Chapter 149

Fifteen minutes after leaving, Xiong Jiao Man’s group returns to the bamboo building. A wolf tide is closing on the village, and the alarm has already sounded. Gu Masters pour toward the four gates and the outer walls, climbing the wooden ladders and the defensive towers built higher than the walls themselves. ^{ch. 149}

Fang Yuan climbs a ladder and uses the White Jade Gu to survey the field. Thousands of ordinary lightning wolves fill the ground outside. Among them are at least thirty bold lightning wolves, a pack almost twice the size of the one that attacked the village earlier that year, or larger still. Three frenzy lightning wolves, each the size of an elephant, wait at the rear. Fang Yuan finds no lightning crown wolf among them, the beast that in his previous memory devastated the clan and cost Gu Yue Qing Shu his life. Its absence leaves him relieved. ^{ch. 149}

The wolves surge forward, and many die in the pit traps ringed with bamboo spears beneath the wall. Rank one Gu Masters feed primeval essence into the Steel Vine Gu and Poison Flower Gu planted along the wall, poisoning the ones that reach it. Rank two Gu Masters on the ladders and towers answer with volleys of moonblades. A bold lightning wolf breaches the wall with a bolt of current that kills a rank one Gu Master inside. The defenders concentrate their fire and bring it down. ^{ch. 149}

Fang Yuan shields himself from the same wolf’s lightning bolt with the Water Shield Gu. He answers with three Moonglow Gu moonblades that cripple its leg and take out an eye. The surrounding Gu Masters finish it off. Spent, he withdraws to a rear building to recover his primeval essence, one of many Gu Masters rotating in and out of the fight. By ten o’clock he has gone back in five times. The wolves show no sign of thinning. ^{ch. 149}

Watching from the rear, the clan elders worry the assault will last through the night. The wolves see clearly in the dark; the Gu Masters do not. Gu Yue Yao Ji, running the healing effort, reads a casualty report worse than in previous years. She attributes the toll to the sheer number of wolves, not to any decline among the clan’s Gu Masters. Fang Yuan is one of three Gu Masters who have not yet handed over their Nine Leaf Vitality Grass, a subordinate reports. Her granddaughter, the subordinate adds, has refused to leave the front line at the east gate despite his advice. Yao Ji lets both matters stand. She judges the front line good practice for the girl who will one day inherit the medicine hall. ^{ch. 149}