The elderly Gu Master’s crane cries out over the battlefield, and from far off, thousands of answering calls come back. Fang Yuan, still tracking sound through the Earth Communication Ear Grass, hears it before anyone else and feels a stab of danger. The Bai clan leader first takes it for migrating birds and warns against attacking recklessly, then sees the truth: over ten thousand cranes, gathered into one mass, diving on the arena. ch. 191
Someone guesses a myriad beast king must be behind a flock this size, and the survivors, having only just outlasted a wolf tide, despair that Qing Mao Mountain now faces a crane disaster as well. The cranes fold their wings and drop like arrows; more than half the gathered Gu Masters are killed in the first strike alone. Each wingbeat lands with a boar’s strength and each claw can break rock, and with no village walls to shelter behind in open wilderness, beaks pierce hearts and claws crush skulls through the crowd. ch. 191
Fang Yuan, still blind in the maze fog, dodges by ear as the cranes come for him too, until Gu Yue Bo’s shout reaches him nearby. Puzzled by the protective note in the clan leader’s voice, Fang Yuan weighs the odds and answers anyway, since staying close to a rank four Gu Master is his best chance of surviving the attack. Gu Yue Bo, relieved to hear him, sets their old conflict aside and promises to see him safely back to the village. ch. 191
Fang Yuan knows the village is in truth the more dangerous place for him, but judges the cranes the nearer threat and agrees to follow. The elderly Gu Master descends on his crane and declares that no one here will escape; Gu Yue Bo identifies him on sight as rank five. Blind and unable to see him, Fang Yuan wonders why this minor, resource-poor mountain is suddenly drawing rank five experts at all, and guesses the answer lies with the first gen Gu Yue. ch. 191
Reasoning that only a rank five Gu Master stands a real chance against another, and that the new arrival is as much an opportunity as a danger, Fang Yuan tells Gu Yue Bo that the first gen ancestor has fully awakened and that the village is safe, a claim that shocks the clan leader into committing fully to getting him there. Gu Yue Bo fights through crane after crane to clear the way, taking hit after hit meant for Fang Yuan, until he is finally surrounded and can go no further. Fang Yuan stays safe behind him for the moment. ch. 191
When the maze fog finally fades on its own, Fang Yuan finds the ground littered with human and crane corpses alike, and Gu Yue Bo covered in wounds taken again and again in his place. He recognises the birds as Iron Beak Flying Cranes, a species native to the Middle Kingdom rather than the Southern Border, and the elder’s mount, hovering above, as a myriad beast king. Seeing the surviving Gu Masters still scattered and being picked off in isolation, Fang Yuan urges Gu Yue Bo to rally them into one group, and Gu Yue Bo calls out that the clan has a way to deal with a rank five and asks everyone to gather with him. ch. 191
Old enemies among the three clans, driven by the threat of death, converge on him despite themselves. Watching from above, the elder considers letting them regroup so he can finish them all together and hold Gu Yue Bo’s people as leverage against his real target, but decides the three rank four clan leaders are dangerous enough to remove first, and strikes all three with a slowing light that Gu Yue Bo cannot shake off. Unable to break free, Gu Yue Bo orders the Gu Yue clansmen to protect Fang Yuan at all costs, since he alone knows the way out, and turns to fight the elder himself. Surrounded by clansmen casting healing and speed buffs over him, Fang Yuan watches the three clan leaders, despite their mutual hatred, fight together and die one by one, and the cranes force their way past them into Gu Yue village. ch. 191
The village falls into chaos: bamboo buildings collapse, the clan pavilion stands half destroyed, the square runs with blood water, and the ground shakes further from Tie Xue Leng’s own fight with the first gen Gu Yue somewhere below. Gu Yue Yao Ji, unable to find Gu Yue Bo among the returning wounded, cries out in alarm at the sight of the crane flock closing in, and Fang Yuan says nothing in reply. Taunted by the elder to come out and face him, the first gen Gu Yue answers: blood water fountains up in the square as his coffin rises out of it, and as a blood wight he confronts the elder with shock that he survived, accusing him of secretly orchestrating an earlier attack the chapter does not name. ch. 191
