Chapter 166

White-haired, blue-eyed, and missing an arm, the attacker is unmistakably Bai Ning Bing. Fang Yuan senses the killing intent behind him before the ice blade lands, leaps back, and throws up the white armor of his Sky Canopy Gu just as the blade strikes the ground and icicles erupt after him. He somersaults clear and slides down toward the valley floor, while Bai Ning Bing laughs and shivers with the urge to kill him, drawing the attention of every Gu Master fighting below. ^{ch. 166}

A Bai clan Gu Master rushes to help, over his own lord’s furious order to stay out of it, insisting that a man who has lost an arm and carries the clan’s hopes cannot be risked further. Gu Yue Bo recognizes Fang Yuan but, still doubtful of him for vanishing before the wolf tide and pressed hard by the Bai clan’s fighters, orders his own Gu Masters to secure the wolf’s materials rather than send anyone to help him. ^{ch. 166}

The Bai Gu Master grows a huge yellow-lit mud arm out of the ground and grabs for Fang Yuan. A dark golden light bursts from Fang Yuan’s aperture and tears the arm apart. It is the Chainsaw Golden Centipede, refined all along and never shown. Fang Yuan swallows his own fist into its mouth and shrinks it around his forearm until its two rows of razor blades form what looks like a hiltless sword. With his Thunderwings Gu carrying him forward at lightning speed, he closes the distance before the Bai Gu Master’s own defense finishes forming and cuts him in half at the waist. ^{ch. 166}

The killing stops every fight nearby cold, both clans staring in shock at a rank three elder cut down in an instant. Bai Ning Bing is delighted rather than dismayed, praising the centipede and demanding Fang Yuan fight him directly. Fang Yuan calls him noisy and turns to meet him, and the chainsaw shatters Bai Ning Bing’s ice blade on contact, then whips across his chest hard enough to throw him into a rock. ^{ch. 166}

Bai Ning Bing barely rolls clear of a follow-up strike that shatters the rock where he had been sitting, and rage at being pressed by a mere rank three initial stage cultivator, despite having let his own suppressed cultivation rise freely since his fight with Gu Yue Qing Shu, drives him back in with a fresh ice blade. Fang Yuan, stronger than him from the Black and White Boar Gu, wields the centipede as easily as a branch, extending and shrinking it at will until Bai Ning Bing can barely defend, his ice muscles nearly spent and his robe shredded. ^{ch. 166}

Unable to win up close, Bai Ning Bing falls back and switches to range, first sending ice birds from the Blue Bird Ice Coffin Gu that Fang Yuan shoots down with a moonblade from his own left arm, then mixing in icicles from the Icicle Gu that Fang Yuan dodges or absorbs on his Sky Canopy Gu. Bai Ning Bing starts to gain the upper hand at range, until Fang Yuan detaches the centipede and burrows it into the ground out of sight, and Bai Ning Bing, unnerved by the hidden threat, curses and backs away. ^{ch. 166}