Chapter 331

Wei De Xin recognizes her own pregnancy from her body’s signs, and it had been her most closely held secret before Fang Yuan named it outright. In Fang Yuan’s previous life, she went on to help Shang Pu Lao defeat Shang Qiu Niu and become the leading young clan leader candidate. She later conspired with her brother Wei Shen Jing against Shang clan to avenge her husband’s murder, a betrayal that made her the first to cost Shang Yan Fei a real loss and that ended in Shang Pu Lao’s own banishment. Fang Yuan tells her not to fear him: if she does her best for Shang Xin Ci, he might even help raise her child, and she should not seek out Wei Shen Jing for now, since Wu clan has already recruited him and he is being watched at all times. Dominated by his certainty, she bows her forehead to the ground and tries to speak, but Fang Yuan cuts her off: no explanation is needed, only how she and her clan perform, and she leaves. ^{ch. 331}

Watching her go, Fang Yuan judges she will now serve wholeheartedly, since in his previous life Shang Pu Lao secured her loyalty the same way, through the unborn child. He tallies Shang Xin Ci’s growing force: the Wei clansmen as her base, Wei De Xin, the three Xiong brothers and her servants Xiao Die and Xiao Lan as her generals, with Wei De Xin also raising her female guards, and Zhou Quan, if won over, as commander over them all. He knows subduing Zhou Quan will be hard, and that someone is behind the vivid rumors already spreading that she has tried and failed to recruit him over a dozen times. Fang Yuan lets it continue rather than intervene, since the time is not yet right. ^{ch. 331}

Days later, in a secret room, Fang Yuan drives his rank three peak stage primeval essence against his aperture walls in an attempt to break through to rank four. Even with his aperture’s ninety percent primeval sea behind it, the walls will not give, until Bai Ning Bing sends a waterfall of her own primeval essence through their bone flesh unity Gu. Though it is only rank four initial stage, its arrival alone makes his aperture tremble. Two hours of her continued support crack the walls entirely; they collapse into a thin light membrane, and Fang Yuan advances to rank four. He credits the breakthrough to bone flesh unity Gu, to Bai Ning Bing, to Shang clan city’s resources, and to his own previous-life experience and effort, achieved within two to three years of arriving. Rank four matches what many clans’ elders hold and would let him roam freely through the Southern Border, Central Continent or elsewhere. He notes that Spring Autumn Cicada’s own recovery is quickening in step with him, pressing harder on his aperture. ^{ch. 331}

Fang Yuan then leads Bai Ning Bing, Xiao Die, the Xiong brothers, and Wei De Xin with her people, all with some strength back after recent refining, to the manor Zhou Quan oversees in the fourth inner city. Xiao Die complains they have been turned away here before. When an arrogant doorboy demands a visiting letter and claims his master is napping, Fang Yuan orders the door smashed. Xiong Huo kicks the boy aside and Xiong Tu breaks down the door, and the group storms in, wrecking the manor and beating its servants as Xiong Feng gropes at the women among them. ^{ch. 331}