Chapter 1358

Fang Yuan tells the righteous path Gu Immortals that a Wu clan Immortal Gu House is already on its way to rescue him. He urges them to cooperate, promising credit for the righteous path and for Southern Border if they succeed together. Chi Gui had earlier given him an information path Gu worm and knowledge of the formation, letting Fang Yuan realize he could run it alone. Having made an example of the two Xia clan Gu Immortals and now offering the promise of rescue, Fang Yuan wins the group’s obedience. Even Ba De has to take his orders now. ^{ch. 1358}

Fang Yuan turns his attention outward, where the cocoons are paid for out of the dream realm, which Purple Mountain True Monarch thins because it blocks his way to Spectral Soul’s main body at the centre just as the super Gu formation does. More than twenty cocoons of light have formed, and large pieces of the dream realm vanish entirely, leaving it pocked with holes like cheese eaten by rats. The first cocoon cracks open. Purple Mountain True Monarch’s waiting Gu worms swarm the naked body before it reaches the ground and enter its immortal aperture. Clothed and animated, the body flies off, and Fang Yuan recognizes it as the Pure Dream Reality Seeker Physique, the same body type Ying Wu Xie once had. The physique is man made, an extreme physique Shadow Sect’s Old Man Yan Shi spent long years researching, which leaves Fang Yuan wondering how Purple Mountain True Monarch came by the method. He orders the righteous path Gu Immortals to destroy every cocoon and kill the one that just escaped. ^{ch. 1358}

Fang Yuan teleports the confused Gu Immortals, including Qiao Si Liu, outside the formation without explanation, angering them. Wu Liao moves first. The rest follow, both under Fang Yuan’s threat and drawn by the leap in dream path their clans would gain from capturing and researching one. Only the two Xia clan Gu Immortals still hold back, until Fang Yuan offers each of them a way back inside the formation for one destroyed cocoon, and they give in with gritted teeth. Shadow Sect’s side, led by Fairy Miao Yin, Hei Lou Lan and Bai Ning Bing, arrives far fewer in number, a disadvantage the tangled battlefield covers easily. As cocoons are destroyed, the vanished dream realm reappears in smaller, incomplete patches, and a killed body creates a huge dream realm on the spot, leaving the terrain very complicated. ^{ch. 1358}

Unable to locate Purple Mountain True Monarch, Fang Yuan keeps working the formation itself. Fang Yuan reads the swarm of bodies as cover for Spectral Soul, whose main body lies inside the dream realm and whose remnant soul may be riding one of the escapees. The super Gu formation catches one Pure Dream Reality Seeker Physique body, which has no Gu worms and is easily suppressed, and delivers it to him in black chains. The formation was built for defence and hits far more weakly than Fang Yuan does himself, and its second layer reaches less than half the dream realm. Fang Yuan thinks a few more captures might let him work out the method and grow such bodies himself. He goes on to capture close to ten bodies in total. He discovers they gain no cultivation over time: some carry rank six immortal bodies, others are mortals, and only a very small number reach rank seven. ^{ch. 1358}