Chapter 1161

Perceivable dao Immortal Gu shines with blue starlight the first time Fang Yuan activates it, gathering into a thin layer of water for more than ten breaths before fading. It leaves in his mind an account of his own dao marks. ^{ch. 1161}

Snow path and ice path lead, at sixteen thousand marks combined. A hundred marks raise an Immortal Gu’s effect by ten percent and a thousand marks double it, so with an ice or snow path Immortal Gu he reaches seventeen times the might of a Gu Immortal with no dao marks, at the same essence cost. City Well, by contrast, had cost him a hundred times the essence for its hundredfold effect. ^{ch. 1161}

Luck path follows at fifteen thousand, from Feng Jun’s foundation on Immortal Succession Mountain and the earthly calamity of the giant disaster blazing tree. Qi and sound path follow at around thirteen thousand each. The first comes from Qi Zai, a rank seven Gu Immortal, the second from Tang Song, a rank seven supreme elder of Eastern Sea’s Tang clan. Blood and rule path hold about twelve thousand each, from Hei Fan grotto-heaven’s Zheng Tuo and Chen Chi. The rest of his paths that reach ten thousand all come from rank seven Gu Immortal corpses. ^{ch. 1161}

Water path holds about eleven thousand, from lone immortal Zhou Li’s foundation. Transformation and strength path together come to about nine thousand. Wind, wood and food path marks came from earthly calamities, the wind flowers and spring dawn jade orioles, with food path probably from the profound white flying salt calamity. Earth, time and information path are fewer still, and he traces them to the variant human alliance and, probably, to his hundred years harmony pact with Chu Du and Lang Ya Sect’s alliance agreement. Phantom path and the other smallest paths still hold about a hundred marks each, the amount sovereign immortal fetus carried from the start. ^{ch. 1161}

Fang Yuan’s main fighting methods rest on strength, sword and time path, with familiar face and blood asset Immortal Gu as support. His five grandmaster attainments lie in wisdom, strength, star, blood and transformation path. Both sit almost entirely apart from where his heaviest dao marks actually rest. ^{ch. 1161}

His plan centered on transformation path, but the four races alliance now blocks it. He cannot undergo tribulation on the icy plain, so he cannot draw out Reckless Savage’s true meaning or gain further marks there. An ordinary rank seven Gu Immortal has passed up to around forty or fifty earthly calamities, four or five heavenly tribulations and a grand tribulation or more, and still holds only about ten thousand dao marks in their main path. Fang Yuan has passed only four. Yet he already holds sixteen thousand in a path that is not even his focus, and counts some thirty thousand marks gained from those four calamities alone. ^{ch. 1161}

His own aperture, immense fortune in itself, draws heaven’s maximum force, since he is a complete otherworldly demon. Each of his first four calamities was passed at great danger. Yet each paid out in dao marks to match. Fang Yuan judges the danger worth it, and begins to see each calamity ahead as a chance rather than a threat. ^{ch. 1161}

Turning perceivable dao Immortal Gu on his own Immortal Gu, Fang Yuan gets no result. Mortal Gu carry dao marks, but Immortal Gu carry fragments of the Great Dao, which Perceivable Dao cannot sense, though it reads mortal Gu without trouble. Tested on immortal materials it works, the cost rising with their quality and rank, least on purely information path materials and more on any other kind, whose dao marks conflict with its own. It costs him nothing extra on himself, since his own dao marks never conflict. ^{ch. 1161}

That property cuts both ways. An ordinary Gu Immortal’s dao marks blunt an attack of another path, but Fang Yuan takes the full force, and an attack of a path his own marks share might even be amplified against him. This is why he fights best at range, evading rather than trading blows. ^{ch. 1161}

He concludes that perceivable dao Immortal Gu has real but narrow uses. It can tell real materials from fakes, and read another Gu Immortal’s dao marks, though slowly and visibly. It can also compare marks while refining an Immortal Gu, though it can neither locate nor influence them. At best, it turns him from a blind man into a man who keeps his eyes shut. ^{ch. 1161}