Chapter 1199

Fang Yuan agrees the price is fair. The soul’s value has risen with guts Gu’s own. The rockman tribe of the northern icy plain has an urgent need for guts Gu, but its resources cannot meet Lang Ya Sect’s own needs, so it is not the sect’s main trade partner. ^{ch. 1199}

Guts Gu demand outstrips supply everywhere. Southern Border’s demand bred a black market reselling it at inflated prices, and Lang Ya Sect’s repeated price hikes still cannot satisfy the market. Guts Gu is Fang Yuan’s greatest source of income, funding his repeated use of rank seven Immortal Gu and his resupply of green grape immortal essence. ^{ch. 1199}

Lang Ya land spirit says this Gu Immortal soul will raise guts Gu output hugely, though such souls are found only by fortune. Future investment lies in Tai Qiu, where he asks Fang Yuan to gather desolate beast and plant souls, inferior individually but stable in quantity. Fang Yuan declines, since the coming competition leaves him no time, and hands over a second soul instead: a featherman’s, Zheng Ling, following an earlier one already named as Xue Song Zi’s. Variant human Gu Immortals are extremely rare, so the land spirit is slightly surprised. He takes the unknown featherman soul without investigating further, worth several hundred more points. ^{ch. 1199}

Fang Yuan brings out a third soul, and the amused land spirit tells him to lay out everything. He has many: Dong Fang Chang Fan and others from before, a group killed in Hei Fan grotto-heaven, more received in the turbulent flow sea area. Producing soul after soul, three, then six, then ten, he leaves the land spirit demanding to know how he killed so many. Fang Yuan calls it luck. He keeps going until the souls fill the surroundings, and the shocked land spirit says he now understands why Fang Yuan sided with variant humans. He notes Fang Yuan’s mere rank six cultivation, and likens the killing to Spectral Soul Demon Venerable in his youth; Fang Yuan only forces a smile. ^{ch. 1199}

Fang Yuan adds cultivation insights, Gu recipes of every path, Immortal Gu recipes, killer moves, and updated maps of each region. Lang Ya blessed land’s treasury is already vast, coveted by Heavenly Court and never far from Shadow Sect’s thoughts. What Fang Yuan contributes is rarer still: the foundation of many dead Gu Immortals. Lang Ya land spirit refuses none of it. ^{ch. 1199}

Unlike his predecessor, who cared only for refining Gu, this land spirit means to restore hairy men to the dominance they held in the Immemorial Antiquity Era and the Remote Antiquity Era. The sect is centered on refinement path, with transformation path also common. He wants Gu Immortals of every path, matching Northern Plains’ Huang Jin tribes or Central Continent’s ten ancient sects. Fang Yuan’s contribution points climb steeply. ^{ch. 1199}

Elsewhere, Twelfth Hair is mid Gu refinement in another cloud city. The fire he controls suddenly weakens: an error. He spurts his own blood into it, and the fire flares back, but the backlash leaves him pale and shaking, bleeding from his seven orifices. His wide, blood-traced eyes stay fixed on the fire. When it dies down, the formation opens on over a hundred rank five self will Gu, showing his extraordinary refinement attainment. Hairy man Gu Immortals raised by the previous land spirit had extremely weak battle strength but strong refinement skill. Twelfth Hair is relieved: sacrificing himself in time spared the batch and a debt of triple the materials. ^{ch. 1199}

Dizzy from refining eleven times straight, Twelfth Hair means to rest and take more assignments for immortal essence stones. Fang Yuan supplies contribution points and his own materials to hairy man Gu Immortals willing to refine for him, and they no longer disdain him for it. His rank eight battle strength helps. Paired with his financial power, it fills them with respect. ^{ch. 1199}

Twelfth Hair complains that his desolate beasts are costly to feed, and that the beast enslavement Immortal Gu he uses is only lent, charged against his points by the period. He means to buy his own eventually. A rank six Gu costs up to ten thousand points, though. Checking the sect’s list, he sits in the upper half with just over six hundred points, still far from his goal. His edge: cultivating enslavement path with several desolate beasts already in hand earns him points more easily than most. ^{ch. 1199}