Chapter 229

Squatting by the leopards’ corpses, Fang Yuan pulls a Breath Concealment Gu from each animal’s ear. It is a rank three grass Gu that masks a Gu Master’s aura and cultivation level. Nearly every dark leopard carries one, but the leopards hunt in pairs, rank at least thousand-beast-king, and are agile ambush specialists, so capturing one alive is dangerous and the trick is still little known. Fang Yuan recalls that in his previous life a righteous path hunter nicknamed Hunting King, Sun Gan, later publicized the trick and grew rich selling the Gu. Countless Gu Masters then rushed to Zi You mountain, and within a few years the dark leopards were wiped out. For now, though, the mountain remains untouched. ^{ch. 229}

Without the destroyed earth hearing ear grass, Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing lean on the two new Breath Concealment Gu to dodge danger. They skirt around Zi You mountain rather than climb it, since going deep would cost even the Bai clan dearly, and after two days on the forest paths they find a man made mountain trail. Following it to evening, they spot smoke rising from a hamlet set in a mountain basin, ringed by low stone walls and guarded, its mortal farmers filing home with their hoes. ^{ch. 229}

Bai Ning Bing has already cut and dyed her long silver hair black, darkened her ice muscle pale skin, and hidden her telltale eyes under a straw hat and a covered face, so together they pass for mortal villagers. Two guards stop them at the gate. Fang Yuan claims they are mortals from a hamlet across the mountain who fled a tiger while hauling herbs and salted meat to sell, and that his burns are from a house fire he got while saving the family’s rice. The senior guard, satisfied, lets them in and sends the younger one to warn the village head as a precaution, over the junior’s grumbling that no Gu Master would bother tricking mortals. ^{ch. 229}

Fang Yuan chooses a run down house belonging to an elderly woman whose grandson was killed by a wolf, and plays simple minded to win her over. She agrees to let the pair stay the night in exchange for chores, and Bai Ning Bing watches the act speechlessly. Fang Yuan draws water, chops firewood and cooks the meal, and a fabricated sob story leaves the old woman in tears. That night, worn out from days of walking, Bai Ning Bing lies on the floor well satisfied. ^{ch. 229}

That night, Fang Yuan checks the bone flesh unity Gu in his aperture and judges it safe to use, then hands Bai Ning Bing one of the two linked jade bracelet Gu, keeping the other for himself. Asked what comes next, he says their destination is Shang Liang mountain, home of the Shang clan. Bai Ning Bing hesitates: going to a top southern border clan’s territory, ranked below only the Wu clan, could mean walking into a trap while the Bai clan hunts them as criminals. Fang Yuan answers that Shang clan city is one of only two places in the whole Southern Border that could take them in. Though the Shang clan itself stands with the righteous path, its city is a place of freedom where demonic path figures also do business. That is why it is the richest clan in the Southern Border, ahead even of the Wu clan. Asked if rumor is true that the city sells anything, he corrects her: only low grade goods circulate that freely, and something like a Yang Gu still cannot be bought there. ^{ch. 229}