Chapter 211

High in the sky, Lord Sky Crane screams and hurls his remaining strength into a charge of white light against First Generation Gu Yue, a blood wight who bares his fangs and meets him head on. The two collide in a huge explosion and are thrown apart, both injured. First Generation Gu Yue vows to repay the grudge someday and tries to flee on bat wings, but a heavily wounded iron beak flying crane king intercepts him from above. Lord Sky Crane closes the pincer with the crane king: the crane king’s corpse falls to the ground, and blood wight is completely destroyed. ^{ch. 211}

Holding First Generation Gu Yue’s head aloft, Lord Sky Crane laughs three times, then breaks down crying. Once spent, he flies for Qing Mao mountain, only to be suppressed there by Bai Ning Bing’s self detonation and forced to use his Life burial Jade Gu; breaking free of the ice afterward, all he finds is Fang Zheng, at the point of death beneath it. ^{ch. 211}

This whole sequence plays out as an image on a wall: a Gu worm carried on emergency missions records events for the Immortal Crane Sect to evaluate on a Gu Master’s return, a rule that binds even a sect elder like Lord Sky Crane, though almost no one in the sect outranks him enough to judge him, not even the sitting sect leader. The one who can is Supreme Elder He Feng Yang, rank six and titled Winged Crane Flying Immortal: a youthful, jade smooth face, green eyebrows reaching his waist, and eerie dark eyes that watch the recording before slowly turning away. Lord Sky Crane stands beside him, not daring to breathe loudly. He has slept nearly a thousand years and is technically the elder of the two, but seniority here runs on strength, not age. Rank five against rank six is only one step, yet the text calls it the gap between mortal and immortal. ^{ch. 211}

He Feng Yang notes that Lord Sky Crane killed the sect’s traitor but failed to retrieve the blood skull Gu, and was toyed with and suppressed by two juniors. Lord Sky Crane hangs his head in shame. He Feng Yang allows that it is no surprise, since one of the two carries the Northern Dark Ice Soul Physique, credits him for trying to make amends afterward, and asks whether the young man he brought back really is twin to the one seen in the recording. Lord Sky Crane confirms it: the one who escaped is the elder brother, Fang Yuan; the one captured is the younger, Fang Zheng. The brothers are not on good terms, he adds, so much so that shown footage of Fang Yuan slaughtering their clansmen, Fang Zheng wanted to kill him on the spot. ^{ch. 211}

Asked whether he has time enough for whatever he is planning, Lord Sky Crane’s face turns solemn: his lifespan is at its limit, only a few days remain, and not even the Life burial Jade Gu can change that. Only a lifespan Gu could, and those are held by the sect leader and a few supreme elders, out of his reach. His plan instead: he has spent his life’s savings and his own Gu worms on a spirit incubating flea, brought Fang Zheng into the sect as his pupil, and means to refine the bloodkin worm in the boy and incite him to kill his brother and bring back the blood skull Gu for the sect. He Feng Yang doubts Fang Zheng can really be turned this way. Lord Sky Crane answers that despite his talent Fang Zheng is still a child, and that after death his own soul, stored in the spirit incubating flea, will stay beside the boy and guide his cultivation, since the road is already laid for him to walk. He kneels and begs for the chance. He Feng Yang grants it, calling it likely his last, and Lord Sky Crane leaves overjoyed, vowing success within twenty years. ^{ch. 211}

Southern borders, Wan Cheng mountain: the Tie clan city climbs the mountainside behind blackrock walls extending thousands of li, rock houses and steel towers rising to the peak, its streets prosperous with carriages, horses, and crowds below. At the heavily guarded clan leader pavilion atop it, the Tie clan leader stands with his niece, Tie Ruo Nan, her gaze sad but determined. This is the nineteenth time she has asked him something, he tells her; her father’s death grieves him, and with her mother gone early too, she still has him, her uncle, and he will not put her in danger. She answers that despite her sadness she feels happy for her father, who spent his life fighting crime without ever backing down, even wounded, and walked his path to its end; now it is her turn to do the same. ^{ch. 211}

Struck by how closely her eyes echo her father Tie Xie Leng’s, the clan leader remembers their younger days together, staring at the same demon suppression tower while Tie Xie Leng vowed to fill the world with justice and lock away every demonic Gu Master, even if it meant filling the tower himself; that oath still echoes though his friend is gone. He tells her the path she has chosen is not an easy one. She says nothing, looking instead toward the peak. ^{ch. 211}

The demon suppression tower there stands over three hundred metres tall across almost a hundred floors, ancient and rustic in design, wrapped in cloud, famous not only in the southern borders but across the world, Middle Continent included. Since its founding the Tie clan has imprisoned hundreds, thousands, and by some counts even ten thousand demonic Gu Masters inside it, though even the clan leader is not certain of the true number. It is the pride of righteous Gu Masters and the dread of demonic ones. Tie Ruo Nan declares, half to her uncle and half to herself, that just as the mountain carries its tower, so does her own heart, and that she will finish walking the path her father could not. ^{ch. 211}

Elsewhere, the demonic Gu Master feels her head spin with nausea and a creeping weakness, though she has nothing left to vomit. Her plan to hold out three days collapses after only one; the python poison is worsening faster than she expected, and she knows she is cornered and needs a healing Gu urgently. She curses the two strangers, certain that without their interference she might already have caught a wild Gu and cured herself, but she has made no progress finding one in the dangerous forest without proper tools. ^{ch. 211}

Bai Ning Bing raises a dagger to her own right ear, ready to cut it off so she too can use the Earth Communication Ear Grass, which requires replacing the ear entirely; demonic cultivators are ruthless toward themselves as much as toward others, and she does not hesitate. Fang Yuan stops the blade a millimetre short: the demonic Gu Master has already left the cave, so he tracks her alone with his own ear grass instead. He follows the sound of fighting and finds her battling a twin headed boar, a hundred beast king with a defensive Gu of its own, her strength far below normal from the poison. ^{ch. 211}

Watching, the two grow excited at a battle of attrition they can exploit, confirm she really did bury the Charred Thunder Potato Gu, and wonder why her primeval essence has not run dry, guessing at some supporting Gu like the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus or a fish bubble Gu. When the moment is right, Fang Yuan hands Bai Ning Bing the Stealth Scale Gu and she closes in unseen. Another buried Charred Thunder Potato finally kills the boar for good, its stomach blown open and its blood spilling as it dies. Exhausted and marveling at the boar’s toughness, Chen Cui Hua leans against a tree as darkness closes over her vision, the fight having drained her last strength; only fear keeps her conscious, and she resolves to hurry back to the cave rather than risk collapsing in the open. A last gust of wind by her ears is the final question of her life. Using the boar’s death to catch her off guard, Bai Ning Bing strikes like lightning and kills her in one blow, the Chainsaw Golden Centipede crushing her skull as her headless body drops. ^{ch. 211}

Fang Yuan celebrates and moves in. Bai Ning Bing, reaching into Chen Cui Hua’s aperture with her mind, is only slightly disappointed to find just three Gu worms inside, since Gu worms refined by a Gu Master tend to be more rigid than wild ones. Fang Yuan plunders them easily as the aperture darkens with death: a rice bag grass Gu, an iron thorn thistle Gu, and a Charred Thunder Bean mother Gu. He also recovers a hairy leg Gu and a jumping grass Gu from her body, along with a bookworm found in her smashed brain matter, already killed by Bai Ning Bing’s blow; he guesses, with some regret, that the bookworm was her inheritance item, carrying the knowledge that had taught her what she knew. ^{ch. 211}

Bai Ning Bing is greatly disappointed there is no healing Gu among the haul. Fang Yuan stays quiet, having expected as much: even a healing Gu that could not cure the poison outright would have kept her general state from falling this far. What puzzles him instead is that her primeval essence recovered during the fight at a rate matching the ten extreme physiques, despite her only A grade talent and no Gu among her worms that could explain it. ^{ch. 211}

Unwrapping Chen Cui Hua’s breast bindings, Bai Ning Bing finds a silver triangle tattoo on her chest, and Fang Yuan recognizes it as the mark of the Third Watch Gu: a rank five, single use Gu that accelerates its user’s own time to three times normal speed. Under it, a day passes for the user as three days would for anyone else, cultivation and primeval essence recovery both racing ahead at that pace, which explains the recovery Fang Yuan noticed in the fight. The cost is just as severe: time flowing three times as fast shrinks the user’s remaining lifespan to a third of what it should have been, so the less than a year Chen Cui Hua had held her inheritance already cost her nearly three years of life. Any injury or illness that worsens with time also worsens three times as fast on her, which is why the green python’s poison, advancing at a day’s pace for others, tore through her at three days’ worth every day. Bai Ning Bing remarks that being given such a Gu marks her inheritance as at least rank five, wasted on someone like this, and looks at the headless corpse with disdain. ^{ch. 211}

The Gu suits demonic Gu Masters precisely because they fight alone without clan or sect backing and must put survival first, condensing a lifetime into one burst of higher cultivation, brief but brilliant, where otherwise their potential would go to waste before it ever grew. Fang Yuan judges her fate was not strange even so, since Third Watch Gu users are usually bold and forward driving, while she was timid and hesitant by nature, and so ended as she did. ^{ch. 211}

Bai Ning Bing’s expression sours at the thought that this could be her own future without a healing Gu. Fang Yuan laughs and reassures her that everyone walks their own path, and another’s wide road may not suit her at all. Her mood lifts. Looking into the dense forest ahead, Fang Yuan reflects that killing this demonic Gu Master and taking her Gu worms has strengthened him tremendously, but he still lacks a healing Gu and refuses to count on luck alone: he might find one yet, or end up like her, getting nothing even to the end, or die trampled by a wild beast at any moment. Either way, all there is to do is keep walking his own path forward. ^{ch. 211}