Ten days after the vital Gu assessment, an academy elder gathers fifty seven fifteen year olds in the bamboo walled training field to teach the Moonlight Gu’s attack. He names it the Gu Yue clan’s symbolic Gu, the way the Xiong house has Bear Strength Gu and the Bai house has Stream Gu. Then he demonstrates: mind moves the crescent mark into his palm, primeval essence pours in, and a cutting motion throws a pale blue moonblade that shears clean through a grass puppet’s neck. His own essence runs white silver, the mark of a rank three Gu Master, one tier above the red iron of rank two and two above the green copper of rank one. About thirty five students have refined the Moonlight Gu among the fifty seven with cultivating talent, and they line up to practice. ch. 22
Only Fang Yuan watches with a cold, calm expression. In his previous life he reached rank six and founded the Blood Wing Demon Sect, so a rank three elder’s trick stirs nothing in him. He fakes several practice swings, then slips one true moonblade past the chaos into a neighbor’s puppet rather than his own, drawing gasps and mistaken credit to the C grade boy standing opposite that target. Watching that boy take the praise, Mo Bei vows not to lose, and Fang Zheng, relieved his brother did not throw it, tells himself in his heart that Fang Yuan’s earlier win was only luck. The elder sets a three day deadline with ten primeval stones for the best result, and within minutes the moonblades thin out: one C grade student says his aperture holds only thirty eight percent capacity and lets him throw just three. ch. 22
