A Goat Explores Tai Qiu
Fang Yuan travels day and night without rest toward Tai Qiu, using blood torrent under thick cloud cover and sword escape Immortal Gu most of the time. He avoids open Immortal Gu near danger, relying on mortal killer moves. Heaven’s will can think and plot, Shadow Sect’s intelligence says, because of Star Constellation Immortal Venerable, though it still needs time to lay traps. Fang Yuan’s speed is very fast, so it cannot block him in time. Reasoning a straight course would let heaven’s will deduce Tai Qiu as his goal, he curves and detours instead, extending his route’s length several times over. ch. 1087
Three days after the wild dragon centipede, Tai Qiu rises on the horizon, a vast plain of ordinary grass holding a huge, very eye-catching stand of giant grass. It soon fills his vision completely. With hiding pointless this close, he slows, stops using Immortal Gu, and enters directly as a commotion builds ahead. He activates dark limit Immortal Gu, which conceals aura and can hide him from heaven’s will to a degree, then change form Immortal Gu, becoming a coiling mountain goat. The commotion fades. ch. 1087
Fang Yuan recalls that dark limit Immortal Gu once let Hei Lou Lan, then still mortal, conceal her Great Strength True Martial Physique aura and survive. Its effect on him is limited. Heaven’s will resists letting the ten extreme physiques upset the world’s balance, and his sovereign immortal aperture stands above them, his calamities carrying far more power than theirs. He also thinks Fairy Jiang Yu’s place in Shadow Sect means it definitely holds such tools, and that escaping this predicament and using those remnant forces could leave Ying Wu Xie’s road ahead unhindered. As a coiling mountain goat, a common desolate beast here, he blends in perfectly, completely unlike his eye-catching Gu Immortal body. ch. 1087
A huge golden sand dark stallion eats no meat and has a calm temperament, and with the goat also a herbivore it subconsciously feels no threat, though it stays very alert until Fang Yuan is far off. Fang Yuan considered this choice deeply. A wolf’s shape would instead have provoked the stallion. Guided by a memorized map, he pushes toward the first site, southeast, the giant grass rising from tree height to tower and hill height as he goes deeper. He slips past many desolate beasts using his human intelligence. ch. 1087
Deep in, he reaches a huge group of about a hundred coiling mountain goats, the first large gathering he has seen this far into Tai Qiu. He moves carefully among them. One could carry a wild investigative Immortal Gu able to see through his disguise. He secretly activates attitude Gu, and the herd warms to him; young goats trail him before their elders call them back. He wishes he could raise some of them. ch. 1087
Leaving their ground, near the first site, Fang Yuan checks himself: dark limit Immortal Gu’s concealment is weakening but still holds a while, and needs rest before reuse. Its protection varies by target. It worked best on Hei Lou Lan as a mortal, weaker on dark path Gu Immortals and weaker still on Gu Immortals of other paths, though luckily it does not conflict with Fang Yuan’s own marks. He must finish before it fades. Otherwise heaven’s will would focus on him, and countless desolate beasts and ancient desolate beasts would attack him together. At the site, he senses it has changed completely: the map’s immemorial qi grand lion corpse and its guarding lions are gone, leaving only faint wolf howls. ch. 1087
He identifies at least thirty desolate beast black blood wolves now holding the ground, three hundred thousand years after the map was made, fierce despite their unremarkable size and holding a wide territory. Wild Immortal Gu within a desolate beast group cannot be activated at will, unlike a Gu Immortal’s own. Fang Yuan does not hesitate. He gives up the site, judging the corpse and its guardians vanished for some reason, replaced by this small band of wolves, and detours around their territory toward the second destination. ch. 1087
