Thieving Heaven's Fortuitous Encounter?
In an immensely corrosive darkness, Fang Yuan’s soul suffers a punishment no dream realm has given him before. Only his extraordinary soul foundation, over ten million man soul, lets him endure it. Light finally breaks the darkness and young Thieving Heaven wakes on the open desert at noon, the night already passed. Information left behind by the clan’s own Gu Master explains why: he defied clan rules and was exiled, sentenced to three days alone before he may return. He curses the clan for exiling a child over merely a few words, then loses all vigor on finding he knows neither his direction nor where the clan lies. Sitting in the sand with no Gu worms, no water, no food and no shelter against the night cold, he expects to freeze, then swears instead to live and find a way home. ch. 1492
Fang Yuan then feels the restraints on his body vanish and takes control of young Thieving Heaven, who owns no Gu worms and only twenty to thirty percent primeval essence. He judges the clan poor enough to treat even a Gu Master like this youth as expendable. He tries the immortal killer move Unravel Dream, but finds it completely restricted inside Thieving Heaven’s dream realm. He picks a direction and starts walking. After a day and a half he dies of thirst, and his soul returns to his body with a heavy injury that he heals using guts Gu. A second attempt in a different direction also fails, and Fang Yuan reasons that this round turns on the explorer’s luck, one direction holding a fortuitous encounter, while his luck path methods stay unusable in the dream. ch. 1492
On a third try he falls into a quicksand pit, but before it swallows him sand erupts upward like a geyser and throws him clear. The pit becomes a hole blowing cool air, and winged mortal Gu called cool wind Gu fly out on the breeze. He is too weak and very hungry to reach them at first. He grabs one that falls injured but crushes it dead in his excitement. Using Unravel Dream, which works here unlike elsewhere in the dream realm, he then pulls one Gu free and catches a second injured one, refining both. When the cool air fades the wild Gu flee with it, but he already holds five cool wind Gu in his aperture. ch. 1492
Continuing on, he finds a small oasis whose well is guarded by wild beasts, including a leader that carries a mortal Gu. Using the five cool wind Gu and the terrain, he kills the whole group and subdues the leader’s Gu worm, a poison path Gu shaped like a scorpion. The well itself has dried up. He drinks the beasts’ blood and eats their meat, packs blood into their stomachs and ties meat to himself, then builds a windbreak of skins and bones over the well. Climbing down inside, he finds a man-made hole at the bottom, and following it fifty to sixty steps brings him to a small underground room holding a soil bowl, a tiny spring and a dried corpse. Fang Yuan wonders whether this could be Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s own early fortuitous encounter. ch. 1492
