Dual Cultivation
Fang Yuan explains that Shang clan city’s shops can complete their mismatched set of Gu worms. A properly complementary set, like the ice and water Gu Bai Ning Bing once carried with her Northern Dark Ice Soul physique, would at least double their combined fighting strength. He can fund the trip either by selling his stockpiled bone spear and spiral bone spear Gu, or with primeval stones produced by the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus. ch. 230
He keeps a third goal to himself. A rock at a Shang clan city gambling site hides what the chapter calls a legendary rainbow colored Gu, a battle trump card unlike anything he owns. His four most valuable Gu, Spring Autumn Cicada, Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus, blood skull Gu and the new bone flesh unity Gu, all aid cultivation rather than combat. Blood skull Gu has lost most of its worth, since Fang Yuan has almost no living blood relatives left to use it on. The Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus has no room to grow because he lacks its fusion recipe, so its help will matter less as his cultivation rises. Spring Autumn Cicada is presently dormant and dangerous either way: using it now would be perilous, but leaving it to wake on its own risks destroying his aperture. ch. 230
Having watched Fang Yuan’s folksy performance at the old woman’s house and pieced it together with how he refined the bone flesh unity Gu earlier, Bai Ning Bing grows chilled by how calculating he is. She reminds herself to stay wary, recalling the Bai clan leader’s downfall as a warning. She takes the red jade bracelet Gu, and Fang Yuan, who refined it earlier, removes his own imprint so the two of them can co-refine it together. The refining takes her little time. ch. 230
The moment she finishes, the linked bracelets vanish and matching circular marks appear on their wrists, green on Fang Yuan’s left and red on Bai Ning Bing’s right. The marks open a mutual sense of each other; it leaves Bai Ning Bing faintly nauseated, while Fang Yuan’s brows only tighten. Neither the Grey Bone Scholar’s scroll nor Fang Yuan’s own study mentioned this, and he decides the scholar must have worked it out only in theory, without testing it. ch. 230
Bai Ning Bing explains that the bone flesh unity Gu comes in five grades set by how close the two refiners’ relationship is, from worst to best: fratricidal, friendly relation, indissoluble relation, familial relation and blood kin relation. In that same order, they convert one fifth, two fifths, three fifths, four fifths and all of a transferred primeval essence. Given their own antagonistic bond, she guesses they landed the middle grade, indissoluble relation. The test confirms it: Fang Yuan sends ten percent of his primeval essence into her aperture, and three fifths of it arrives, the rest lost in conversion. ch. 230
When Bai Ning Bing sends her own primeval essence back, Fang Yuan’s aperture begins shaking. Only rank one upper stage, and already carrying hundreds of stored bone spear Gu, it cannot absorb her higher quality snow silver essence at full rate, and he shouts for her to stop. She weighs pushing through against the risk of breaking his aperture, recalls that he could still destroy the Yang Gu by will alone regardless, and withdraws. Only about a fifth of the transfer converts, instead of the expected three fifths. His stone membrane aperture walls, the mark of a rank one upper stage Gu Master, shake violently under just that first wave. ch. 230
