The vision on the wall repeats twice more, and only then does Fang Yuan say that he understands. He works out that a Photo-audio Gu, which feeds on light and sound to survive, recorded the scene and has stayed alive here on the cave’s red light and the waterfall’s sound reaching through the crevice. The recording exposes a failed plot: the clan head plotted against the Flower Wine Monk, lost the fight, and even his sneak attack only drove the monk back before costing his own life. Ashamed of the truth, the surviving elders swapped the two men’s roles when they told the story afterward. The clan head became the hero, and the monk became the one who supposedly died on the spot. But a body found elsewhere breaks that story. ch. 16
In his previous life the Gu Master who found this place feared being tied to the Flower Wine Monk and reported the treasure to the clan for safety instead of keeping it, earning a reward for his loyalty. Fang Yuan will not make the same choice, and after so much trouble searching he means to keep everything for himself. He pulls the vines fully apart. The remains hold only a bag of fifteen primeval stones, which Fang Yuan calls a miser’s hoard before reasoning that healing from the battle and the lingering taint of the Moonshadow Gu must have used up the rest. Besides a few withered flower and grass type Gu, there is nothing else. ch. 16
Fang Yuan weighs telling the clan, then rejects it. He judges the recording could shame the clan if sold to a rival village, but not badly enough to matter, and decides he owes the clan no loyalty worth spending on it. Retracing his path outside, he realizes this place sits inside the mountain wall rather than underground as his previous life’s account claimed, and concludes the clan destroyed the recording wall and spread a false story afterward. Luck, effort, and the wine together made tonight succeed. Counting the fifteen stones against the two he already carried, Fang Yuan now holds seventeen primeval stones in total. He means to shut himself in the inn and refine the Liquor worm as his vital Gu, so he can return to the academy dormitories and draw on the clan’s cultivation resources. ch. 16
