Chapter 265

On the second day, Wei Yang brings Fang and Bai to breakfast at a shop called Early Spring, serving thousand layer agate cake, crab roe bun, golden field pancake and snow porridge, and tells them Shang clan city is the largest in the southern border, built up over thousands of years into more than ten thousand shops and hundreds of thousands of people. He walks them through the culinary, caretaking, Gu fighting and red-light zones, naming a rank one Gu’s boarding fee at eighty primeval stones a month. Even by carriage, the three cannot cover a full percent of the sprawling city in a day. ^{ch. 265}

On the third day, Wei Yang shows them the substitute refinement zone, explaining that even Empress Wu Ji once spent eleven years refining a single rank five dragon strength Gu, which is why the trade exists. He describes the auction zone’s rhythm, a small sale daily, a mid-scale sale every two weeks, and a large sale at each month’s end, then brings them to the battle zone, the city’s most crowded district, with over eighty stages for single, paired and multi-enemy practice. ^{ch. 265}

There, Little Xiao greets Wei Yang warmly as “big brother,” thanking him for guidance that helped him fight his way into the third inner city at rank three middle stage. Wei Yang reminds Fang and Bai that he rose through this same battle zone himself, fighting from the fifth inner city up to the third across eighteen consecutive rounds before the clan leader recruited him at twenty five. He invites the pair to spar, and Bai Ning Bing chooses the bare flagstone stage, over a hundred meters of open ground with no wind, snow, rain or sand. Wei Yang seals the stage from onlookers, leaving only Little Xiao to watch. The usual announcement of cultivation levels is skipped, since this is only a casual match. ^{ch. 265}

Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing strike from either side at once, firing spiral bone spear Gu that Wei Yang, his body wrapped in a golden light armor, takes three hits from without dodging, testing their strength before it holds. He answers by forming two broadswords of light, among the strongest rank three attacking Gu by Fang Yuan’s own reckoning, and charges Fang Yuan. Fang Yuan speeds himself with the jumping grass and raises the canopy Gu’s white armor and three flying bone shields; the broadswords cut through the bone shields before landing on the armor itself, and in the same instant Fang Yuan’s fist lands in Wei Yang’s stomach, failing to crack his golden armor but sending him flying with the force of the blow. Bai Ning Bing rushes in at once and fires a volley of spiral bone spears at Wei Yang meant to kill him outright, and Little Xiao cries out in alarm. ^{ch. 265}