Rank Three Peak Stage once again
In a secret room at Nan Qiu garden, Fang Yuan sits cross-legged while Bai Ning Bing presses her palms to his back, pouring rank three peak stage snow silver primeval essence into him through bone flesh unity Gu. The room stays completely silent throughout. Inside him, the essence crashes through his aperture like a chilly waterfall, cleansing its walls until the water membrane freezes solid into a radiant stone membrane, and Fang Yuan advances from rank three middle stage to rank three upper stage. Narration adds that a stable foundation lets success follow naturally. When the session ends, Bai Ning Bing withdraws her hands, her blue eyes stirring with feeling: with her help his cultivation has been catching up to hers step by step, and tonight, using a Gu he has saved for the moment, it will draw level with hers at rank three peak stage. ch. 312
Privately, she still doubts the poison vow binding them holds no hidden flaw, remembering Shang Ya Zi’s downfall as a warning, and the mental pressure Fang Yuan puts on her keeps building. Unprompted, he tells her he is sincere and the vow holds no problems; she answers only with cold irony that she hopes so. Fang Yuan had expected this reaction: removing Shang Ya Zi opened a young master’s seat for Shang Xin Ci, but it also cracked his partnership with Bai Ning Bing and forced Shang Yan Fei’s hand. The day before, Ju Kai Bei and Yan Tu, rank four initial stage Gu Masters together nicknamed half the sky of the battle stage, had issued a forced joint challenge against Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing, and the news set the whole battle stage talking. Rumor read it two ways, that the veterans felt threatened by the pair’s rise, or that Ju Kai Bei and Yan Tu had a private wager riding on the outcome. Almost no one gave Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing a real chance, since one side held rank four and the other only rank three. ch. 312
Before leaving, Bai Ning Bing declines Fang Yuan’s offer of his heavenly essence treasure lotus for her match against Yan Tu, insisting she wants to test her own progress rather than lean on his help. Alone afterward, Fang Yuan reads her refusal as a small, perhaps unconscious crack of self-doubt, and privately judges her still too inexperienced to hide it from him. ch. 312
He then takes out white silver relic Gu, a finger sized pearl he first saw priced at fifty thousand primeval stones during the Jia clan’s caravan on Qing Mao mountain, a price far beyond him at the time. Relic Gu of this kind cost a fortune because a single use raises a cultivator by a small realm, with a stable foundation and no side effects. Fang Yuan activates it without hesitation, and about four hours later he rises from rank three upper stage to rank three peak stage. He clenches his fists, moved: this is the second time since his rebirth he has reached this level, but where stone aperture Gu cost him his future prospects to get there at Qing Mao mountain, this time, helped by his A grade aptitude, he keeps his full potential intact. ch. 312
The Spring Autumn Cicada is recovering too, its withered body regaining gloss and its dead leaf wings turning green over more than two years of healing, and the pressure this puts on his aperture is real. Where the same pressure nearly overwhelmed him at Qing Mao mountain, his rank three peak stage aperture, strengthened by Bai Ning Bing’s help and bone flesh unity Gu, now bears it with ease. Even so, he tells himself he cannot relax, since the cicada’s recovery keeps accelerating and his own cultivation must outpace it or the old danger returns. ch. 312
The next day, crowds gather on a grass battle stage, common terrain in the Northern Plains, to watch Bai Ning Bing face Yan Tu. Most expect her to lose and pity her for it, moved by her fame and her reputation as a snow fairy. Yan Tu, an old man with unkempt hair, bare crooked legs, and uncut nails, leers at her looks in a hoarse voice; Bai Ning Bing answers with open killing intent, calling him shameless, and he mocks her manners back before the bell rings. Both open at once, four icicles against three fire pellets; one icicle melts a fire pellet but the weakened pellet still reaches her, since her rank two icicle Gu sits a notch below his rank three fire pellet Gu. Wary of the primeval essence cost of detonating her icicles early, Bai Ning Bing dodges instead and answers with three icicles of her own, and the two circle and trade attacks across the grassland at an intensity already beyond what the crowd expected. ch. 312
