Chapter 1655

Fang Yuan dives with the village Gu Masters, and water shell Gu eases the pressure on them at once. A large group of weaving sea spiders approaches, fighting by numbers and webbing prey. The Gu Masters turn pale. Fang Yuan forms a huge whirlpool that sweeps the spiders away, then deliberately says he cannot sustain it long, so the group dives deeper while the disoriented spiders move off. The Gu Masters admire his method, since trapping without killing avoids the blood that would draw more trouble. With Fang Yuan as guardian they reach the Earth Trench, where a lot of black oil lies because no Gu Immortal has come to excavate it. ^{ch. 1655}

The Gu Masters collect the leaking streams with their Gu worms while Fang Yuan watches from afar. With his refinement path quasi-supreme grandmaster attainment level, he understands their core Gu worms at a look. He plans to refine Gu worms from black oil to raise their efficiency. A huge group of seashell sharks then approaches, far stronger than the sea spiders. Born toothless, seashell sharks set seashells in their mouths as teeth that root and harden with age, so infants are weak and adults rule other sharks. ^{ch. 1655}

The Gu Masters are unafraid and use the black oil terrain, spraying barriers of collected oil and feeding the sharks, which are too huge to move easily in it, to the oil. The oil slowly devours them and, left long enough, would turn their whole bodies into new black oil. Fang Yuan sighs, remembering the nightmares he had in his previous life after first seeing this. He advises dragging out the trapped sharks as usable Gu materials. The old village head hesitates over the pollution, but Fang Yuan, who has designed a Gu recipe with the sharks as its main material, says he can remove the oil. ^{ch. 1655}

Trusting him after the water shell Gu, the head orders everyone to work but keep clear of the oil, whose food path dao marks can prove fatal and whose corrosion no mortal body endures. Fang Yuan promises to remove any that sticks, and the Gu Masters drag out the sharks, most still alive. A Gu Master then pulls out a mermaid covered in black oil, her build a girl’s, with some life force left. Fang Yuan steps in, and the oil moves off her like an obedient child and gathers before him as a big black ball. The Gu Masters admire and envy him, but his smile freezes at the mermaid’s face. He goes into a daze and says Mo Er. ^{ch. 1655}