Tear through the sky
Watching Ju Kai Bei close in on an already-injured Fang Yuan, Shang Xin Ci fears that one hit now, with his strength tripled to nine dragon-elephants, would kill him. Fang Yuan’s only real hope is a long range attack strong enough to hold Ju Kai Bei off, and he has nothing built for it beyond a blood moon Gu too weak to matter. Strength path Gu Masters fight mostly at close range with little long range recourse, a weakness Yan Tu has exploited against Ju Kai Bei in the past, and as he closes the distance, Wei Yang, Shang Xin Ci and Bai Ning Bing all read the match as decided. Several spectators sigh that the match is already over. ch. 320
At that exact moment Fang Yuan smiles, all eight phantoms flare up behind him, and he points a finger and activates a Gu that instantly burns off more than forty percent of his snow silver primeval essence. For the first time, his beast phantoms stop being hollow traces of Dao marks and turn solid, and boar, brown bear, crocodile, green bull, horse, stone turtle, white elephant and black python all descend at once and surround Ju Kai Bei, charging, biting, goring and coiling from every side. Almost a thousand Gu Masters watch in total silence as the eight phantoms pummel him, cracking and shattering his ivory armor, until they turn hollow again and vanish, leaving Ju Kai Bei half kneeling and gasping with his head in his hands. ch. 320
While Ju Kai Bei struggles, Fang Yuan holds two primeval stones and multitasks, absorbing their essence while still directing his phantoms, and thanks to his A grade aptitude and heavenly essence treasure lotus he recovers to seventy percent primeval essence, though the split attention genuinely weakens his control while he does it. Ju Kai Bei counts more than ten places on his body where bones have broken and can only heal the worst of them, lacking the spare essence and the opening to draw on his own primeval stones while Fang Yuan refuses to give him the chance. He privately admits that only his desperate reliance on ivory armor Gu kept him from fainting outright, though it cost him nearly all his yellow gold primeval essence. ch. 320
Ju Kai Bei asks hoarsely whether the attack was strength qi Gu, and Fang Yuan, still absorbing essence, confirms it, while Ju Kai Bei’s face shows envy, jealousy, helplessness and bitterness at once. Strength qi Gu is an ancient strength path Gu nearly extinct in the present age; it lets a strength path Gu Master’s own beast phantoms leave his body and attach to a formless qi of strength, gaining the ability to strike directly rather than remain harmless traces, before the qi fades and the phantoms return home. Fang Yuan refined it himself in a secret room after buying a rank four atmosphere Gu at auction, reverse-refining it through more than twenty ingredients and more than thirty precisely timed steps at better than an eighty percent success rate, a recipe the narration notes will not become widely known among recipe masters for another two hundred years. ch. 320
Each beast phantom costs five percent of his snow silver primeval essence to hold, so all eight together cost forty percent, meaning even at a full ninety percent essence Fang Yuan could only use the move twice in theory, and in a real battle, with essence also spent on movement, defense and all-out effort Gu, realistically only once. Knowing this, and knowing he cannot close the distance again now that Fang Yuan holds a genuine ranged answer, Ju Kai Bei surrenders outright. The crowd that once called him half the sky of the battle stage watches that sky give way, and Fang Yuan’s reputation tears through it in a single afternoon. ch. 320
