Three Step Fragrant Grass
On a cliff above the mountainside, Bai Ning Bing watches as group leader Xiong Zhan gambles everything on his Plunder Gu against an advancing bold lightning wolf, pouring in all his primeval essence to force the theft. The plunder fails for lack of primeval essence, its backlash costing Xiong Zhan a mouthful of blood, and the freed wolf’s lightning bolt burns him to death an instant later. One of the two remaining Bai clan Gu Masters is run down and killed by the wolf, and the last, pinned against the cliff and screaming in despair, spots Bai Ning Bing above him and calls out in relief, only for Bai Ning Bing to answer with an icicle through his skull. ch. 132
Bai Ning Bing then kills the bold lightning wolf itself with an ice blade formed from condensed mist, and destroys the Lightning Current Gu that leaps free of the corpse and darts toward him. From Xiong Zhan’s body he takes the Plunder Gu, disregarding the three clans’ agreement that a dead Gu Master’s ownerless worm be handed over, reasoning that as the symbol of the Bai clan’s rise he would be protected even if the clan found out. Bored by the wolf tide, he muses aloud that a worthier opponent would be more fun, and wonders how much Qing Shu, Xiong Li and the others have grown after their time cultivating behind closed doors. ch. 132
Days later, in a square crowded with Gu Masters, Fang Yuan studies a flag on which the Swimword Gu displays the three clans’ resources and the merit points needed to exchange for each, ten for a wolf’s eye, five for a 500g bag of rice, twenty five for a primeval stone. What draws his eye is the Three Step Fragrant Grass Gu, a movement-boosting worm that is the only one of its kind on the board and priced too high to reach by ordinary means; he rules out using his true strength to earn points quickly, since that would draw the clan’s suspicion, and rules out raising vitality leaves to sell for points, since it is too slow to beat a rival to the exchange. He reflects that merit points exist only because the wolf tide has driven demand for primeval stones past what the ordinary currency can bear, an emergency measure that, like wartime paper money on the Earth he remembers, only loses value the longer the crisis drags on, and regrets that his own low cultivation leaves him unable to work the village’s economy the way a rank three Gu Master could. ch. 132
His thoughts are interrupted by bystanders gossiping that Bai Ning Bing has struck again, naming Xiong clan’s Xiong Li as the latest target after injuring Chi Shan before, and grumbling that a rank three Gu Master picking fights with rank two opponents, even one who evens the odds by suppressing his own cultivation, is hard to understand. Hearing this, and dismissing Bai Ning Bing as a man already halfway into his coffin, Fang Yuan feels something click into place, realizing he now knows how to gather a large amount of merit points quickly. ch. 132
