Chapter 326

San Cha mountain falls into unrest as demonic and righteous Gu Masters alike rush toward the inheritance. Shang clan holds the entrances at first, feeding in reinforcements, but Wu clan then breaks its blockade. Once word spreads that the site was a rank six Gu Immortal’s blessed land, other top clans send their own fighters, and neither Shang nor Wu clan can hold back the crowd any longer. San Cha mountain descends into daily casualties, righteous against demonic, demonic against demonic, righteous against righteous. Fang Yuan watches from a distance. Close to a month after the opening, some explorers have already won benefits inside, and that success only pulls more people in. He knows better, from memory of his previous life: the real prize sits past at least a hundred barriers, through fog that swallows the lost and dogs that kill the careless. It is a demonic inheritance, and demonic inheritances are dangerous by nature. Better to wait, let others clear the way, and seize the reward once the risk has thinned; for now, he chooses to refine Gu. ^{ch. 326}

His target is the nine eyes liquor worm, rank four in a chain where each stage purifies a different grade of primeval essence by a small realm: liquor worm for green copper, four flavors liquor worm for red steel, seven fragrances liquor worm for white silver, nine eyes liquor worm for yellow gold. No rank five liquor worm exists; its would-be creator was killed young, before his research could finish. Fang Yuan already owns one four flavors liquor worm, kept unused because bone flesh unity Gu and Bai Ning Bing’s help had made it unnecessary. That is changing. Bai Ning Bing is rank four already, and he expects to reach rank four initial stage himself before long, at which point their cultivation will be the same and the help bone flesh unity Gu still lends him will drop by a lot. At Shang clan city he can buy every ingredient he needs: two liquor worms and four wines to make a second four flavors liquor worm, two four flavors liquor worm and seven spices for a seven fragrances liquor worm, and two seven fragrances liquor worm with the eyeballs of nine different hundred beast kings for the nine eyes liquor worm itself. The first fusion goes smoothly. The second attempt, fusing a third four flavors liquor worm into a second seven fragrances liquor worm, fails outright and wastes the stones spent on it. He buys the materials again and tries once more; this time the two seven fragrances liquor worms fuse cleanly, and three days later he holds a nine eyes liquor worm, silkworm shaped, pearl white, with nine gem like spots across its body in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and other colors standing in for eyes. The refining has cost him almost two hundred thousand primeval stones; every failure lands early rather than at the costlier late stage, which the narration credits to his good luck. He is still only rank three peak stage, so the worm goes into his aperture to wait; Bai Ning Bing could use it now, but her own report puts her northern dark ice soul physique’s aptitude at ninety six percent, and yellow gold essence would strip more from her than it gives. Fang Yuan expects that once he reaches rank four and uses it himself, his primeval essence will for the first time outrank hers. A vow stands between them, its terms unstated here, but he still marks Bai Ning Bing as a danger he has not forgotten. ^{ch. 326}

Elsewhere at the inheritance grounds, the poison path Gu Master Long Qing Tian, called one who dyed the sky blue before, kills three Shang clan elders and lifts demonic morale, until Wu clan’s rank four Elder Wu Tong Shen arrives two days later to hold him back. In the city, Shang Xin Ci’s courtship of Zhou Quan stalls; his pride will not soften. Fang Yuan’s own cultivation speeds up on the yellow gold primeval essence Bai Ning Bing keeps supplying him, even as the Spring Autumn Cicada recovers faster and presses harder on his rank three aperture. Then the Auspicious Festival arrives, marking the day Shang clan’s founder, once a poor trader who inherited a Gu Master’s legacy through a single transaction, first set up his stall. Shops close, lanterns and banners fill the streets, and buying and selling become the whole city’s game for a day. Shang Xin Ci alone is not celebrating. Nine banquet invitations from the city’s young masters sit on her table, and she can accept only one. Fang Yuan reads the politics for her: Shang Qiu Niu, eldest son of the first wife, leads the strongest faction; a second faction unites Shang Pu Lao, Shang Suan Ni, and Shang Bi Xi; a third, biding its time, joins Shang Chao Feng and Shang Fu Xi; Shang Chi Wen has no ambitions of her own, and Shang Pi Xiu is too playful to matter. Her foundation in the city is weak, he tells her, so she needs one of the three factions behind her. Shang Xin Ci works out the rest herself and explains it back to him: the first and second factions are already rivals, so backing either one means offending the other outright, while the third lets her enter the city’s politics without fully joining the fight. The narration credits the reasoning to her own high intelligence. She picks the third, Shang Chao Feng’s invitation. Fang Yuan feels the irony of it: in his previous life, Shang Chao Feng and Shang Xin Ci were rivals contesting the clan leadership; in this one, they choose to walk together first. ^{ch. 326}