Chapter 175

Questioned about the attack, Fang Zheng denies knowing any motive. He points instead to the clan’s rivals: the Bai clan, and especially the Xiong clan, which is known to recruit demonic Gu Masters against rising talents like himself. Tie Ruo Nan’s line stalls there. The Xiong clan is believed wiped out by the wolf tide. ^{ch. 175}

That belief breaks when a Xiong clan envoy arrives. An ancestral Gu let a large part of the clan hide and survive the wolf tide together, and the news turns what had looked like a two-way contest between the Gu Yue and Bai clans into a three-way one. The Gu Yue elders call the retreat cowardly, accusing the Xiong clan of using the wolf tide to weaken its rivals, and resolve to send an envoy who will judge the Xiong clan’s remaining strength: side with the Bai clan against it if it is still strong, move to seize its spirit spring if it is not, and press it for compensation regardless. ^{ch. 175}

No elder wants the job. Leaving the village now would cost them their place in dividing the clan’s still-unsettled interests. Gu Yue Yao Ji nominates Mo Chen, Mo Chen returns the nomination to Yao Ji, and the hall splits behind one name or the other until elders are arguing openly. Clan leader Gu Yue Bo watches without joining in, reading the dispute as the medicine faction’s first open contest with the weakened Mo faction, and wondering whether Fang Yuan’s apparent distance from the Mo faction leaves an opening for himself. ^{ch. 175}

Fang Yuan then stands and volunteers himself as envoy. The hall is stunned; the elders read it as throwing away his own share of the clan’s interests for nothing. His real aim is to set the three clans against each other, or, failing that, simply to leave the village. ^{ch. 175}

Before the elders can answer, Tie Ruo Nan bursts in with her father, Fang Zheng, and Gu Yue Jiang He behind her, and declares that anyone but Fang Yuan should go. She names the dead demonic Gu Master as Wang Er, once a hunter at the mountain’s foot. He attacked Fang Zheng only by mistake: his real target was his twin, Fang Yuan, whose killing of Wang Er’s family had driven him to revenge. Gu Yue Jiang He kneels and confirms it. He admits he had found and hidden the killing under his own jurisdiction rather than report it. ^{ch. 175}

Fang Zheng, enraged, confronts Fang Yuan over the killing itself: an old man and a girl, both innocent mortals, did not deserve to be cut down. Fang Yuan answers with indifference. He reads the Tie family’s speed in unravelling this case as proof they will just as surely uncover his killing of Jia Jin Sheng, and feels the pressure of that closing in. ^{ch. 175}