Three days and three nights of unbroken rain trap Fang Yuan indoors, since rain washes away the wine scent he has been using to lure the Liquor Worm and searching in a storm would only draw suspicion. With the search stalled, he decides to begin refining the Moonlight Gu he already holds, keeping the worm as a hope rather than a plan. He sits cross legged, calms his mind, and turns his attention inward to the primeval sea inside his aperture, a green copper water filling forty four percent of the space. ch. 10
He pushes primeval essence into the Moonlight Gu, and the crescent Gu answers by glowing blue and resisting the intrusion, a living creature defending its own will. After ten minutes he has spent ten percent of his primeval sea for only a thin spread of green at the crescent’s two tips. Progress is slow. After thirty minutes total his primeval sea holds just fourteen percent, over half spent, and the Gu itself is only about a twelfth refined. He breaks off the attempt, but the Moonlight Gu keeps expelling the essence already forced into it, and at that rate it would purge everything within six hours. ch. 10
Fang Yuan reasons that refining a Gu is a war of attrition, won by replenishing the primeval sea as fast as the Gu drains it. Natural recovery alone restores about four percent an hour for his C grade talent, so he draws instead on a primeval stone, and within half an hour his sea is back at its forty four percent ceiling. He calculates that Fang Zheng, an A grade talent, recovers eight percent an hour against the same Gu’s three percent drain over six hours. That means his brother can win the refining race without spending a single stone. Fang Yuan has only six stones to his name, nothing like the backing that Gu Yue Mo Bei or Gu Yue Chi Chen draw from their families, and he considers turning back to the Liquor Worm instead. The rain is easing when a knock comes at the door: Shen Cui, bringing food and wine after three days of storm. ch. 10
