Chapter 131

As rain and lightning batter Qing Mao mountain through the night, Fang Yuan lies not in his rented room but at the inn, deliberately placing himself where he cannot be swept into the fighting outside. Unlike his previous life, when he was only a rank one Gu Master hiding with the support group, he is now rank two middle stage with his Four Flavor Liquor worm advancing toward its upper stage, and he judges that the clan’s higher ups, blinded by past experience, have underestimated the wolf tide’s severity by choosing to fight it in the open rather than hunker down and defend the village. ^{ch. 131}

Waking again at midnight to the sounds of battling Gu Masters and howling wolves outside, he lies in the dark feeling a boundless loneliness that he attributes not to being a reincarnator carrying a secret but to a truth he holds about everyone, that people are isolated islands whose encounters, however bound by interest, kinship, friendship, love, or hate, always end in separation, and that facing this loneliness rather than fleeing into crowds is what breeds talent and courage in those who achieve greatly. He tells himself that each time he feels this loneliness, it strengthens his resolve to walk the demonic path, and his thoughts turn to the story of Ren Zu. ^{ch. 131}

Legend holds that Ren Zu, who already possessed Hope Gu, Strength Gu, and Rules and Regulation Gu and had given his heart away to the Hope Gu, needed a heart to wear the Attitude Gu, and that the Attitude Gu offered him one called loneliness, warning it would bring endless pain and fear, which Ren Zu accepted anyway. Sitting alone through a starry night as instructed, Ren Zu felt a crushing loneliness despite his Gu, and by dawn a new heart had grown in him; unable to bear the pain and fear it brought, he tore out his own eyes, and where they fell his left eye became a son, Verdant Great Sun, and his right eye became a daughter, Desolate Ancient Moon, each kneeling before him and naming him father, at which Ren Zu wept with joy that he would now be remembered and mourned, giving up his sight so his two children would watch the world in his place. ^{ch. 131}

By dawn the rain has stopped, and Fang Yuan finds the village grieving, since none of the three clans escaped the night unscathed and the merit board shows twenty five small groups lost outright, Gu Yue Peng’s among them, with the survivors mostly injured or crippled. Over the following dozen or so days the danger only grows as word spreads of a hundred beast king bold lightning wolf and then a thousand beast king frenzy lightning wolf, prompting the three clans to commit their rank three elders, while Fang Yuan relies on the Earth Communication Ear Grass he paid for in blood to keep steering clear of the largest packs, until by the end of July the fighting, though still dangerous, comes under the three clans’ control. ^{ch. 131}

On a mountainside elsewhere, group leader Xiong Zhan and two remaining Gu Masters, all that is left of two combined Xiong and Bai clan groups, are cornered against a cliff by an advancing bold lightning wolf, and Xiong Zhan, lamenting that even thirty percent of his primeval essence would spare them this chase, chooses to gamble on his Plunder Gu, which can forcibly steal a Gu worm from an enemy but leaves him immobile while it works, asking his companions to shield him as he raises his arm to try it. Watching unseen from above, a white haired young man in white, revealed as Bai Ning Bing of the Bai clan, sips spring water rather than wine and reflects that only a fight this desperate gives such lives any meaning, showing no intention of stepping in to help even though he could, since to him kinship’s warmth is only a facade over a deeper, defining loneliness. ^{ch. 131}