Chapter 1038

Hei Lou Lan undergoes Ying Wu Xie’s light path Gu formation and watches it strip away the information path dao marks Fairy Li Shan had placed on her, impressed that Shadow Sect broke a quasi-great grandmaster’s work this way. Her estimate of Shadow Sect rises another level at this. Ying Wu Xie confirms the dao marks are gone. His biggest mission is not Fang Yuan but rebuilding Shadow Sect and saving Spectral Soul Demon Venerable’s main body, and though he hates Fang Yuan he does not lose his reasoning. After hesitation he decides to recruit Hei Lou Lan as his subordinate for her talent and her Great Strength True Martial Physique. ^{ch. 1038}

Under the new alliance agreement Hei Lou Lan must obey him without defiance or concealment, and with no way to resist she accepts, feeling no remorse for betraying Fang Yuan, whom she had schemed against and now hates. She offers to lure Fang Yuan using stargate Gu and black heaven. Ying Wu Xie refuses, telling her Shadow Sect keeps a spy inside Lang Ya blessed land and that stargate Gu works at best on a bottom tier rank six Gu Immortal and cannot carry a single Immortal Gu. From Spectral Soul’s guidance he knows Fang Yuan’s new body carries at least a hundred dao marks in every path and more than a thousand in all, too many for him to use stargate Gu. Spectral Soul Demon Venerable was invincible in life, with an immense foundation, and built Shadow Sect out of it after his death. Ying Wu Xie’s next step is to refine Fixed Immortal Travel instead, which Hei Lou Lan notes has only just been destroyed, leaving the refinement a high chance of success. Spectral Soul’s guidance within the Red Lotus true inheritance left him three separate recipes for it, any of which could succeed. ^{ch. 1038}

In Southern Border, Fang Yuan travels the mountains weighing what he gained and lost in slaughtering Ni clan village. Its Gu Masters had posed no threat; he needed only enslavement path methods to summon a huge beast group and trample the village without fighting personally. The desolate beast mud monster was what forced him to fight himself, and it gave him a good deal of trouble before he killed it. A Gu worm’s rank should match its Gu Master’s, and his rank seven sword path Immortal Gu, held by his rank six body, proved too costly to use freely. Each activation cost over a hundred beads of green grape immortal essence, and his nine-five sovereign immortal aperture produced only sixteen beads a day, not enough for one. Immortal essence stones from Lang Ya land spirit replenished what he spent. He resolves to have Lang Ya land spirit reverse refine these rank seven Gu into rank six so they suit him, paying in sect contribution points rather than risk a failure chance that stays high. ^{ch. 1038}

He judges reverse refined Gu alone still insufficient, since his rank seven flying sword, made for fatal blows, pierced the mud monster easily but could not do it much damage, its mud being filled with earth path dao marks. He wants sword path killer moves too, like the ones Bo Qing once built around flying sword Immortal Gu, but cannot create them himself, since his sword path attainment is almost nonexistent and he has not found a way to use wisdom Gu. Lang Ya land spirit, now set on expanding the hairy men race, agrees to the reverse refinement once Fang Yuan offers sect contribution points. Looking over Lang Ya blessed land’s existing collection of sword path moves, he still cannot decide which to take. He changes the topic instead, asking to spend his last of three first supreme elder refining favors, already used twice for stargate Gu and second aperture Gu, on one final Immortal Gu. Asked which one, Fang Yuan answers Fixed Immortal Travel. ^{ch. 1038}