Chapter 188

Fang Yuan presses the attack, and the Chainsaw Golden Centipede cuts down over twenty more bladewing blood bats before he decides to run. By the time the scattered swarm reacts, he is already a hundred steps ahead, though about twenty bats keep the chase. The Thunderwings Gu, corrupted by the Blood Frenzy Gu, has reached its limit and started fighting his control, so Fang Yuan lets it go, throwing it behind him. The bats swarm the abandoned Gu instead, tearing it apart, and by the time they catch up his primeval essence, fed by the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus, has recovered past half. He kills eight or nine more before the rest flee, and reflects that a Gu built for grappling, rather than his Centipede, would let him capture two or three alive. ^{ch. 188}

Turning deeper into the cave, Fang Yuan pieces together why the bats were sent for him at all. The first gen Gu Yue, whose Blood Wight Gu form left his aperture dead and unable to recover primeval essence on its own, needs the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus to escape that weakness, and it was he who loosed two bat groups at Fang Yuan to seize it, a plan Tie Xue Leng’s soundwave indirectly foiled. Whichever of the two wins their fight, Fang Yuan reasons, both will still come after him: Tie Xue Leng to punish him, the first gen Gu Yue for the Lotus. He resolves to leave Qing Mao Mountain immediately, and digs on through the collapsed passage with the Chainsaw Golden Centipede until, three to four hours later, a thick rock wall blocks the way completely, one even the Centipede cannot cut through. ^{ch. 188}

Elsewhere on the mountainside, the three-clan fighting continues without him. Bai Zhong Shui, a young Bai clan Gu Master, downs a Xiong clan opponent before Fang Zheng’s group ambushes her with a moonblade, and she answers with a water ball from her own Gu. Xiong Lin arrives with more Xiong clan fighters and reveals the alliance: Gu Yue clan and Xiong clan have joined for this first round, meaning to finish Bai Ning Bing off together. Bai Zhong Shui, coughing blood, taunts that the alliance only proves they fear facing Bai Ning Bing one on one, since a later round will still pit one fighter against him alone. Both sides close on her at once, and she is surrounded. ^{ch. 188}

Back in the tunnel, the rock wall resists hours of grinding from the Chainsaw Golden Centipede and the Blood Moon Gu, and Fang Yuan advances about fifty centimetres before he senses a faint lifeform through it. Listening with the Earth Communication Ear Grass, he digs through to find the source: the Thousand Li Earthwolf Spider, a rank five Gu sealed inside a cocoon, weak and half dormant. He recognises it, and the pieces fall into place: the Flower Wine Monk, stopped by the first gen Gu Yue while trying to nurture the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus in Gu Yue village long ago, used this spider to dig an escape route, then died of his wounds after leaving behind an inheritance meant to let his descendants seize the Lotus and ruin the clan. The novel does not explain why the spider itself sealed into hibernation, or what the first gen Gu Yue was truly after. ^{ch. 188}

Because the cocoon has left it so weak, Fang Yuan refines the rank five spider with ease, the same way he once refined a White Boar Gu taken from the Earth Treasury Flower Gu. Having thrown away the Thunderwings Gu, he needed a new mount, and the spider, a large steed-type Gu that feeds on soil, gives him one. He rides it along the tunnel the Flower Wine Monk once dug escaping, but a rank five Gu drains rank three primeval essence fast, so he has to stop again and again, drawing on both the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus and primeval stones to keep going. Digging through cave-ins as they come, he slowly puts the blood lake graveyard behind him and climbs toward the surface. ^{ch. 188}