Chapter 1220

Fang Yuan wants a supreme elder with status and the nerve to stand a rank eight’s pressure, and Qiao clan’s first supreme elder calls it too difficult. Wu Yong is not only a rank eight but Wu clan’s first supreme elder and the heir to Wu Du Xiu’s Immortal Gu. Fang Yuan presses the point coldly. If Qiao clan has no one equal to the task, it might as well give up its ambitions toward Wu clan. Reassessing Fang Yuan’s steel expression, Qiao clan’s elder agrees to the plan. ^{ch. 1220}

At the funeral, Wu Yi Hai arrives to pay respects to his mother. When Wu clan’s third supreme elder Wu Qiao speaks up in apparent impartiality, every gaze turns to him. Wu Yong himself cannot be sure whose side Wu Qiao is on. ^{ch. 1220}

Wu Yong agrees at once, without rebuke. He says his mother would want the heritage acknowledgment held during the funeral itself. Fang Yuan judges him not simple. Qiao clan’s first supreme elder’s opinion of him rises: Wu Yong has recognized he cannot block the acknowledgment and chooses to protect his own image by granting it. ^{ch. 1220}

To prevent tampering, Wu Qiao hosts the ceremony himself, calling for the clan’s rank seven blood path Immortal Gu, Bloodline, which he calls loot from a slain blood path demonic immortal. Blood path is officially forbidden, though every righteous force secretly studies it as the fastest route to battle strength, and the immortals present take it for Wu clan’s own work. Fang Yuan gives a drop of blood. A dark red light shines from the Gu with no issue. He credits his relief to blood asset Immortal Gu, recovered and folded into familiar face to disguise his bloodline. A rank eight Bloodline might have caught him, and this one is only rank seven. ^{ch. 1220}

Wu Qiao then puts hundreds of questions to him, some genuine and some traps built from events that never happened. Fang Yuan’s soul search of the real Wu Yi Hai carries him through. Wu Qiao stays expressionless throughout. He tells Fang Yuan that soul and bone inspection would normally follow too, but since Wu Du Xiu has died they will skip it. This leaves Fang Yuan extremely glad, since his own soul path and bone path methods are weak enough to risk showing a flaw. Learning her body left no trace at all, not even hair, deepens his sense of luck. ^{ch. 1220}

Wu Qiao reports his findings, and Wu Yong and the other elders agree. Fang Yuan then refines life tablet Gu and soul lantern Gu, left in Wu clan’s ancestral hall as the mark of his acknowledgment into the clan. After paying respects to Wu Du Xiu he cries profusely, a fantastic show of acting. Though the funeral bars a banquet, he spends the day over tea with Wu clan Gu Immortals, declining every spar offer. He benefits greatly from the standing his bloodline now gives him, as a rank seven Gu Immortal and the first supreme elder’s brother. ^{ch. 1220}

The funeral ends seven days later. Fang Yuan sees off guests beside Wu clan as though he had always belonged. Wu Yi Hai’s name spreads through the region, respected more for his tie to Wu Yong than his own cultivation. Three days later, at dawn, Fang Yuan watches the sunrise from Bear Mountain. Wu clan grants him the mountain outright as his own territory but no official role, which worries Qiao clan, whose secret alliance was meant to buy influence among Wu clan’s leaders. Fang Yuan is unhurried, weighing how his new identity lets him openly use the giant dream realm to raise his attainment. ^{ch. 1220}

An information path Immortal Gu arrives carrying Wu Yong’s summons. Fully assimilated now, Fang Yuan is safe from any secret move, and inside Wu clan’s territory Wu Yong must protect this brother. Wu Yong tells him clan rule lets a newly advanced rank six choose a rank six Immortal Gu, and a rank seven choose a rank seven one. He sends Fang Yuan to the treasury to pick two. ^{ch. 1220}