Chapter 277

Holding a Purple Thorn Token, Fang Yuan enters a rock gambling den and points out a handful of deliberately low-grade rocks for the shopkeeper to dissect. The discount for a token holder brings the price to six hundred and fifty primeval stones, and Fang Yuan pays before a single rock is opened. Word of the token brings five old masters running from their rest, Great Master Duan at rank three and the other four at rank two peak, each working an unusual method on the rocks: acid, magnetism, a frog Gu’s tongue, fire, and a small whirlwind. A crowd gathers to watch such senior hands lavished on cheap stone, and when the rocks turn out ordinary, solid or hollow with no Gu inside, the onlookers grumble and disperse disappointed. Fang Yuan blames his luck and leaves, and only once he is gone does the shopkeeper strike his clerk for nearly wasting a token holder’s visit. ^{ch. 277}

The dissection was never the point. Fang Yuan came only to confirm his target, and having done so, counts the visit a success even though he still cannot touch the Stellar Stone he is after. He has no way to dissect it himself, and forcing the old masters to do so openly would draw a crowd, while asking them to do it in secret with the token would draw suspicion instead. Shang Yan Fei’s people have likely already traced his earlier win of a mudskin toad in Jia Clan’s caravan, and a second lucky find this soon would tempt a clever man like him to start investigating in earnest, a risk Fang Yuan will not run for the sake of the Spring Autumn Cicada. He judges the chance of anyone else stumbling onto the stone in the meantime as infinitesimally small, and decides to keep gambling small rocks in the district for a few days to build an ordinary reputation. ^{ch. 277}

Back at Nan Qiu Garden, Bai Ning Bing is already returned from Feng Yu Manor and hands him an Ice Crystal Gu. Fang Yuan draws on the Spring Autumn Cicada’s aura to refine it before returning it to her, one of the terms the poison vow binds between them, and she carries it off to a secret room to continue the work herself. Fang Yuan withdraws to a second secret room and begins refining a Gu of his own: Eating One’s Words. ^{ch. 277}