A voice full of murderous intent speaks behind Fang Yuan in the secret cave, and he thinks at once that he has been followed. In an instant his mind runs through suspects, from his uncle to Jiang Ya, the rank one Gu Master he met at the inn. The voice claims he has already been poisoned by a Single Gate Poison Gu that will turn him to pus and blood within seven days unless its counterpart is used. Fang Yuan judges that as a mere rank one initial stage Gu Master with no vital Gu, he has effectively no way to fight back, and he offers to hand over the Liquor worm in exchange for his life. ch. 15
A second voice answers, trembling with fear and begging the Flower Wine Monk for mercy, and Fang Yuan turns to find light and shadow shifting on the cave wall into a moving picture. The picture shows a battle already over. A lean Gu Master stands at the top of a mountain beside a collapsed pit, with another Gu Master kneeling before him, and Fang Yuan recognizes the bald, pink robed victor as the Flower Wine Monk. Fang Yuan reads the kneeling man’s uniform as the Gu Yue clan head’s own, with the aged onlookers around him the clan elders of that generation. ch. 15
The Flower Wine Monk accuses him of luring him to a banquet under the pretense of trading primeval stones for moon orchids and lacing his wine with poison instead. He begs for his life, offering a spirit spring’s primeval stones, a store of moon orchids, and his own servitude. The Flower Wine Monk, calmed, sets his price at three thousand stalks of moon orchid and three thousand primeval stones every week, in exchange for periodically curing the poison. Then he notices the kneeling man still holds active Gu. The clan head reveals a rank four Gu called Moonshadow, able to restrict the use of primeval sea and primeval essence, and demands the weakened monk surrender instead. The Flower Wine Monk refuses, driving a single punch into the clan head’s heart that kills him instantly, then quickly gains the upper hand as the charging elders collapse, some injured and the rest dead. Just as he moves to finish the last survivors, pain suddenly grips his stomach, and he flees into the mountain woods and vanishes. ch. 15
