Chapter 179

The official record says the fourth clan head killed the Flower Wine Monk after a sneak attack broke a mercy the clan head had intended to show, and that the clan head died soon after from the same attack’s wounds. Tie Ruo Nan is disappointed rather than satisfied: without an heir, the Flower Wine Monk left no inheritance that could explain where Fang Yuan’s Liquor worm came from. Gu Yue Yao Ji cuts the visit short before she can read further. ^{ch. 179}

Fang Zheng offers a new lead outside the pavilion: Chi faction elder Gu Yue Chi Lian once defended Fang Yuan in public, and Chi and Mo were the two dominant factions in the clan before the wolf tide. Tie Ruo Nan, doubting herself against her father’s reputation for solving cases cleanly, resolves to keep working the theory rather than lean on him. She reasons that Chi faction would only give a Liquor worm to an unproven student like Fang Yuan if he forced their hand, so she looks for what he could have held over them. ^{ch. 179}

With her father’s permission, she plants a Cactus Pointer, a rank three consumable Gu grown from a buried seed, and opens the flower bud it produces to find a single word written inside: Aptitude. Tie Xue Leng warns beforehand that the Gu only speculates from what its user already knows and is not guaranteed to be right. The word sends her back to Jia Fu’s report, where Gu Yue Chi Lian is recorded buying a Cleansing Water Gu, which only cleanses foreign primeval essence traces from an aperture. She theorizes that Chi faction’s heir, Gu Yue Chi Cheng, has a weak aptitude propped up by Chi Lian pouring in his own primeval essence, the Cleansing Water Gu covering the traces, and that Fang Yuan uncovered the secret and blackmailed the faction for the Liquor worm. Fang Zheng objects that Chi Cheng is recorded at B grade, and Tie Ruo Nan answers that examining his aperture directly would settle it. Tie Xue Leng refuses outright. They came to solve a killing, not to upend another clan’s politics. Tie Ruo Nan proposes the alternative instead, asking to view the awakening ceremony as recorded by the clan’s Photo-audio Gu. ^{ch. 179}

Gu Yue Bo agrees to fetch the recording and asks a favor in return: if Fang Yuan is the killer, delay any move against him until after the three-clan tournament two days away. Fang Yuan’s mortal victims cost the clan nothing with outsiders, but Jia Jin Sheng’s death risks the trade relationship and the retaliation of the Jia family, and Gu Yue Bo weighs that cost against Fang Yuan’s value as a rank three fighter the clan needs for the tournament. ^{ch. 179}