If not for the harshness of the winter, how could we look forward to spring!
Over a month after his last visit, Fang Yuan finally returns to the stone crack cave now that spring has cleared the crippled wolves and thinned the Gu Masters patrolling nearby, slipping back in with the Stealth Scales Gu and clearing a small number of stone monkeys that have repopulated the pillars. He descends the crude stairs under the White Jade Gu’s cover, torch in one hand and the Moonglow Gu’s light in the other, until he reaches a stone door bearing an inscription that warns of a golden centipede’s danger and names earth communication as the way to avoid it. Finding the ground before the door wet, he digs up an Earth Treasury Flower and draws from it a small, shriveled, ear shaped Gu worm with ginseng like roots, a rank two grass Gu called Earth Communication Ear Grass. ch. 128
Fang Yuan judges this Earth Communication Ear Grass exceptional, with a scouting range of up to three hundred paces that rivals many rank three investigative Gu worms, and easy to feed on plentiful, easily stored ginseng root rather than the fast wilting moon orchid petals his Moonglow Gu depends on. He refines it at once with primeval essence, reasoning that a Gu worm this capable must carry some further cost to use beyond mere refining, in the way the Zombie Gu and Wood Charm Gu slowly corrode a Gu Master’s body with prolonged use, but decides the gain is worth whatever price it demands. Back in the village, still ranked last on the merit board and mocked for it, he spends the following days trading small merit points for ginseng root to nurse the grass back to full vitality while the clan’s attention stays fixed on the wolf tide. ch. 128
That night, alone in his sealed rented room with a basin of warm water, a towel, and a dagger laid out before him, Fang Yuan recalls the Sacred Sunflower Scroll’s demand of self castration to gain power, hums a rhyme about winter’s harshness making way for spring, and cuts off his own right ear. He presses the now fully revived Earth Communication Ear Grass, grown plump and palm sized, against the wound and pours in red steel primeval essence, and its roots take hold and drive into the wound with a pain that leaves him swaying on his feet, since he has no numbing Gu to spare himself and relies only on his willpower, until the grass fuses seamlessly into a new right ear with no scar left behind. ch. 128
Checking the mirror, Fang Yuan finds his new right ear more than twice the size of his left but is satisfied all the same. He cleans the blood from his body and the cloth on the floor, slices what remains of his severed ear into paste with the Moonglow Gu to destroy it, hides the basin of bloodied water under his bed with a lump of coal dropped in to blacken it beyond recognition, and finally lies down as the pain slowly fades until he falls asleep. ch. 128
