Chapter 178

Fang Zheng had thought his brother’s fall from grace, the drinking, the C grade result, brought the tall mountain of Fang Yuan down to his own level. Learning the whole collapse was a performance leaves him convinced he never knew this brother at all, and a fear he does not want to name creeps in alongside the distance. He follows Tie Ruo Nan anyway, offering to answer anything she asks. ^{ch. 178}

Tie Ruo Nan narrows the Liquor worm’s origin to two causes: outside help, or an inheritance legacy. An inheritance would also explain a motive for killing Jia Jin Sheng, if he refused to stop pursuing the worm and followed Fang Yuan to an inheritance ground. She wants to see the Gu Yue clan’s history records, kept in the forbidden grounds and closed to outsiders and to anyone below the rank of elder. Gu Yue Yao Ji, who currently guards the forbidden area and wants Fang Yuan gone to clear the way against a rival faction, offers to bring the Tie father and daughter in herself. ^{ch. 178}

In the underground archive, Tie Ruo Nan reads that the Gu Yue clan’s first generation leader founded the village with a mysterious past, and she guesses he was a demonic cultivator. Tie Xue Leng answers that a demonic cultivator settling down and fading into a clan’s righteous descendants is common rather than strange, and when Tie Ruo Nan objects that this lets old crimes go unpunished, he tells her the world is grey rather than black and white, and that white can hide worse sins than black. She is not convinced, and argues that a wrongdoer should still answer for what he did; he tells her only that she should focus on the case for now. Reading on, she stops at an entry naming the fourth generation clan leader as the Flower Wine Monk, beside the words Liquor worm. ^{ch. 178}

A frenzy lightning wolf attacks Bai Ning Bing, who makes no move to dodge. A rank five white form immortal snake, drawn from the clan’s spirit spring into his aperture by his Northern Dark Ice Soul physique rather than refined by him, floods the wolf’s sight with smoke, but reacts too slowly to stop a thunderbolt that punches through Bai Ning Bing’s chest. The wound freezes shut and melts back into flesh, a recovery Bai Ning Bing credits to the ice physique itself. He tells the Bai clan leader that the snake is not bound to him and will only surface when his life is truly in danger. The clan leader reports that the three-clan negotiation over the wolf tide has failed and the clans have agreed instead to a tournament open only to Gu Masters aged thirty and under, its result deciding the compensation. Aware his life is ending, Bai Ning Bing welcomes the chance for one more fight, and hopes Fang Yuan will attend. ^{ch. 178}