Can the blood of Incorruptible Justice be cold?
Watching Bai Ning Bing go, Fang Yuan judges him more dangerous now that he is no longer lost. He decides on the spot to leave Qing Mao Mountain rather than pursue their rivalry further, since it offers him nothing. He reasons through the likely outcomes of the lightning lycan crisis: the wolves overrunning the mountain, or one clan surviving to dominate the other. Every path, he concludes, is bad for him. He plans to reach the village, claim the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus, and take a healing Gu from the clan storage while the chaos still covers him, then leave at once. ch. 170
On the way, running on foot with his thunderwings spent, Fang Yuan is stopped by two strangers. One is Tie Xue Leng, a masked rank five Gu Master known across the Southern Border as the Divine Investigator. The other is his daughter Tie Ruo Nan, a rank three prodigy near Fang Yuan’s own age. Tie Xue Leng greets him politely and offers the pair’s help against the beast tide. Fang Yuan feigns alarm and claims he is running for reinforcements. ch. 170
Elsewhere, the two clan leaders brace for death. Their elders are dead, their primeval essence nearly spent, and the already wounded lightning lycan, its body gashed to the bone, sends the ordinary wolves in to finish them rather than fight itself. Tie Xue Leng arrives and uses his Righteous Gu to cow the wolf pack. He then batters the lycan into flight with a rank five Ironfist Grappling Gu, but lets it escape rather than pursue. He coughs corrosive blood from old injuries and waves off his daughter’s attempt to heal him. Fang Yuan and Tie Ruo Nan arrive in time to see the lycan driven off. The Bai clan leader, grateful, invites Tie Xue Leng to stay at Bai village. Gu Yue Bo instead reminds him that he already knows Tie Xue Leng has come for the murder investigation tied to Jia Fu’s request. Tie Xue Leng answers that the investigation itself will be led not by him but by his daughter. ch. 170
