Chapter 156

A rank two Gu Master leads Fang Yuan through a tunnel beneath the village to the clan’s recipe vault, built around the primeval spring that founded Gu Yue village, a place ordinary Gu Masters enter at most once, during their awakening ceremony. Only clan elders, the clan leader, and the Dark Hall’s guards may otherwise pass, and Fang Yuan’s new rank grants him that access for the first time. ^{ch. 156}

Inside, rank two Digital Shade Gu worms rest on jade plates around a room just under six hundred sixty-seven square meters, sorted by color: green for rank one recipes, red-black for rank two, white for rank three, orange for rank four, and purple, at the center, for rank five, of which his new rank lets him browse only up to rank three. A Digital Shade Gu is a recording Gu, one refinement short of the rank three Photo-audio Gu that also carries sound, the same kind the Flower Wine Monk once used to leave Fang Yuan the inheritance details in the rock crack cave. He is limited to fifteen minutes a day, and the old Gu Master waiting outside tells him he may return tomorrow. ^{ch. 156}

He first reads the recipe for Moonscar Gu, fused from Moonlight Gu and Scar Rock Gu for twice the attack range at the cost of weaker damage, its success improved by adding jade rock or refining under a moonlit night, and finds new detail even in his five hundred years of memory among the nearly ten thousand words of past Gu Masters’ notes. Skimming the rank three recipes next, he sets aside most as unsuited to him, but studies three built from Moonglow Gu: Golden Moon Gu, which keeps the same shooting distance but hits with far greater force; Frost Moon Gu, whose ice slows what it strikes; and Illusory Moon Gu, which conjures a shadow clone to confuse an enemy and serves as the base for the rank four Moonshadow Gu. ^{ch. 156}

Despite his five hundred years of memory, Fang Yuan reckons he knows less than one in a hundred thousand of all the Gu worms in this world, and Moonshadow Gu is one such gap. What he reads of it unsettles him: it suppresses thirty percent of a rank four Gu Master’s primeval essence, fifteen percent of a rank five’s, and sixty percent of a rank three’s, and against someone of his own C grade aptitude, whose usable essence runs only forty to fifty percent of normal, it would leave him unable to draw on any primeval essence at all. He recalls the Flower Wine Monk covered in blood on the shadow wall after losing to the fourth generation clan leader, and had assumed Moonshadow Gu caused those wounds. Learning it only suppresses essence rather than injures reopens the question of how the monk was actually hurt, and the whole inheritance turns into a mystery again. ^{ch. 156}

When the fifteen minutes end, the old Gu Master leads him back out. Fang Yuan sets the Golden Moon, Frost Moon, and Illusory Moon recipes aside anyway, since all three need large amounts of moon orchid flower petals that spoil within days and would starve once he leaves the clan to roam, and resolves to return the next day for the rank three recipes he has not yet seen. ^{ch. 156}