Chapter 1121

After reaching Immortal Succession Mountain, some immortals still trade hushed asides about the eagle. One notes that attacking Fang Yuan would mean dealing with the eagle first. They wonder whether he is an enslavement path Gu Immortal, vulnerable to direct attack, and agree to wait rather than act. Fang Yuan listens behind a flawless front, pleased their guesses have drifted from the truth. If they really mistake him for an enslavement path cultivator, they will only be caught off guard by his transformation path and strength path power. ^{ch. 1121}

Through the conversation Fang Yuan keeps probing and reading them. Isolated too long, they have barely any shrewdness compared to Gu Immortals outside. He splits them into two groups, the four bloodline relatives Chen Chi leads and the three blood-sworn siblings under a blood path leader, with the final two immortals loners. They know very little, having never even heard of treasure yellow heaven, fitting their status as the criminals’ descendants Hei Fan cut off from it. ^{ch. 1121}

Immortal Succession Mountain is tall and solitary, its ten narrowing levels showing clear signs of human design, ringed by resource-rich forests. The grotto-heaven is isolated, free of calamities and cut off from treasure yellow heaven, so generations of accumulation have left its resources truly rich, and Fang Yuan is impressed. The group follows the heavenly spirit to a simple, grand pavilion near the peak, held up by eight thick pillars. An elephant-sized stone tablet carved with words takes up almost all the space inside, and the bell settles onto a hook on one pillar. Chen Chi tells Fang Yuan the tablet will answer his questions. Fang Yuan reads it patiently. ^{ch. 1121}

The tablet gives him the history. Hei Fan’s granddaughter Hei Feng Yue vanished along with attitude Gu, and with his lifespan nearly spent Hei Fan could do nothing but set down his own immortal aperture, absorbing a fragment of the immemorial azure heaven and losing his freedom. The immortals who failed to protect her lost their freedom, locked inside the grotto-heaven, their apertures fused in to enlarge it. Before absorbing the fragment, Hei Fan had arranged his true inheritance and the nest, adding the requirement of attitude Gu’s aura in hope for his granddaughter. This was his miscalculation: too optimistic from kinship to accept she might be gone, so the true inheritance went uninherited until Fang Yuan, in disguise, opened the nest. ^{ch. 1121}

Hei Fan sensed this error before death. He added a further rule: if no main tribe heir came within several hundred years, the grotto-heaven’s descendants could roam Immortal Succession Mountain for their fortunes. The criminal immortals, grieving that they had failed him, left hidden stone-tablet inheritances there before choosing to die alongside him. Once the limit passed, the mountain opened to the grotto-heaven’s mortals: many won lesser inheritances, some becoming Gu Immortals, but none reached the peak to claim the first inheritance. By the tablet’s rule, whoever wins it becomes the grotto-heaven’s owner, empowered to pardon the criminal immortals and free them back to Hei tribe, though until then no descendant may carry the Hei surname. ^{ch. 1121}

With the time limit past, main tribe and criminal immortals alike are equally qualified to compete for the first inheritance, so they have long raised descendants hoping to win it and their freedom. The present Gu Immortals took other inheritances long ago and are themselves disqualified, so they have lived peacefully, never expecting anyone from the main tribe to come. He reasons Hei Fan kept one further lever of control after death. Early on many pass their calamities, but as they grow stronger they cannot, and each must ask the spirit to stall a calamity, which puts them under its control since it can withdraw that help and let them die. Fang Yuan judges Hei Fan worthy of the champion who led Hei tribe through its most glorious era, holding complete control of the grotto-heaven in death and revered by every Gu Immortal. He doubts the tablet’s claim that the criminal immortals died willingly alongside their ancestor, suspecting instead Hei Fan forced their deaths to keep the grotto-heaven from breaking apart from within. He asks the heavenly spirit what he must do to obtain the true inheritance, and every other Gu Immortal present holds their breath, watching with concern. ^{ch. 1121}