Chapter 222

A secret tunnel opens onto a pure white hall built from bone. At its center sits a huge vat of milk spring water, and Bai Ning Bing plunges her hand in to find it packed almost to the brim with Bone Spear Gu, rank one worms shaped like miniature spears. A second search turns up a rank two variant, the Spiral Bone Spear Gu, and she keeps one to refine later. Fang Yuan then hauls worm after worm out and instantly refines them with the Spring Autumn Cicada’s aura, downing a few dozen within minutes and pressing on until his aperture holds over two hundred Bone Spear Gu and more than twenty Spiral Bone Spear Gu, while Bai Ning Bing watches, stunned. He orders the remainder destroyed rather than left for the Bai clan, and Bai Ning Bing, though it pains her to waste Gu worth a small mountain of primeval stones, agrees. ^{ch. 222}

A second hall holds three bone pillars, each cradling one Gu: Ribcage Shield Gu, Flying Bone Shield Gu, and Arm Bone Wings Gu. An inscription permits only one choice, the rest left for a later inheritor. Fang Yuan reasons through his existing gear and takes the Flying Bone Shield Gu, leaving the other two untouched. ^{ch. 222}

A third hall holds a seated skeleton before a huge bone book, the Grey Bone Huge Book, which records refinement recipes and the life of its author, Grey Bone Scholar, and marks this as a righteous inheritance. Fang Yuan kneels and kowtows three genuine times, striking his forehead hard enough to sound three times on the floor, and a section of the bone wall slides back to open a new tunnel. He then holds Bai Ning Bing back from disturbing the skeleton itself, and after five minutes a second door opens as well. Only once both paths have appeared does he smash the skeleton apart and take a rank three Gu, the Bone Spike Gu, from inside the skull. ^{ch. 222}