Chapter 140

Bai Ning Bing breaks free of the ice far sooner than anyone expects. The clan elder, Qing Shu, Yao Hong and two more Gu Masters, five in all, surround him while Fang Zheng watches from a slope, ready to warn if a Bai clan group appears. The elder charges him with killing Gu Yue Gu Masters and breaking the three clan alliance, demanding a life for a life, but Bai Ning Bing, having pieced together from Xiong Li and Qing Shu’s words that his attacker is named Fang Yuan, only broods over his lost arm. ^{ch. 140}

Bai Ning Bing lifts the seal on his own cultivation, restoring rank three white silver primeval essence to his aperture. Under the Northern Dark Ice Soul physique, essence merely held in the aperture nurtures it as strongly as a Gu Master actively cultivating would, an effect that would grow several times stronger again at rank four, which is why the physique’s cultivation only accelerates toward its own destruction the higher it climbs. Bai Ning Bing curses Fang Yuan by name for costing him the Frost Demon Gu, a rank three worm he had only managed to refine after three earlier failures, leaving him with just the Blue Bird Ice Coffin Gu as his other rank three worm. ^{ch. 140}

The clan elder opens with a moonlit hand strike that clashes against an ice blade Bai Ning Bing grows from his frost, then follows with a golden moonblade that also collides with it evenly; astonished that a rank two Ice Blade Gu can match what he calls his own rank three “Moonhand blade” and the golden moon, the elder does not yet know the Northern Dark Ice Soul physique lets Bai Ning Bing’s rank three cultivation boost a rank two Gu worm to rank three strength. Bai Ning Bing then spins the ice blade into a five meter storm moving three times faster than before, mincing two rank two Gu Masters outright, and, despite Qing Shu’s Green Vine Gu reaching for her, cutting Yao Hong into frozen pieces before he can pull her clear. ^{ch. 140}

The elder charges through the dying storm behind a Steel Shirt Gu’s armor and survives it, only for Bai Ning Bing’s remaining ice blade to run him through the heart once the storm ends, killing him. Bai Ning Bing turns on Qing Shu next, demanding Fang Yuan’s location and offering him a peaceful death; Qing Shu says the two of them have fought more than ten times and admits Bai Ning Bing has since surpassed him, but refuses to betray his clansman and calls him to fight instead. When Bai Ning Bing turns toward Fang Zheng, Qing Shu steps between them and answers by activating Wood Charm Gu. ^{ch. 140}