Dark Leopard dies for love
At sunset the footless bird can no longer fly, worn out by a full day of extreme dives and climbs on top of the earlier blast damage, and crashes into a purple leafed forest. Bai Ning Bing surveys the unfamiliar canopy. Fang Yuan guesses from their course that they are near Zi You mountain, safe by day and extremely dangerous after dark. After more than two hours searching, they find shelter in a cave once home to a pouched bear. ch. 228
Around a bonfire, eating stew and roast bear paw alongside delicacies carried from the Bai clan’s stores, Bai Ning Bing needles Fang Yuan that his burned, disfigured face is retribution for burning the Bai siblings to death. He only laughs, privately pleased rather than stung. He reasons the injury will save him the trouble of changing his appearance once Bai clan wanted posters go out. Meat bone Gu could later regrow the burned skin if he ever wanted his old face back, though the shattered cartilage in his burned right ear is beyond even that Gu’s healing. He cites two figures who deliberately gave up their looks for advantage. The demonic Bai Shan Zi faked madness by smearing himself with his own filth and castrating himself, fooling his captors into loosening their guard, then returned to massacre his enemies’ whole families. The righteous Empress Wu Ji cut off her own nose to survive her sister’s seizing of the throne, and more than ten years later overthrew her sister’s regime and had her sister’s five sense organs cut off in turn. Fang Yuan argues that clinging to appearance marks shallow people who rarely succeed, then tells Bai Ning Bing that her own striking blue eyes and silver hair make her too easy to recognize and that she should change them too. She agrees, saying she is tired of her old look anyway. ch. 228
They tally the pursuit’s cost: earth hearing ear grass, chainsaw golden centipede, carapace Gu, iron thistles, stealth scales Gu and the footless bird are all destroyed or spent. Against that, Fang Yuan holds large numbers of bone spear Gu and spiral bone spear Gu, a rank three flying bone shield, jade bone Gu, iron bone Gu, and a healing meat bone Gu. He also keeps several recipe books, a clearing heat Gu taken from the Bai clan, and above all the bone flesh unity Gu they refined mid-chase. He judges the Bai Gu inheritance worth more than the earlier flower wine inheritance, even though its author, the flower wine monk, was rank five, a grade above the rank four Grey Bone Scholar. The Bai Gu inheritance was planned over a long time, while the flower wine one was assembled in haste. Fang Yuan has only walked its main path, leaving side branches and many locked doors in the Flesh Sac Secret Chamber for the Bai clan to claim. ch. 228
Near dawn, a two winged, black feathered python provokes a pregnant dark leopard, one of a pair of thousand-beast-king ranked predators native to Zi You mountain known for near silent ambush kills. Her mate is away hunting, and the python constricts her to death before he can return. He kills the python in turn, only to find her already dead. At dawn he circles her body and licks her wounds, though he can identify the python’s poison by scent alone. Fang Yuan tells Bai Ning Bing the pair mate for life, so if one dies the other will not go on living alone. By noon the male has died beside her, and Bai Ning Bing, having watched the whole course of it, sighs. ch. 228
When Fang Yuan wakes and walks toward the corpses, Bai Ning Bing waves off the idea of loot. Any flighted Gu on the pair have already fled, she has no way to capture Gu herself, and what remains from the fight is not worth having. Fang Yuan agrees their own Gu worms are nothing special for beasts of that rank, but insists a harvest is still possible, and walks over to check. ch. 228
