Chapter 201

Five days earlier, in the blood barrier at Qing Mao Mountain, Fang Yuan had fought at Bai Ning Bing’s side and gathered plunder from the slaughter afterward. Every Gu worm he took was already injured. Five days without food on the river killed them one by one. Fang Yuan still lacks a healing Gu of his own choosing. When Bai Ning Bing wishes aloud that her own worms had survived the self-detonation, he answers that not everything needs a Gu to fix. ^{ch. 201}

He calls out the tusita flower, a lantern shaped Gu that spins in midair, and it releases bandages, medicine cans, and small bottles wrapped in red light. He explains the disinfecting powder and the clot forming paste, then splits the supplies between them. Bai Ning Bing recognizes mortal methods she once learned at the academy, though the smell of the paste makes her recoil. Fang Yuan treats his own wounds without flinching, used to the burn and the stench from his previous life, while she works on hers, her torn robe leaving her half bared without her noticing or caring. ^{ch. 201}

From the tusita flower he also produces two full sets of clothes, prepared long before he ever meant to leave the village, close enough in age and build to fit Bai Ning Bing as well. Once dressed and bandaged, she confronts the change to her body more directly, and asks when she will get the Yang Gu back. Fang Yuan tells her not until he regains rank three, and turns to wash his own torn but salvageable robe in the river. His silence tells Bai Ning Bing exactly where she stands: rank three but without a single Gu worm, powerless against a man who could destroy the Yang Gu with a thought and strand her as a woman forever. ^{ch. 201}

Humiliated at being outmaneuvered, she demands jerky when her stomach growls, and Fang Yuan hands her a bag from the tusita flower; the meat is tough as wood but fills her all the same. He produces an iron pot next, then coal, kerosene, flint, and a metal rack, all before she can even think to climb the cliff behind their beach for firewood. Suspicious of how thoroughly he had planned ahead, she presses him on whether he always meant to flee Qing Mao Mountain, but he answers only by asking her to fetch water. ^{ch. 201}

They boil the jerky into a soft, warming meal, gritty with river sand but welcome all the same. When Bai Ning Bing asks to cook more, Fang Yuan refuses to spend the food, and lists off the dangers of the forest behind them, wild beasts, wild Gu worms, and meat neither of them can be sure is safe, until she has no answer left. He decides against pushing the point, judging she has taken enough for one day. ^{ch. 201}

Fang Yuan chooses to camp there for the night, on a beach walled by cliffs on three sides that keep most predators out, though the two agree to keep watch in shifts regardless. He then lends her his Chainsaw Golden Centipede and Sky Canopy Gu, both rank three, since his own rank one body cannot use their full strength even boosted by his aptitude and the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus. Between Gu Masters a worm can be lent this way, obeying a borrower only as long as the true owner allows it, and can be recalled at the owner’s will alone. Such lending is rare even so, and Fang Yuan’s easy willingness to do it puts Bai Ning Bing on guard. ^{ch. 201}