Chapter 1973

After the qi tide passes, Plump Lady, a female immortal and member of Mo clan, a Western Desert super force, flies over the sand on a yellow cloud. Western Desert’s Gu Immortal world gave her that title, and she likes it so much that she calls herself by it and her original name is forgotten. She senses something unusual and stops. Below her lies a giant pit that she knows is no natural sand pit but the space left after something was drawn away. Feeling an ancient desolate plant’s aura, she understands that a Gu Immortal has secretly stolen one from wolf desert, which is Mo clan territory. ^{ch. 1973}

The thief’s actions are very clean. Disappointed, she records the scene with information path Gu worms and informs Mo clan, hoping its investigators will capture the thief. Then she leaves, because she has a mission. ^{ch. 1973}

She reaches Sand Wolf City, one of Mo clan’s main cities, in a vast oasis, and flies openly to City Lord Manor. The people waiting there kneel and pay their respects to the revered immortal. She waves off the prepared banquet and asks for a secret room for closed cultivation. She also asks about the Gu Masters with aptitude and loyalty she ordered gathered, and the city lord says the vast majority of the city’s Gu Masters have been screened. She will take them away after three days. ^{ch. 1973}

In the secret room she examines her immortal aperture and sighs. Her six thousand acres of sand farms mainly produce light sand and cold-warm flowing sand, her goods for a long time. After the fate war she absorbed five heaven path dao marks, and the landscape turned uneven, with a trench splitting the desert and thousands of acres of sand farms lost. She cannot afford a wisdom path Gu Immortal to restrain this, and Mo clan’s wisdom path Gu Immortals are not close to her. With the five regional walls gone, the five regions’ heaven and earth qi fuse and make her aperture unstable, and the best answer is to keep absorbing and releasing the qi along with the change. She wishes she had qi path attainment, but consoles herself that most Gu Immortals lack it too. ^{ch. 1973}

Plump Lady still feels intense danger, as do all the Gu Immortals of the unified five regions. Lone cultivators and super forces alike prepare for huge battles. Her task is to bring Gu Immortal seeds from Sand Wolf City back for Mo clan to nurture. Every force in the five regions and two heavens now spends its resources on nurturing Gu Immortals rather than storing them, since enemies would take everything if they were wiped out. She cannot discard her sand farms, her only source of revenue, so she must save them. ^{ch. 1973}

She rebuilds the farms and fixes their Gu formations, but the area of the Earth Trench cannot be fixed, so her farm stays split in two. She regrets having refused a Mo clan formation path Gu Immortal’s offer of help when she built it. An immortal formation would have cost much and used one of her only two rank six Immortal Gu as its core, and she did not want to expose her aperture. That formation path Gu Immortal is now extremely popular with everyone. She feels a little bitterness about her ordinary earth path inheritance, since Western Desert has the most earth path Gu Immortals, and cannot afford a second path. Because production falls greatly without sand-type immortal materials, she connects to treasure yellow heaven to buy fertile sand. ^{ch. 1973}

Gu Immortals there complain that they cannot move around, since they must keep absorbing and releasing qi and repairing their apertures. They trade news of qi tide deaths and destroyed fisheries. Also posted is Fang Yuan’s arrest warrant, by a mysterious force willing to pay a huge sum for his latest information. It says that he has the sovereign immortal aperture and body, can annex apertures to skip calamities, and has hit an all-time low in strength because he obtained too many heaven path dao marks. The secret of the sovereign immortal fetus Gu is completely exposed, though not by Heavenly Court: Fairy Zi Wei and Old Man Zheng Yuan released the warrant on Spectral Soul’s orders. ^{ch. 1973}

The Gu Immortals are jealous and hateful, but one says he would not dare expose Fang Yuan even after finding him. The whole world saw his pseudo venerable battle strength in the fate war, and nobody dares to contest his title of number one demon in the world. Plump Lady watches as a spectator and hopes never to meet him. She does not know that she once fought Fang Yuan, or that he took the ancient desolate plant stolen earlier. ^{ch. 1973}

While she cultivates, Peng Da and Mo Li, two figures in sorry states supporting each other, reach Sand Wolf City. The air currents from Fang Yuan taking the thousand wish tree saved them. The guard demands one primeval stone per person, and Mo Li pays two. Along the way Mo Li taught Peng Da to inspect his aperture, where he found three Gu worms, and explained primeval stones. Because Peng Da knows nothing of Gu Master cultivation, Mo Li believes his amnesia and invites him to stay at his home. ^{ch. 1973}

Mo Li’s huge house with a flower garden stands in the central area of the city. His wife, a rank two Gu Master, is happy and surprised to see him alive. He says his caravan is completely ruined and only the two of them survived, and she calls being alive the greatest blessing. Mo Li says he can rebuild a caravan as long as he is alive. ^{ch. 1973}

His wife tells him that the city lord has ordered the selection of Gu Masters with A grade aptitude and loyalty to Mo clan to nurture into Gu Immortals. Their son wants to sign up, though his aptitude is B grade, and she says loyalty to Mo clan matters most. Mo Li realizes showing enough loyalty costs money and asks how much. She names a sum that leaves Peng Da gaping and that all their remaining savings will not cover, and she leaves the decision to her husband. Mo Li says he will borrow shamelessly, glad that their son wants to improve himself. His wife is touched but worried about the destroyed caravan. Mo Li feels confident that as a rank three Gu Master with his strength intact, he only needs time to recover from the loss, provided his luck is not bad. ^{ch. 1973}