Chapter 117

In the conference hall, clan head Gu Yue Bo tells a room of elders that a River Swallowing Toad, a rank five Gu, drifted along the Huang Long River three days earlier and now blocks a river channel at the foot of the mountain, and he asks for ideas to drive it away before it can put the village in constant danger. Gu Yue Chi Lian warns that the matter must be resolved quickly, since anyone with evil intentions who learns of it might provoke the toad to entrap the clan. Gu Yue Mo Chen, though a political enemy of Chi Lian, sets that rivalry aside at this critical moment and agrees with him, then adds that if the toad floods Qing Mao mountain, the wolf lairs will be submerged and the wolves will be forced up the mountain early, triggering the wolf tide ahead of schedule and forcing the clan to fight beasts for space at the summit. ^{ch. 117}

Gu Yue Bo reminds the elders that the first generation ancestor founded the village here for its underground spirit spring, and that a flood could destroy the spring along with the surrounding land the clan depends on for cultivation resources. When some elders suggest asking the Xiong and Bai villages for reinforcements, Gu Yue Bo calls it premature, recalling that the first clan head once killed a rank five Blood River Python that attacked the fledgling village, and judging the River Swallowing Toad comparatively harmless. He describes a rumor from a previous clan head that the toad has a warm temperament, harmless to ordinary people unless it senses another Gu’s aura or takes a serious injury, and the hall’s panic eases. Gu Yue Yao Ji privately admires how the clan head’s calm has settled the room. Gu Yue Bo cautions that this is only rumor and proposes sending a group to test the toad first; the elders agree, and after Chi Lian offers a member of his own Chi family, the clan head assigns the task to the Chi Shan group. ^{ch. 117}

At a tavern table, Fang Yuan asks the old shopkeeper about his search for bitter shell wine, which he needs for a Liquor worm fusion. The shopkeeper reports that someone in Bai village has drunk bitter shell wine, brewed from the bitter water of a black, ring-marked conch called a bitter shell, and notes that it ranks alongside the clan’s own green bamboo wine and Xiong village’s bear gall wine as the three wines of Qing Mao, rarer even than Bai village’s famous white grain liquid. Fang Yuan resolves to obtain it despite the risk, since Bai village’s rising Gu Masters might kill an uninvited intruder before he reaches the gate, reasoning that it is still more attainable than the far-off green Ai wine. ^{ch. 117}

When the shopkeeper lingers to beg Fang Yuan to buy back the tavern, citing wage cuts under its current owner, Fang Yuan refuses, smashes a wine jar against the old man’s head, and orders him away. Around him, tavern guests trade rumors of the River Swallowing Toad, their fear growing with each retelling; Fang Yuan is privately amused, knowing the toad is a gentle creature that sleeps, eats only river water, and flees rather than fights unless cornered, and he guesses it drifted out of the Huang Long River into a tributary that carried it to the foot of Qing Mao mountain. ^{ch. 117}