New Alliance Agreements
Bai Ning Bing’s stunning looks pull the banquet’s attention off ordinary-looking Fang Yuan, and she receives a purple thorn token too. Fang Yuan shows the young masters a forthright, hotblooded side, since good ties with them would greatly aid his years on Shang Liang mountain. He says he was the future clan leader of Gu Yue clan, like Bai Ning Bing, and closes the distance at once. Asked why Qing Mao mountain became an icy hell, he shows a painful expression and calls the past a nightmare. With the purple thorn token in his hand, no one presses him. ch. 272
The banquet ends after an hour. Shang Xin Ci asks whether she may still call him Brother Hei Tu, and he says whichever she likes. Noting that the token lets him leave and enter the second inner city freely, she asks whether he stays at Nan Qiu garden. He confirms it and invites her to visit and go shopping together. Shang Yan Fei takes her away first. The other young masters invite Fang and Bai, and Fang Yuan promises to visit, though the promises are empty. ch. 272
Back at Nan Qiu garden, Bai Ning Bing coldly asks on what conditions he will return the Yang Gu. Fang Yuan answers that, each holding the other’s weakness, they should not fight and hand a third party the gain, and asks her help to rank five peak stage. She refuses, angry that he goes back on the rank three they agreed. They trade claims of having saved each other’s life, then fall silent, aware that only mutual help brought them to Shang Liang mountain. ch. 272
Fang Yuan proposes staying a few years in Shang clan city and buying a set of complementary Gu worms, which alone shows their true power. She offers him help to rank four peak stage at most and demands half the primeval stones for her work on Bai Gu mountain. He agrees and offers a hi-five, but she insists on poison vow Gu, which he accepts at once. He then sets terms: gains split thirty percent to her and seventy to him, and he picks Gu first and pays her in primeval stones. She accepts at once, relieved, since a Fang Yuan without terms would be stranger. She cares only for the Yang Gu, her final hope crushed by Doctor Su Shou’s information, and after a night of talk and over ten readings she finds no loophole. ch. 272
The next day they buy poison vow Gu, a rank three Gu sold for forty-five hundred primeval stones to holders of at least a yellow pear token. The purple thorn token cuts fifteen hundred, so Fang Yuan pays three thousand. Bai Ning Bing refines the Gu herself in fifteen minutes, to stop him from sneaky moves. The shopkeeper says primeval elder Gu is sold only at auctions, but the token lets them pre-order before any auction short of a large one. They spend sixty-seven hundred primeval stones on one. Fang Yuan wants the poison vow Gu split and the elder Gu charged to her, and she waves it off. ch. 272
Back at Nan Qiu garden, they use the poison vow Gu, and the new agreement is established. Fang Yuan places half of his over nine hundred thousand primeval stones in her primeval elder Gu. He loses half his fortune but gains an alliance mate, and she sees hope of regaining the Yang Gu. Fang Yuan solemnly asks her to help him reach rank three. Smug at his ugly expression, Bai Ning Bing agrees to help him that very day. ch. 272
