Addicted to cultivating!
Startled by the strain, Fang Yuan cuts back the transferred amount and slows the pace. He is surprised that primeval essence of too high a quality can also cause problems, since he has only ever raised his own essence’s quality gradually with the liquor worm before. Bai Ning Bing, listening in the dark, rolls her eyes at what she takes for a rare, enviable kind of complaint. ch. 231
After four hours, the six percent of snow silver essence transferred is fully absorbed, and his once rough stone aperture walls already carry a faint sheen, like raw jade catching its first polish. Fang Yuan urges another ten percent transfer, and the two cultivate through the whole night. At the rooster’s crow, he opens his eyes and finds he has risen a full small realm, from rank one upper stage to rank one peak stage, in a single night. He has never felt cultivation move this fast, not even in his previous life, and he calls it almost addictive. ch. 231
Bai Ning Bing quickly grasps a further use. Normally only a Gu Master’s own primeval essence can power a breakthrough to a new major realm, which is why aptitude decides so much, but the bone flesh unity Gu lets another person’s essence do that work instead. Fang Yuan judges the whole venture at Bai Gu mountain worth it for this Gu alone, even at the cost of the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus. Bai Ning Bing marvels that the rank four Grey Bone Scholar, no higher ranked than that, invented something this powerful. ch. 231
Two days after that first session, Fang Yuan sets aside the original plan to leave after one night. He decides to stay until he reaches at least rank two, reasoning that the rock in Shang clan city will still be waiting two or three years from now. Bai Ning Bing agrees, since the gap between rank one and rank two will matter for the road ahead. The old lady, secretly hoping the diligent pair will simply stay for good, makes no move to send them away. Fang and Bai spend their days farming her fields and their nights cultivating on little sleep; next to moving through the wilds in harsh conditions and constant danger, this life feels like heaven. ch. 231
Within days, Fang Yuan’s aperture walls turn crystal clear and he is close to rank two. The bone flesh unity Gu climbs above blood skull Gu and the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus in his estimation, second now only to Spring Autumn Cicada, leaving the liquor worm’s single small realm boost nowhere near comparable. Low ranked, cheap to refine and usable even by rank one or two Gu Masters, the Gu lets any well resourced clan raise Gu Masters in batches instead of nurturing them one by one. Bai Ning Bing calls this a difference capable of remaking the very structure of society, and Fang Yuan agrees. ch. 231
The scale of it tempts Fang Yuan overnight to abandon fighting alone and found his own organization again, as he once built the bloodwing demonic sect in his previous life. Gathering people and resources under one banner helps a Gu Master’s cultivation up to rank five, he reasons, though it stops mattering once someone crosses into the immortal ranks at rank six. By morning he talks himself out of it: openly wielding so valuable a Gu would draw every major force’s greed, and he judges even the Wu clan, the strongest in the Southern Border, would not dare use it alone. Only an alliance of at least the Wu, Fei, Tie and Shang clans together could risk it at scale. Doing this himself would only draw hunters from every side, and cost him everything he built. He recommits to fighting alone. ch. 231
Fang Yuan recalls that in his previous life, Bai Sheng and Bai Hua used this same Gu to become known as the righteous twin stars, yet deliberately let the world underestimate its real power. Killing them at Bai Gu mountain before that reputation could form, he judges, was itself an achievement. He reasons that since the Gu only works between two people, and the siblings likely refined it by the scroll’s plain method rather than his altered recipe, they may never have realized it could power a breakthrough at all. Giving up on the puzzle, he notes he owns no thought boosting Gu, not even a basic bookworm, and plans to buy some once they reach Shang clan city. ch. 231
Back in the fields under the sun, Fang Yuan takes the hoe from the old lady. Bai Ning Bing, who has only ever watched farmers work on Qing Mao mountain, joins in out of curiosity. That evening, eating coarse rice and sweet potatoes outside the old lady’s house, she tells the two she has good news to share. ch. 231
