Chapter 115

Inside his aperture, Fang Yuan wills the red steel Relic Gu into action; its red light overtakes the Black Boar Gu and the two Liquor worms, which sink away, while the White Jade Gu flashes in the depths and the dormant Spring Autumn Cicada stays hidden, and the light replaces his own light red primeval essence to thicken the light membrane wall far faster than ordinary cultivation could. After about fifteen minutes the Relic Gu exhausts itself and vanishes, having carried Fang Yuan to rank two middle stage and left a thread of scarlet middle stage primeval essence in his primeval sea. ^{ch. 115}

Fang Yuan spends primeval stones to refill his aperture until the forty-four percent primeval sea within it is completely filled with the new scarlet essence, then returns to the stone forest half an hour later, heading for its center. ^{ch. 115}

Jade eye stone monkeys swarm him at once, and the Spring Autumn Cicada’s sudden trembling cry warns him an instant before the stone monkey king, three times the size of an ordinary stone monkey, strikes his left shoulder from concealment; the White Jade Gu blocks the blow at a cost of five percent of his scarlet essence, far less than the ten percent it would have cost at initial stage, and he recognizes how narrowly his recent conditioning against such hits has spared him a crippled shoulder like Gu Yue Man Shi’s. ^{ch. 115}

Realizing the king carries a concealment-type Gu worm, Fang Yuan retreats as over five hundred stone monkeys close in behind its command cry, the chaos spreading as his chosen escape route drives the swarm into other monkey groups’ territory and sets the whole rock forest fighting itself. He absorbs repeated costly sneak attacks while falling back, grateful he had already reached middle stage before this fight, until he is left with only a bit over ten percent of his primeval essence and about a hundred meters from the rock door, too little to be sure of reaching it or of the door holding if he did. Judging the king is still lurking for one last opening, Fang Yuan resolves to risk everything and begins pulling off his upper garment. ^{ch. 115}