Chapter 123

Chi Shan, kept warm through the snow by a Double Orifice Stove Gu, a rank two Gu that stores internal heat for use in attack while subduing cold only as a side effect, tells Fang Yuan gravely that Xiong Li has been seeking him out for days for a contest of strength. Fang Yuan already knows; Chi Shan explains that the challenge is really about the three clans’ stalled negotiation over how to split the alliance’s interests under the coming wolf tide, since non-alliance means destruction but the clans will not yield their own interests without a fight, waged instead through Gu contests that display each faction’s strength. ^{ch. 123}

Chi Shan admits he has already fought Xiong Li and lost: Xiong Li carries the Brown Bear Innate Strength Gu, giving him a bear’s strength, and the Grand Bear Gu on top of it, giving him another bear’s worth, so that together, by Chi Shan’s account, he wields two bears’ strength, a gap Chi Shan cannot close even as he concedes the title of Qing Mao Mountain’s number one strongest person belongs to Xiong Li outright. He tells Fang Yuan that the clan higher-ups have ordered him to avoid the match, since losing as the man who woke the River Swallowing Toad and saved the mountain would cost the Gu Yue clan’s negotiating position, and hands over a money bag as personal compensation; Fang Yuan weighs it and finds it holds two hundred primeval stones. ^{ch. 123}

Alone afterward, Fang Yuan privately judges that the clan is using his toad-chasing fame as a bargaining chip, and that he, Xiong Li, and Chi Shan are all pieces on that same board, with Chi Shan a willing one; having never wanted the fight himself, he only feels grateful for Chi Shan’s two hundred primeval stones, and recites a private verse about walking alone through heaven and earth as he returns through the snow to his simple rented room, having already sold off his earlier bamboo building and wine tavern, and sits down to cultivate, since advancing within a small realm takes only accumulated time rather than the ability and talent a large breakthrough demands. ^{ch. 123}

That evening Jiang Ya arrives with five money bags holding more than four hundred primeval stones from Fang Yuan’s recent sales, and Fang Yuan hands him nine vitality leaves in turn; Jiang Ya reports he has not yet secured the Fish Scale Gu Fang Yuan wants, since it is only slightly less valuable than the Jade Skin Gu and the clan has tightened its grip on resources as the wolf tide nears, though Fang Yuan is not discouraged, reasoning that both the Bai clan and his own produce Fish Scale Gu and that it should surface once the three-clan alliance opens its wolf-tide contribution exchange, where only each clan’s signature Gu, the Gu Yue clan’s Moonlight Gu, the Xiong clan’s Bear Strength Gu, and the Bai clan’s Stream Gu, stay off the table. ^{ch. 123}

Later that night Gu Yue Qing Shu and Gu Yue Fang Zheng call on Fang Yuan, Qing Shu hoping to buy the Liquor worm, the Black Boar Gu, and the Nine Leaf Vitality Grass; Fang Yuan refuses the grass outright and cannot sell the Liquor worm, since it has already become the Four Flavours Liquor worm, but offers to trade the now-redundant Black Boar Gu, whose best advancement path in the Steel Mane Gu he no longer needs beside his White Jade Gu, for a Fish Scale Gu plus the price difference. Pressed again on the Liquor worm, Qing Shu finally explains that it is wanted for Gu Yue Yao Le, this year’s new B grade student and granddaughter of medicine hall elder Gu Yue Yao Ji, and that Yao Ji once tried to buy a Liquor worm in the treehouse without success. A high price is offered, along with a promise that Fang Yuan would get special attention from the medicine hall if he were injured in the wolf tide. ^{ch. 123}