Chapter 1289

Fang Yuan reopens his eyes and activates the killer move again, moving a whole segment of Reverse Flow River in huge waves that stop Old Ancestor Xue Hu’s attacks for a moment before Xue Hu strikes harder. Fang Yuan judges privately that the move still carries too many Gu worms and problems to be finished, needing years of deduction or higher attainment to become concise. Onlookers, stunned at his speed, still doubt he can finish one this fast. Old Ancestor Xue Hu and Mao Li Qiu step up their attacks, but the river is so vast that their endless assault costs it less than five percent of its water. ^{ch. 1289}

Fang Yuan calls the river to rise once more. This time all of it responds like a waking dragon. Old Ancestor Xue Hu, calling this wishful thinking, slams an icy light into the river, reflected back to turn the surrounding grassland into an icy plain. Fang Yuan is shaken but safe inside the river, and only Purple Mountain True Monarch’s timely waking keeps Shadow Sect’s group alive. He announces they will leave and raises rings of light carrying the group into the sky, Shadow Sect first to retreat. When Ying Wu Xie protests in transmission about the sovereign immortal aperture, Purple Mountain True Monarch answers confidently that his deduction says Fang Yuan will not die and can surely escape, and Ying Wu Xie keeps his doubts to himself. ^{ch. 1289}

Reverse Flow River glows blue, shrinks to a point, and reforms as a light blue white robe on Fang Yuan, its surface carrying slow flowing water and faint mist, with a deep azure sash. Myriad Self Second Style has reached its finished form: Reverse Flow Protection Seal. Old Ancestor Xue Hu refuses to believe it and fires an icy light at incredible speed. The seal blocks the strike fully and throws it back at its creator, and Old Ancestor Xue Hu dodges his own icy light. ^{ch. 1289}

Mao Li Qiu vanishes and reappears behind Fang Yuan, claws sending him into a crater in the icy ground. Fang Yuan stands up expressionless and without a graze, the robe unchanged in shape but its mist largely gone and its white dulled as though dusted. Mao Li Qiu’s paw comes away bloody, an immemorial desolate beast’s blow turned back. No rank eight has struck a rank seven and come away hurt while the rank seven stood unharmed. For the last few thousand years Feng Jiu Ge alone had the talent to battle rank eights, and Fang Yuan’s finished move now shares that glory, which Bu Zhen Zi murmurs as Central’s Feng Jiu Ge, North’s Liu Guan Yi. Old Ancestor Xue Hu smiles that he underestimated the young man and stops attacking. ^{ch. 1289}

Mao Li Qiu, furious at losing face, batters Fang Yuan for dozens of blows. He is left unmarked while the beast itself bleeds and pants. Fang Yuan turns and charges the Central Continent Gu Immortals, who scatter, and only their two rank eights stay to attack, their blows bouncing off the seal onto the pursuing Mao Li Qiu. The enraged Mao Li Qiu answers with a burst of purple light, and the three-way fight collapses into chaos. It is the last thing Ying Wu Xie sees from the sky, and he understands that Liu Guan Yi’s name will now spread through the five regions and rival Feng Jiu Ge’s own. ^{ch. 1289}

More than ten days later, a battered Fang Yuan crosses the regional wall into Eastern Sea. He is free at last of what he calls that crazy animal. More than ten days earlier Old Ancestor Xue Hu, Central Continent’s Gu Immortals, and Longevity Heaven had thrown everything they had into fierce combat. Fang Yuan slipped free of the chaos, though Mao Li Qiu hunted him until Northern Plains’ regional wall held the beast back. He decides it is time to return to Southern Border, and flies off into the clouds. ^{ch. 1289}