Encountering a demonic Gu Master
By a lake, Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing find traces of a fire where meat was cooked. Fang Yuan listens through the roots of Earth Communication Ear grass, finds no ambush, and judges from the ashes that the fire was lit half a month ago by someone alone. Bai Ning Bing says Gu Masters of a clan travel in fives, so this one seems to be a demonic Gu Master. Demonic Gu Masters are very vigilant, so meeting one definitely means a fight unless enough strength is displayed to make it shrink back. A Gu Master who roams this wilderness alone has around rank four cultivation. Fang Yuan is rank one at the initial stage and Bai Ning Bing a new rank three, so they would most likely be done for. ch. 209
Fang Yuan decides they must recuperate. He takes bandages and medicine from the tusita flower and gives most to Bai Ning Bing. Because she drew most of the frenzy needle bees’ fire, his Carapace Gu left him with barely any injuries. Her back is full of fingertip-sized holes, since the bees countered the Sky Canopy Gu, but with the Ice Muscles Gu used earlier, two layers of defense saved her. Little medicine and few bandages remain, so Fang Yuan says they really need a healing Gu, though no chance in half a month has worked out. Medicine is expendable, hard to make and slow to collect, while a healing Gu works better and spends primeval essence that recovers naturally. ch. 209
Bai Ning Bing then wants to slice off her breasts, which burden her in battle, but fears the wound without a healing Gu worm. Having lived as a man all her life, she treats this body as nothing sacred, and knows the Yang Gu in Fang Yuan’s possession could restore a male body. Fang Yuan tells her to wrap them with a bandage like an injury. She sighs that this is the best she can do now. ch. 209
Wild beasts come to drink at night, so they clear the birds from a cliff cave and stay there. A few days later her injuries have mostly recovered. They continue toward Bai Gu mountain. On the second day Fang Yuan finds burnt wood left by the demonic Gu Master. On the third they reach a stream where an intense battle left the skeleton of a hundred beast king green python. Fang Yuan guesses the demonic Gu Master has rank three cultivation too, and he would rather face wild beasts than her. ch. 209
That afternoon they find cut-away flesh on the ground, and Fang Yuan judges that she is poisoned. Bai Ning Bing is delighted, since a weaker enemy favors them. As the traces grow, he deduces they are closing in, that her injury is worsening, and that she may turn more extreme. One afternoon Fang Yuan hears breathing in a cave and says she is at her last breath. Bai Ning Bing wants to strike, but he says to wait, since she will die of poison in a few days. ch. 209
A weak voice from the cave says it has found them and asks whether they want her primeval stones and Gu worms. Fang Yuan retreats at once, sure that her firm tone means traps. She comes out and tells them they will all stay. Fang Yuan vanishes from sight and leaves the fight to Bai Ning Bing, who activates the Sky Canopy Gu, summons the Chainsaw Golden Centipede, and suppresses the Gu Master in three rounds. The Gu Master is a middle aged woman without shoes, her face and limbs green from the python’s poison. She gives way and leaps back into the cave, Bai Ning Bing chases, and Fang Yuan’s warning comes too late. An explosion under Bai Ning Bing’s feet blows her away. ch. 209
