Chapter 301

Beaten to the point of vomiting blood, Zhu Ba throws both arms around Fang Yuan and crushes him against his own fat, pinning his arms so he cannot move. Fang Yuan keeps punching and kicking inside the hold, breaking Zhu Ba’s bones and pulping flesh under his skin, but Zhu Ba grits through it, certain that releasing this monster now means disaster. Squeezed for room, Fang Yuan calls a green bull phantom from his all-out effort Gu. Watching from the crowd, Bai Ning Bing’s pupils shrink at a beast phantom she has not seen before, and she wonders, unfinished, what a fight against him would even look like with only her own Gu worms to rely on. ^{ch. 301}

Bull strength lets Fang Yuan pry Zhu Ba’s arms apart despite his shaking effort and streaming sweat; Zhu Ba, certain that losing his grip means his death, screams that he surrenders. The hosting Gu Master forces the two apart and declares Fang Yuan the winner. The crowd turns on Zhu Ba at once, calling him a paper tiger and mocking their own battle stage for letting its rank eight expert fall to a newcomer, and his standing built up over years is ruined in a moment. Bai Ning Bing reasons through it: Zhu Ba’s style wears an opponent’s essence and stamina down before striking, but against Fang Yuan’s endless essence from the heavenly essence treasure lotus and a strength cultivator’s stamina to match, the two styles cancelled out and the tougher fighter simply won. She notes the irony that she has drifted toward scheming tricks while Fang Yuan has drifted toward raw, forthright power, as if the two of them traded styles. ^{ch. 301}

Below the stage, Wei Yang, who came specifically for Fang Yuan’s first fourth inner city match, tells him he did well, and later at a banquet says he may have been born for the strength path, a path Wei Yang himself once failed on, and urges him to keep walking it while many eyes are watching. Fang Yuan knows exactly what those eyes mean: overnight fame after beating Zhu Ba has already brought forceful challenges from strength path Gu Masters chasing his all-out effort Gu, and the better he does, the more of them will come. Eight days later he kills Jin Bian Yuan by destroying his core defensive Gu mid-fight. Ten days after that he beats Liao Hua Dong, an aggressive fighter who survives only because the hosting Gu Master steps in. Seventeen days on, Zhong De, who fights with the strength of five tigers, is beaten like a dead dog and left lying motionless. ^{ch. 301}

Fang Yuan keeps winning through the fourth inner city, growing faster than its many other experts in cultivation, in new Gu worms, and in every other measure, while staying careful: he gathers information beforehand through Wei Yang’s authority and Li Ran’s underground network, and caps himself at four matches a month, using the eight days of rest after each to prepare rather than answer taunts. Titles pile onto him as he becomes famous, the strongest newcomer in history among them, and the crowd names him ruthless and cruel, never letting go of an enemy he can kill. ^{ch. 301}

Three months on, in the secret room, Bai Ning Bing channels her snow silver primeval essence into Fang Yuan through the flesh bone unity Gu, losing some of it in the conversion, and his aperture walls thicken from white light into something like water; he advances from rank three initial stage to middle stage in only a few months, helped by Bai Ning Bing’s own rank three peak stage cultivation. The pace would draw great attention if it became known, and even shocks Fang Yuan himself, though not Bai Ning Bing, whose own cultivation speed as a former ten extreme physique is monstrous. He tells her she will reach the fourth inner city battle stage within days and asks whether she means to push her own cultivation to rank four; she refuses, saying that if he can fight his way through at rank three, so can she, though she mentions her aptitude has climbed again to ninety-two percent and asks when he will give her the yang Gu. Fang Yuan is caught off guard by how fast that number moved; he knows a fair amount about the ten extreme aptitude, but not in depth. Bai Ning Bing tells him not to worry, that she can protect his life, and that the poison vow Gu they once used between them is reason enough to trust her even if he does not otherwise; she reflects privately that these months with him have been the most peaceful of her life, even as she sees clearly that he is pulling ahead of her. ^{ch. 301}

In these months Fang Yuan has also gained the strength of a turtle and taken on the rank three bronze skin Gu, which tans his skin bronze and grants permanent defence rather than the temporary kind its rank two version offers; combined with his iron bones, steel tendons, and golden shield Gu, his defence now holds against any strong foe even in the third inner city. He has already sold off his canopy Gu, since it overlapped with golden shield Gu and no longer suited his fighting style. As he advances to middle stage, a new group arrives outside Shang clan city, led by Tie Ruo Nan, who notes to herself that Gu Yue Fang Zheng is somewhere inside; Tie Dao Ku greets her as his young master. ^{ch. 301}