Chapter 116

With eleven percent primeval essence left, enough for two moonblades or two more absorbed sneak attacks, Fang Yuan reasons that the stone monkey king’s reliance on a sneak attack marks its defense as weak, so his only real chance is to bait the strike and land a moonblade in the same instant. He drops the White Jade Gu’s defense, stands still holding his own collar, closes his eyes to a slit, and trusts the Spring Autumn Cicada to warn him in time. ^{ch. 116}

The Cicada vibrates, and the stone monkey king appears on his left; Fang Yuan reflexively calls the White Jade Gu, absorbing the blow at a cost of five percent of his essence and leaving him with only half remaining, and as the king tries to flee he flicks his shirt to snag its face, then fires the decisive moonblade the instant it panics, tearing a wound from its chest to its leg and forcing it to retreat rather than press its advantage. ^{ch. 116}

Fang Yuan reasons that, like other unusually cunning beasts, the wounded king is retreating rather than raging on, and that the blood it cannot hide, despite its concealment Gu, marks that Gu as a rank one stealth rock Gu. He withdraws to fully recover his primeval essence, then returns to the central pillar fifteen minutes later to find the king dead and turned to a rock statue, with another monkey already standing on its corpse to claim the vacant title. ^{ch. 116}

A Gu worm drifts from the dead king’s body toward the new claimant, and Fang Yuan intercepts it with a moonblade, then closes his grip with the Spring Autumn Cicada’s aura until the Stealth Rock Gu goes still and lets itself be refined into his aperture beside the White Jade Gu. He scatters the gathering monkeys with another moonblade and drives off the frightened new king with a single word, then finds an unlit cave beneath the pillar but, lacking any investigative Gu worm and with his own condition not at its best, chooses not to descend now that he has found the inheritance’s clue. ^{ch. 116}

Time passes into summer, and using the red steel Relic Gu Fang Yuan closes the gap with Fang Zheng’s cultivation pace; a day after he takes the Stealth Rock Gu, his middle stage cultivation is exposed for lack of any Gu to mask it, revealing to the clan that he won the red steel Relic Gu, and he also lets the Black Boar Gu be seen, drawing mockery from clansmen who cannot understand selling so much for these two Gu. With the added attention, he cuts back his visits to the Flower Wine Monk’s inheritance while continuing to cultivate toward rank two upper stage and gather materials to fuse the Liquor worm and the Stealth Rock Gu, funded by the vitality leaf, until in July a wild rank five Gu suddenly appears at the mountain’s foot near the village, shaking all of Gu Yue Village. ^{ch. 116}