Chapter 20

Fang Yuan calms and reasons that the Spring Autumn Cicada’s gift is rebirth, so using it once now, while it is this weak, would kill it, though its bare aura costs it nothing. He presses a trace of that aura onto the shivering, nearly spent Liquor worm, and its remaining will freezes like a mouse cornered by a cat. With the resistance gone, his primeval essence drives in unopposed, the worm’s white body dyes fully green within moments, and the Liquor worm is refined at last. It now answers his will like moving his own finger, and settles beside the hovering cicada in the sea. ^{ch. 20}

With the cicada’s aura in hand, Fang Yuan turns to the Moonlight Gu and presses the same pressure onto it. Its will surrenders at once and cowers into a corner of its own body. His essence dyes it jade green in a blink, and a single thought strangles what is left of its will. The whole process takes under five minutes and, unlike the six stones the Liquor worm cost him, drains not a single primeval stone. The Moonlight Gu returns to its blue crystal form and settles on his forehead as a pale crescent mark instead of entering his aperture. ^{ch. 20}

Delighted, Fang Yuan realizes he can now press the cicada’s aura onto any rank one Gu and refine it with ease, C grade talent or not, and decides to go claim first place at once. He lets the cicada fade back into sleep and hides the Liquor worm at the corner of his bed so the academy will not find it. Fifteen minutes later a subordinate wakes the academy elder to report that a student has already refined the Moonlight Gu, and the elder assumes it must be the A grade talent Fang Zheng. Face to face with the twin who looks just like his brother, the elder still greets him as Fang Zheng, until Fang Yuan corrects him: he is Fang Yuan, and Fang Zheng is his younger brother. Stunned, the elder points at the crescent mark on his forehead and asks if he truly refined the Gu himself and stands first, and Fang Yuan answers only that it seems so, if no one beat him to it. The academy elder has no answer. ^{ch. 20}