Chapter 1024

Fang Yuan crosses mountains and rivers very fast without a single Gu worm, the tribulation zone giving way to Southern Border’s characteristic mountains and forest. After running so long without rest, he feels no fatigue at all. He senses this body’s uniqueness: an ordinary Gu Master’s body is no different from a mortal’s without modifying Gu like black boar Gu or white boar Gu, since it is a body’s dao marks that make it extraordinary. He assesses that his own body, formed from the rank nine sovereign immortal fetus Gu, must hold many dao marks, its strength path marks alone surpassing his old body’s accumulation. ^{ch. 1024}

Climbing barehanded through the forest, he finds his visual acuity while moving superb to the extreme. Cresting a peak, his field of vision opens fully. His stamina proves unbelievable, his heartbeat strong, and he feels no chill despite the cold wind on bare skin. Spotting traces of battle, he reasons Tai Bai Yun Sheng and Hei Lou Lan, carrying his body, fought Gu Immortals here. ^{ch. 1024}

He jumps from the peak repeatedly, rising each time essentially unhurt. He finds his hair equally durable, steel like. He ties a strand around his wrist so it cannot be used against him in deduction. He concludes his dao marks must carry heavy defensive properties, reassuring since he now holds no defensive Immortal Gu, only Unravel Mystery, Change Soul, and attitude Gu. ^{ch. 1024}

At the battle site he confirms the traces are likely theirs, though without investigative Gu worms he cannot be certain. He keeps pursuing, tracking made hard since Gu Immortal battles are usually fought in the sky and he cannot fly. As time passes, his heart sinks. ^{ch. 1024}

Suddenly a figure drops from the sky in flames, crashing in front of him and setting nearby trees ablaze. He names himself Huo Kong Dong. He asks whether Fang Yuan came from Yi Tian Mountain. Fang Yuan’s expression turns grim as Change Soul Immortal Gu’s aura bursts from him, and instead of answering he demands to know if Huo Kong Dong saw anyone suspicious. Sensing that aura, Huo Kong Dong realizes Fang Yuan is not to be trifled with and softens his manner at once. Though a lone cultivator, he has already joined Southern Border’s Chai clan, a super force whose Gu Immortals died at Yi Tian Mountain, prompting its first supreme elder to send him, an external elder, to investigate. ^{ch. 1024}

Privately thinking the naked man is the most suspicious person around, Huo Kong Dong answers only that no one else is within a hundred li. Fang Yuan screams in frustration, vowing to repay this humiliation a hundredfold on whoever escaped him. Reading this as a man stripped of his Gu worms, Huo Kong Dong resolves not to provoke him. Ready to leave, Fang Yuan tells him to search Yi Tian Mountain himself, then pauses to ask whether he is a member of Chai clan. Confirmed, Fang Yuan claims old friendship with the clan’s ninth supreme elder and asks whether his battlefield killer move myriad flash fire is finished. Huo Kong Dong answers only that the ninth elder remains in seclusion. ^{ch. 1024}

Fang Yuan needles that the elder’s grandfather is keeping him there over harassing Fairy Yi Yi, then asks Huo Kong Dong to lend him some Gu worms. Reasoning that refusing a friend of the ninth elder risks trouble, and that the worms cost little, Huo Kong Dong lends them. Handing them over, he asks Fang Yuan’s name. Fang Yuan gives a false one, Dong Fang Xiong Ji. Huo Kong Dong recognizes the name as a notorious, stingy, vindictive friend of the ninth elder, puts the mismatch down to his having no clothes left, and resolves to write off the loan if it gets this stranger to leave. ^{ch. 1024}