Chapter 127

The Gu tournament ends, and the Gu Yue clan, Bai clan, and Xiong clan reach an alliance to resist the wolf tide together, setting grudges aside for now, aiding one another in danger, banning internal killing under a new investigating battle group, and ruling that a murderer will be expelled and then judged and put to death jointly by the three clans, with the murderer’s family forfeit if he escapes. A dead Gu Master’s Gu worms are owed to the clan on pain of a murder charge if kept secretly, and turning them in earns merit points, the same currency built into a new battle merit board that ranks small groups from all three clans by their kills, with one lightning wolf’s eyeball worth ten merit points and merit points exchangeable for Gu worms, primeval stones, and other resources. The board is meant to correct for how unreliable Gu battle sparring is as a measure of strength, as when Bai Bing Yi’s win over Xiong Jiang overlooked that Bai Bing Yi had attacking methods beyond his Water Drill Gu while Xiong Jiang’s Shadow Bond Gu only reached ten meters. ^{ch. 127}

A month passes, carrying the clans from winter into spring, and after a fight that leaves over ten lightning wolves dead, Fang Yuan finds himself half surrounded by a fresh, mid sized pack of around a hundred crippled wolves while gathering eyeballs. He escapes using his newly refined Stealth Scales Gu, obtained after trading his Black Boar Gu to Gu Yue Qing Shu for the Fish Scale Gu it needed, reasoning that lightning wolves hunt by their sharp, eagle like eyes rather than smell, which is no better than a human’s, so the Gu lets him vanish under their noses. He knows the exception is the lightning crown wolf, a myriad beast king whose eyes carry a Lightning Eye Gu that sees through any cloaking, and that other Gu worms, such as one that senses heat, one that lets a Gu Master converse with beasts, and one that grants unusually sharp hearing, can also expose him. ^{ch. 127}

Back in the village, Fang Yuan watches the merit board’s rankings shift as Gu Yue Qing Shu’s group overtakes Bai Bing Yi’s group for first place, with Xiong Li’s group third and one Gu Master’s own group reported at a distant hundred and thirty seventh, while the last position on the board is marked plainly as Fang Yuan’s own group. Gu Yue Fang Zheng, standing near Qing Shu, taunts Fang Yuan for staying alone and missing out on the clan’s warmth, but Fang Yuan, who has never recruited a single member since becoming group leader, does not need the merit points, food, or resources he already stockpiles, and only hunts each day to keep up appearances and to earn enough merit points to trade for the moon orchid petals his Moonglow Gu needs. ^{ch. 127}

Half a month later, Fang Yuan privately judges that the current calm, thin as it is, comes from the alliance easing everyone’s guard, from the wolves killed so far being only the crippled ones, and from spring keeping the healthy wolves busy mating, and he expects summer to bring the real wolf tide, remembering from his previous life that it killed most of the clans’ Gu Masters and nearly exhausted their strongest resources. He chooses not to warn the clan’s higher ups, reasoning that they likely would not believe him and would only press him on how he knew, that the gap in strength between them makes a warning pointless regardless, and, above all, that warning them would work against his own greatest interest. Turning over historical examples of ambitious men unbound by loyalty or morality, he dismisses kinship, friendship, and love as ornaments the successful merely hide behind, and concludes that most people are trapped for life by rules meant to keep them obedient before he heads out of the village toward the rock crack’s secret cave, with something important planned for today. ^{ch. 127}