Chapter 1054

Fang Yuan means to fix the weakness that cost him against the mud monster and cloud beasts earlier in his travels. The killer move behind that fix, Sword Marks Targeting Death, has a complicated history. Entering Lang Ya blessed land as a rank six Gu Immortal, he had asked Lang Ya land spirit for reverse refinement of flying sword Immortal Gu and his other rank seven Gu, since rank seven Gu were hard to use. The land spirit warned that reverse refinement would take too long before his tribulation arrived, and gave him this move instead. ^{ch. 1054}

Fang Yuan found the gift strange, since Long Hair Ancestor practiced refinement path and could not use a sword move himself. Examining it, he understood the mechanism. It permanently expends a sword path Immortal Gu’s dao marks, carving them onto the target so they hunt out its weak spot, which for a snow monster is the hidden core, and strike a fatal blow after the wound heals. The drawback is severe: repeated use weakens an Immortal Gu until it drops a rank, from seven to six or six to mortal. The previous Lang Ya land spirit had bought this unfavored move cheaply out of interest in refining Gu, and Fang Yuan accepts it as suited to his need. ^{ch. 1054}

Sword light tears through the blizzard and strikes a desolate beast snow monster. Its wound heals, but its body scatters into snow, and dozens of small monsters ten or twenty feet tall rise from the pile, no trouble to him. Fang Yuan repeats the move again and again, destroying desolate beasts in a single hit each time. ^{ch. 1054}

Compared to his struggle against the swamp crab in Hu Immortal blessed land, his battle strength has risen greatly, and he now fights an endless number of snow monsters calmly. He stays vigilant even so. His ease, he reasons, comes from the rank seven Immortal Gu, from his new move’s dao mark cost, and from these snow monsters lacking the gruel mud Immortal Gu effect the swamp crab carried. ^{ch. 1054}

He notices the small snow monsters born from each dead desolate beast keep growing larger, from ten feet toward thirty, and stops using flying sword Immortal Gu rather than let them reach the sixty feet of a desolate beast. Dark vortexes kill dozens at once. Their corpses spawn more, smaller each time. Green wind blades then shred the small ones while the desolate beasts come through intact, and an investigative Gu confirms a dead ten-foot monster produces no more. ^{ch. 1054}

Wondering whether the blizzard drives their growth, Fang Yuan activates Dark Veil, Gu Immortal Hei Cheng’s mortal battlefield move, since only immortal-level battlefield moves clash with an aperture’s dao marks. He also holds Xue Song Zi’s mortal move Snow Domain, but leaves it unused since it would strengthen the snow monsters. Dark Veil weakens the blizzard and slows their growth at first. The storm rages back, crushing the domain at his feet, and only twenty percent of its hundred Gu worms survive for him to retrieve. ^{ch. 1054}

He concludes he can only kill both kinds of monster outright. This calamity, though only sovereign immortal aperture’s first, already far exceeds Hu Immortal blessed land’s fifth, sixth, and seventh calamities. Time passes as the blizzard grows immensely. Fang Yuan’s expression turns grim: this will last long, far stronger than the ten great catastrophes. ^{ch. 1054}

Desolate beasts keep multiplying past what Sword Marks Targeting Death can kill quickly enough, while the small ones grow too numerous for anything but mortal methods, forcing Fang Yuan to fight both fronts at once. He tells himself he holds the high ground and the initiative, since these snow monsters cannot fly. An eagle’s screech interrupts the thought. Iron crown eagles made of snow are forming, and one charges at him. Fang Yuan meets it with Sword Marks Targeting Death, but three more form to encircle him as new danger mounts. ^{ch. 1054}