Plotting
Rocks and smoke fill the air as the blast throws Bai Ning Bing to the ground, but she is back on her feet in a jump, protected and unharmed by the Sky Canopy Gu, though its charge fades by at least thirty percent from the impact. The explosion has carved a crater two to three metres across. From inside the cave, the demonic Gu Master laughs, daring her to come again if she has the guts. ch. 210
Furious but not reckless, Bai Ning Bing works out that a few more hits like that would have destroyed the Sky Canopy Gu entirely. She reasons the blast burst up from the ground itself, wonders whether staying off the ground could dodge it, then realizes she has no flying Gu and would land eventually anyway, and that the demonic Gu Master’s earlier taunt was meant to bait her into a rash attack. She threatens instead to simply camp outside and wait, since the demonic Gu Master cannot hide forever. The demonic Gu Master retorts that she has ample food stored and dares Bai Ning Bing to outlast her in the open weather. Privately, Bai Ning Bing calculates that time favors her, since the python’s poison will only weaken her opponent further. ch. 210
Fang Yuan cups his fist toward the cave and announces, with elaborate courtesy, that they met by coincidence and are only passing through, and turns to leave. Bai Ning Bing objects at first, since they now understand the trap and could win, but quickly realizes Fang Yuan is acting. She plays along. Grumbling about his cowardice while pretending to spare his opponent’s life, she follows him into the woods, her visible killing intent unbroken until they are out of the demonic Gu Master’s sight. ch. 210
Clear of the cave, Bai Ning Bing lays out her read: the explosion never triggered during their earlier fight, only when the demonic Gu Master neared the cave mouth and she followed into range, so the traps must be buried in advance and immovable. She proposes luring wild beasts in to trigger them. Fang Yuan asks what comes after that. Cornered with nothing left to lose, he explains, the demonic Gu Master would fight to the death and likely take one of them down with her even in defeat, and if they killed her cleanly instead she would still destroy her own Gu worms rather than let them be taken, since a Gu Master needs only a single thought to order that. Either way, the kill would cost them without paying out. ch. 210
A Gu Master’s own selected worms outclass wild caught ones, which is why they want hers at all, but few people manage to actually loot Gu worms from an enemy they kill, since a defeated Gu Master with enough warning rarely leaves anything behind. Bai Ning Bing asks about the Plunder Gu. Fang Yuan says a single Plunder Gu does little against a Gu Master, working well only on wild beasts, and succeeding here would need conditions too harsh to arrange. ch. 210
Worried the demonic Gu Master might simply escape while they wait, Bai Ning Bing questions the plan, but Fang Yuan is confident she will not run soon. Righteous Gu Masters, raised within a clan or sect, tend to be nurtured to a higher and steadier standard, while demonic Gu Masters vary wildly, some trained defectors from the righteous path and others farmers or hunters who stumbled into an inheritance and remain half formed. From her rough accent, poor tactics, exposed traces and blood trail, and her tough, large handed build, Fang Yuan reads her as the second kind, most likely a lucky farmer. ch. 210
He identifies the buried explosive as a rank two grass Gu called the Charred Thunder Potato, which detonates under anyone who steps on it, and reasons that a farmer with little knowledge, frightened and unsafe from her worsening, untreated python poison, would have planted many of them around her cave out of instinct. Pressed too hard, he predicts, she might do something extreme, but left alone she will relax, perhaps even doubt whether they truly left, while the buried Gu keep giving her a false sense of safety that will hold her in place a while longer. ch. 210
Listening, Bai Ning Bing has to admit his reasoning holds together, and feels she cannot compare. She raises one more problem: the demonic Gu Master is poisoned and cannot simply wait forever, so she will eventually have to leave the cave. Fang Yuan’s answer is to surveil her using the Earth Communication Ear Grass Gu, whose rank two range still beats most rank three Gu worms. Bai Ning Bing objects that keeping it active drains primeval essence continuously, and that even with the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus’s fast recovery, one person alone cannot watch without ever sleeping. Fang Yuan points out there are two of them, and that Gu worms can be lent, letting them trade off watches. Embarrassed she missed something so simple, Bai Ning Bing curses her own oversight. ch. 210
The exchange is part of a pattern: each small failure and correction subtly deepens Fang Yuan’s hold over her without her noticing. To him, this demonic Gu Master is one target, and Bai Ning Bing herself is the second. ch. 210
The scene shifts to the demonic Gu Master’s own side, naming her as Chen Cui Hua, shellshocked by the encounter. She had been a farmer, and fell into a cave while plowing her fields, finding a corpse there and unexpectedly inheriting a Gu Master’s legacy. Disaster followed: a mountain leopard as large as a buffalo, wrapped in green winds, wiped out her entire village, and she escaped only through her Gu worms. Over half a year of roaming the wilderness her Gu worms died off one by one, until she killed a large python and was poisoned in the process. Meeting these two today is the third time she has encountered Gu Masters; the first two occasions taught her painful lessons in self protection, but she remains a half formed Gu Master with little real foundation. ch. 210
Recalling the fight, she panics, certain she was no match for the girl. She is relieved she had buried so many Charred Thunder Potatoes in advance, and that the man proved meek enough to walk away. Watching their bodies vanish into the forest, she feels only some relief, unsure whether they have truly left. Her investigative Gu worm shows her everything within 350 steps as clearly as if it stood before her, but grants no way to see through solid rock. She decides to wait, planning to leave the cave only after three days have passed. ch. 210
