Chapter 176

Before the assembled elders, Gu Yue Bo asks Fang Yuan outright whether he killed old Wang’s entire family, and Fang Yuan answers, coldly and without hesitation, that he did. Fang Zheng closes his eyes in grief, the brother he thought he knew replaced by someone he now fears. Fang Yuan tells Tie Ruo Nan he feels no need to explain himself, adding only that he had not known Wang Er was a demonic Gu Master and that Fang Zheng was caught in it by accident. ^{ch. 176}

When Fang Zheng presses him for some word of comfort or apology, Fang Yuan mocks him for being too soft, and Fang Zheng answers with a threat of his own: he is close to breaking through to rank three himself. Gu Yue Bo cuts the confrontation off and sends Fang Zheng away. Tie Xue Leng apologises for his daughter barging into the clan’s own discussion, and in the same breath asks that Fang Yuan remain in the village while he stays a suspect in Jia Jin Sheng’s case; Gu Yue Bo agrees, and Fang Yuan accepts without argument. No punishment follows the killing itself, since a Gu Master’s death toll among mortals carries none for the clan. ^{ch. 176}

Outside, Tie Ruo Nan is still furious that the clan brushed the killings aside, and asks her father why Gu Masters believe mortal lives are theirs to take. She apologises separately for using her Intuition Gu against his instructions. Tie Xue Leng tells her he sees his own young hatred of injustice in her, but that her ambition of one law for Gu Masters and mortals alike is far larger than his own ever was, and heavier. He says he will not interfere further, and wishes her the life she wants. ^{ch. 176}

He then gives her a letter from Jia Fu recording the whole of Jia Jin Sheng’s case: how Fang Yuan won a Liquor Worm by rock gambling, how the bamboo gentleman was used on him in questioning, and how his bidding at a caravan’s second visit won him a recruitment offer. Tie Ruo Nan rereads the bidding details again and again, growing more suspicious each time. She lists what troubles her: a C grade aptitude cultivating faster than Fang Zheng’s own, luck that turned six purple gold stones from his first rock gambling into two live Gu, a mudskin toad and a Liquor Worm, and a delicacy with the Moonlight Gu, cutting rock without damaging the core inside, that she finds hard to credit in a student. Then her eyes catch on one line in the letter, and she declares she has found a real problem with Fang Yuan, without yet saying what it is. ^{ch. 176}

Elsewhere, pressure from the medicine faction and the risk of his fallen rank being exposed force Gu Yue Mo Chen to invite Fang Yuan back to negotiate. Fang Yuan agrees to cut his price by thirty percent, on condition Mo Chen pay forty thousand primeval stones up front as a show of good faith and hand over a Pig Iron Gu and an Afterlife Grass Gu. Mo Chen can give the Pig Iron Gu, but says his warehouse holds no Afterlife Grass Gu and that the primeval stones will have to come in installments. Fang Yuan tells him to send what he can first, that marriage can wait until then, and that he will not commit his loyalty before it arrives. ^{ch. 176}

Once Fang Yuan is gone, Gu Yue Mo Yan comes out from where she had been listening, her face marked with crying. Mo Chen tells her the family needs her sacrifice, and she agrees. She holds no soft feelings for Fang Yuan at all, only hatred and disgust, but she has already resolved to marry him for the sake of her family. ^{ch. 176}