Chapter 1788

In a dim room at Wu clan’s headquarters, Wu Yong sits ashen and motionless, an information path Gu worm still a little warm in his hand. An intense conference of Southern Border righteous path higher-ups has just ended, as heated as a market. Xia clan’s and Ba clan’s Gu Immortals came close to screaming, and the rest argued that Fang Yuan had ambushed them and captured all their Gu Immortals. One voice put the clansmen in his hands above reputation. Fang Yuan left an information path Gu worm asking them to wait for his reply, but nothing has come. ^{ch. 1788}

Wu Yong scorns the talk as useless and judges that Fang Yuan has the absolute initiative. Even if he rejects Fang Yuan’s extortion, Xia clan and Ba clan will not, since their first supreme elders are the captives. Heavenly Court’s arrangements were useless too, and contacting Fairy Zi Wei was wasted effort, though he blames Fang Yuan’s terrifying strength rather than Heavenly Court’s weakness. Only Chi Qu You stayed calm and was first to propose pursuing Fang Yuan. Barely anyone responded. ^{ch. 1788}

Wu Yong does not know that Chi Qu You is shocked and anxious inside and made the proposal only to conceal himself deeper. The evidence Lu Wei Yin showed them is genuine. Fang Yuan captured two rank eights and multiple rank seven experts. He won with dream realms that Chi Qu You himself gave him, which makes Chi Qu You the biggest contributor to the victory and the greatest traitor of the righteous path. Chi Qu You had expected Fang Yuan to use the realms against the righteous path, but common sense limited him. ^{ch. 1788}

Chi Qu You gets a headache from the time path super immortal formation, which stopped Gu Immortals from teleporting. Time path formations affect the flow of time inside, so Fang Yuan fought for days and nights while only several hours passed outside. They are poor at concealment, yet this one was so deeply hidden that it could not be detected until Fang Yuan activated it. Chi Qu You is stumped. ^{ch. 1788}

Inside Heavenly Court, Fairy Zi Wei finishes her deductions and sighs deeply. She concludes that the formation should be a past arrangement of Shadow Sect, which set up formations from time path dao marks around natural tributaries of the River of Time. Fang Yuan used it perfectly, added more time path formations inside, and captured every Southern Border pursuer with dream realms in one go. ^{ch. 1788}

She regrets that the righteous path of Southern Border never learned of Chen Yi’s and Thunder Ghost True Monarch’s deaths, since it would then have sent more than two rank eight Gu Immortals. She first hoped the two were alive, and later hid their deaths so as not to raise Fang Yuan’s reputation and so that the other four regions would not compromise with him. Western Desert’s Tang clan and Southern Border’s Chi clan are doing so in secret. Her plan was to keep the regions hostile to him so that losses on either side would benefit Heavenly Court, which would then deduce his location and exterminate him. Instead he won one-sidedly before her arrangements could take effect. ^{ch. 1788}

Among his many paths, deep wisdom path attainment keeps her from deducing his location without many more clues. The ambush shows formation path attainment of at least great grandmaster, which might come from Shadow Sect’s leftovers or from a variant human Gu Immortal he took in at Lang Ya blessed land. She thinks the first unlikely, since he did not use it back then. She goes to where Spectral Soul is imprisoned and soul searches his memories for the formation’s secrets. The formation is strongly concealed but cannot summon year beasts, so Fang Yuan must have added that later. ^{ch. 1788}