Chapter 135

Xiong Jiang recognizes the Plunder Gu in Bai Ning Bing’s hand as belonging to his cousin Xiong Zhan and accuses him of watching Xiong Zhan die without helping, while Xiong Lin charges him with violating the alliance treaty by not surrendering a fallen ally’s Gu worm and fires a Signal Gu into the sky. Xiong Li, though afraid like the others, has already resolved to fight Bai Ning Bing to the death for the clan’s sake, and the brawl turns chaotic as Xiong Jiang’s Roaming Zombie Gu, whose zombie physique feels no pain and shrugs off Bai Ning Bing’s icicles, and Xiong Li’s Grand Bear Gu, whose fists tear through Bai Ning Bing’s water barrier, press him even as the wolf pack still harries the group’s other three members. ^{ch. 135}

Watching from a distance, Fang Yuan reasons that Bai Ning Bing is holding back because he carries the Northern Dark Ice Soul, one of the ten Ten Extreme physiques that Ren Zu’s legendary children are said to represent, physiques ranked above even the best A grade talent: where the finest A grade aperture caps at ninety nine percent primeval essence, a Ten Extreme physique holds a full hundred percent, at the cost that nearly all who bear one die before their time unless they can fight through to rank six. ^{ch. 135}

Bai Ning Bing’s hundred percent essence keeps his aperture under constant strain, forcing him to cultivate carefully just to reinforce its walls even as each further step in cultivation only raises the pressure, and as the Bai clan’s chosen hope he cannot simply stop, since doing so would leave him exposed to the other two clans. Fang Yuan recalls from his previous life that three years after this wolf tide, Bai Ning Bing’s cultivation reaches rank four and his aperture explodes outright, a Ten Extreme self-detonation that annihilates everyone across the three villages and turns Qing Mao Mountain into a domain of absolute ice, a fate Fang Yuan escaped that time only because Fang Zheng’s harassment had already driven him to leave with a caravan beforehand. ^{ch. 135}

Fang Yuan reasons that the true purpose behind Bai Ning Bing’s suppression is not fairness but survival, diluting his rank three silver primeval essence into rank two red steel essence with Gu worms and favoring rank two worms in battle to slow how fast his aperture empties, and that this same fatalism, rather than the disciplined heir his upbringing was meant to produce, is what shaped him into a creature of the demonic path. Seeing him as a pitiful child he had never wished to deal with, Fang Yuan resolves to make use of him first before removing this misfortune early. ^{ch. 135}

In the fighting so far, Bai Ning Bing has killed Xiong Li’s group’s healing Gu Master with his blade but taken a fractured right arm from Xiong Li’s fist in exchange, and still, fighting one-handed against Xiong Li, Xiong Jiang, Xiong Lin and one more Gu Master combined, he holds the advantage over all four. Fang Yuan judges that his own C grade aptitude, at forty four percent primeval essence, leaves him unable to defeat Bai Ning Bing outright even with the others’ help, but tells himself that not being able to defeat him is not the same as not being able to kill him. ^{ch. 135}