A Slight Smile
After resting, Fang Yuan takes back control of the Gu formation from Sixth Hair. Fang Yuan’s strength path immortal zombie body has completely turned into a human shaped mass of golden cloud divine wood. The formation releases a rare immortal material called the purple star urchin. It soon bounces dazzling starlight that shakes the formation with increasing violence. Sixth Hair calls out moving of a single thought, blossoming of the red snake, and red snake tattoos climb from his chest to his neck as his strength rises enough to help destroy the bouncing starlight. The crisis passes, but Sixth Hair collapses from exhaustion once it is over. ch. 1480
A third material, the thousand face human rock, breaks apart under the formation into countless illusory faces that fly into the immortal zombie body’s aperture. The cracks that filled that aperture close up with thick purple gold rock, shining with stars and bristling with spikes like the purple star urchin. Each face sweeps past the sealed Spring Autumn Cicada and drags out a thread of heaven’s will, which the formation melts away. This repeats until the faces can draw out nothing more. Fang Yuan then sends them at the Gu in a swarm dozens of times, leaving only a faint trace of heaven’s will and no cracks on it. ch. 1480
Fang Yuan drives those spikes to stab Spring Autumn Cicada from every direction, and rather than being destroyed the Gu melts into a green jade liquid that the spikes absorb. Only that last bit of heaven’s will is left where the Gu had been. Fang Yuan destroys it at once. The liquid then gathers and reforms into Spring Autumn Cicada, safe and sound with no heaven’s will left inside its body, giving Fang Yuan full control of the rank six Immortal Gu. Fang Yuan’s modification turns what Shadow Sect planned as sequential refinement and reverse refinement into one parallel process, which carries a much better chance of succeeding than an ordinary refinement. ch. 1480
The strain shatters the spiked rock lining the aperture walls, and then the aperture itself breaks apart. Fang Yuan can neither stop this nor wants to. He splits off a portion of his soul into the immortal zombie body, his first split soul, then uses the killer move Strength Reversing Life and Death, modified from Blazing Heaven Demoness’ nirvana fire, to bring the body back to life. Because the body’s lifespan was nearly spent from long exposure to the light of wisdom in Imperial Court blessed land, he adds two lifespan Gu to keep it from dying at once. ch. 1480
The shattering sets off a storm inside the sovereign immortal aperture, and Fang Yuan, unwilling to have the tribulation happen there, opens his aperture door and sends the clone out. His main body follows it out to a nameless spot in Northern Plains he had picked as empty and safe. Heaven answers his new full control of Spring Autumn Cicada with its harshest tribulation. Fang Yuan disperses it easily, and his clone passes the tribulation to become a time path immortal. The clone’s first aperture turns into a high grade time path blessed land that Fang Yuan names Spring Autumn blessed land, small in space but rich in time path resources. Standing with his clone over a grassland under a clearing sky, Fang Yuan lets five hundred years of bitterness in his previous life and every struggle since his rebirth settle into one faint smile on both faces. ch. 1480
