Killed Instantly
Shen Cong Sheng stares at the Merit Obelisk, anxious beneath his calm. His foundation is too shallow against the Paradise Earth true inheritance, while Fang Yuan holds a huge advantage by taking mid-sized missions. Though he knows Fang Yuan means to sow discord, he forces the other Gu Immortals to exchange for rewards and compensates them with immortal materials from his own stock. Their resentment deepens, and none of the rewards they exchange is the one that allows mid-sized missions. He gambles on one of the three likely rewards still left, and it is the wrong one. They have spent almost all their merit points on rewards that help but are not very significant. ch. 1896
Shen Cong Sheng wonders whether the good person title is the one, and he sighs deeply. He decides to accumulate more points and keep exchanging. Before that, he appeases the immortals with another batch of immortal materials, but their expressions change only slightly. In this paradise his rank eight battle strength can do nothing to them, and that is the main reason his influence is declining. ch. 1896
Fang Yuan stands in the clouds above a sea market centered on a small island ringed by Gu Houses shaped like fishing boats. The island floods for more than half of each year, so the market is not open all year round. He knows it well from his previous life, when he took a mission here to punish a merchant who had framed Xia Lin. This time his mission is a mid-sized one, with different characters. Xia Lin arrives, energetic and bright-eyed, improved from the inside out by his guidance, and his investigative method finds her at once. ch. 1896
He does not approach her but scouts the island and the sea depths, where he finds an earth path and water path formation that sustains the island and improves the surrounding sea. The formation is damaged, its earth path portion eroded, which is why the island floods. He wants to repair it, but his formation path attainment is grandmaster and the work needs a great grandmaster. His earth path attainment is only master, while his water path attainment is grandmaster. He judges that a formation path great grandmaster built it, not Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable. His previous life showed that earlier Gu Immortals had entered the paradise, and the builder was evidently one of them. He expects some gain at Wu Shuai’s end soon, sends what he detects to his time path clone, and follows Xia Lin through the crowd. ch. 1896
Xia Lin enters the Golden Jade House gambling den and takes out an information path mortal Gu to return a loan. She borrowed primeval stones for her grandfather’s expensive sea funeral, and gather oil Gu from Fang Yuan has since let her earn a large sum selling oil. The scarred merman serving her says the agreement is not as she thinks. She protests that the ten percent interest has been raised to sixty. He threatens her with a fate worse than death, and she attacks with a torrent that washes him into the wall. ch. 1896
The merman, a rank three, dies there, and the crowd is deeply shocked. Xia Lin is only rank two, but a rank two killer move formed from Fang Yuan’s Gu worms killed him in one hit, and she stands dazed. Fang Yuan transmits to her, and she answers with deep joy. He does not show himself but instructs her on finding an excuse to take over the entire Golden Jade House as justified. ch. 1896
