Chapter 114

Three days after the caravan leaves the village, Fang Yuan fights a retreating battle against jade eye stone monkeys in the rock forest, calling out moonblades from the Moonglow Gu, which now kills five or six stone monkeys per blade where the old Moonlight Gu, even boosted by Little Light Gu, once managed only one or two. Each moonblade costs ten percent of his red steel primeval essence, and with only forty-four percent primeval sea in his aperture he can loose just four in one go, short of the eight he could manage if he fused the Four Flavors Liquor worm, a step he is stuck on for lack of the fourth wine flavor. After three moonblades leave him with fourteen percent light red primeval essence, he stops and switches to the defensive White Jade Gu instead. ^{ch. 114}

When a stone monkey headbutts him, Fang Yuan deliberately takes the blow on his chin rather than crushing it with his fist, using the White Jade Gu’s light to blunt the impact and accustom his body to such hits so that a future life-or-death blow will cost him less recovery time; he reflects that his ruthlessness extends to himself as much as to his enemies. He hunts the stone monkeys almost every three days, both for the Flower Wine Monk’s inheritance and to sharpen his physical stats, combat proficiency, aperture essence, and battle experience together. ^{ch. 114}

The fight ends after fifteen minutes, and Fang Yuan tallies forty-one jade eye stone monkeys killed, crediting three moonblades from the Moonglow Gu with at least seventeen or eighteen of them in only a few breaths, while the rest fell to his fists and kicks over more than ten minutes; he notes the monkeys’ one exploitable weakness, that they cannot change direction once airborne. ^{ch. 114}

Clearing pillar after pillar, Fang Yuan reaches the largest and final one, counting enough rock caves to estimate at least five hundred stone monkeys, with an oversized cave at the top marking a monkey king’s den. Weighing the beast-king hierarchy, in which the wolf tide’s lightning crown wolf is a myriad beast king ruling at least ten thousand wolves, a thousand beast king needs three teams to barely kill, and a hundred beast king can be handled by a regular five-person group, Fang Yuan judges this monkey king a hundred beast king he might attempt alone at rank two middle stage, though even then his chance of success would not reach thirty percent, and decides it is time to use the red steel Relic Gu. ^{ch. 114}