Pitfall
The chapter opens on the legend of Ren Zu, whose son Verdant Great Sun learns of wine on Wisdom Gu’s advice from monkey groups to the east, west, and north. The novel credits monkeys, not humans, as first to brew it. ch. 213
Fang Yuan wants monkey wine to reverse refine the four flavor liquor worm. Failing that, it still works as backup feed for the worm. Wine also disinfects wounds and warms the body. ch. 213
The grass skirt monkey group is technically a hundred beast group, but its numbers approach those of a thousand beast group, led by three monkey kings. Bai Ning Bing alone cannot force her way through a group this size. Wild beasts fight as one, and Fang Yuan proposes a trap instead. ch. 213
On a sunlit slope, the two dig a pit thirty feet deep and fifty feet across. Inside it they bury charred thunder potato Gu, an offensive Gu that self-detonates at the slightest vibration, sunk deep enough that walking overhead will not trigger them. Over the next three days they dig at least five pits in all, the first the largest. The plan is to eat the brains of two or three captured young monkeys at the site, so the screams draw the whole group, and eventually the three kings, onto the buried Gu. ch. 213
The plan works. Two pitfalls are enough to break the monkey groups. Two of the three monkey kings die outright, and the third, wounded, escapes with the survivors. The dead kings are blown to pieces, destroying the Gu worms they carried. Fang Yuan gathers enough monkey wine to fill the tusita flower to its limit, enough to feed the four flavor liquor worm for at least two years. ch. 213
Before leaving, Fang Yuan insists on filling in the two exploded pits. He reminds Bai Ning Bing, who protests mildly, that they found the demonic Gu master they killed by following her own tracks. ch. 213
