As dusk settles over the academy, students head off in twos and threes to eat and drink, but Fang Yuan walks alone to the store beside the Gu room to buy supplies. There Jiang Ya, the young rank one Gu Master who once taught the hunters a lesson at the inn, is selling his last seven grass puppets at three primeval stones each. Fang Yuan silently judges the true cost no more than one and a half, since the puppets are just Scarecrow Gu work. Once the seven sell, Jiang Ya offers him an eighth kept hidden below the counter, but Fang Yuan waves it off and buys ten moon orchid petals for one stone instead, checking the count before he leaves. ch. 23
Gu must be fed, refined, and used, and Fang Yuan’s three differ sharply in what they need. The Moonlight Gu eats two moon orchid petals twice a day, the Liquor worm drinks a jar of green bamboo wine every four days, and the Spring Autumn Cicada drinks only from the River of Time, the invisible flow that carries every living creature forward. At the inn Fang Yuan buys a jar of that wine and a meal on credit, and while eating he works out that the Moonlight Gu and the Liquor worm together cost him nearly a full primeval stone a day. Sixteen days since he began refining Gu, he has spent fourteen and a half stones on feeding them alone, out of an original forty four and a half, with six and a half lost early in the refining and half a stone spent on living. Counting what remains, he finds exactly twenty. ch. 23
A worker warns him that within the month a trading company will buy up the inn’s whole stock of green bamboo wine, so Fang Yuan spends ten more stones on five extra jars rather than risk needing enough cheap wine to draw suspicion. His five hundred years of memory spare him the practice sessions his peers need, saving him a large sum in essence he never has to burn. He counts himself lucky that the cicada needs no money at all, since not even gold can buy an inch of time. His uncle and aunt have cut off his living expenses, so only the academy’s three stone weekend subsidy remains, and he resolves to win the ten stone prize at the moonblade assessment in three days. A saying among Gu Masters holds that raising a Gu is like keeping a mistress: costly to feed, and useless once a man owns more than he can use, which is why most keep only four or five of their own rank. ch. 23
