Xia Clan Retreats
The thought-shells keep multiplying past sixty thousand, spreading beyond the valley. Xia Fei Kuai grows urgent, though Xia Zhuo Mo still hopes he has abilities left unused. Xia Fei Kuai activates his renowned trump card, thirty-three heavenly lights, an area attack that flickers with intensifying light thirty-three times. By its later flickers it grows strong enough to threaten even ancient desolate beasts. The Gu Immortal must stand motionless throughout the activation or suffer backlash scaled to the flicker reached when it stops, from light injury before the tenth flicker up to a fatal risk past the thirtieth. ch. 1311
The light destroys the thought-shells flicker by flicker, encouraging Xia Zhuo Mo. Before the seventh flicker fires, Fang Yuan suddenly withdraws all the roughly seventy-eight thousand remaining shells back into his own mind. His mind, spacious enough as an ancient desolate beast’s to hold them, leaves only the bare tortoise shell as a target. Xia Fei Kuai must still complete all thirty-three flickers to avoid backlash. The killer move finishes having flattened a vast stretch of the valley into open plain, the hills before it completely gone, at heavy cost to his immortal essence. Fang Yuan, undamaged inside the shell, praises the move as truly powerful, deepening Xia Fei Kuai’s humiliation. ch. 1311
Over a hundred thousand thought-shells then re-emerge to surround the tortoise. Fang Yuan notes that Xia Fei Kuai has used three of his ten allotted moves. Xia Fei Kuai launches an all-out assault, destroying countless shells as they move to defend Fang Yuan, and cannot be stopped as he maneuvers around the rest. Fang Yuan withdraws head, tail and limbs into the shell, leaving nothing exposed. After the tenth move, Xia Fei Kuai has managed only some slight injury marks on the shell, and he concedes defeat and leaves. Xia Zhuo Mo stays to collect Gu Master Zhang, then departs as well, somewhat indignant, vowing to return after five years. ch. 1311
