf and the two little cubs, Lin Fan had been staring at the system's interface. After the two cubs had been born, there had been two more entries that had been added into the list of pets that he had tamed.
Both of them were White Wolf cubs, so it was clear that they were the two cubs that the female White Wolf had just given birth to, but Lin Fan never tamed either of them, so he was surprised to see that they were on this list.
But after thinking about it, he realized that they must have been automatically added in since both of the parents were pets that he had already tamed.
It seemed like this was the case when his pets gave birth to children.
This was something that he needed to be careful of because he did have a set amount of pets that he could tame, which was written right at the top of the list. While he wasn't close to reaching the maximum number just yet, it was better to know about this before it happened in the future, catching him off guard.
He even started wondering what would have happened if these cubs were born after he had already maxed out the number of pets that he could tame.
Would they have just not been tamed by him?
That would of course be the best case scenario since he would just be able to tame them after raising the maximum number of pets that he could tame.
The worst case scenario would be that they would be added in any way and that would overdraw on the power that increased the maximum number of pets that he could tame, harming him in some way.
He had seen that as his cultivation level increased, he was able to tame more and more pets, so he knew that there was something that determined how many pets that he could tame.
He assumed that it was some kind of mental force like soul power since that would make sense. After all, this taming ability should be some kind of mental power or the power of his soul to suppress the soul of his pets, which made them become his pets.
So if he were to overdraw on this soul power, what would happen to him?
This was definitely something that was better if he found out sooner than later.
But for now, Lin Fan stopped looking at the system interface and turned his attention back to the two cubs.
As he looked at them, he had to admit that they really were cute.
For now, he was just happy that there were two new members of their small family.