Shameless and Despicable
As Xue San Si begins her dive, Fang Yuan looks up at her with an indifferent gaze, a trace of mockery in the depths of his pupils, and activates horizontal charge Gu, darting left, then vertical crash Gu, putting a hundred steps between them before her attack lands. She fights to control her dive, but her speed is too great to correct in time, and she can only watch him escape her attack range. ch. 343
Her attack still slams into the ground with an explosion that shakes the valley floor for everyone watching; the shockwave tears up stones, trees and plants in every direction and blasts out a crater thirty meters across. Fang Yuan changes direction and charges straight into the smoke after her, using horizontal charge Gu and vertical crash Gu again, ignoring the pain of the cold wind pressure and flying debris. ch. 343
Inside the crater Xue San Si is dazed and dizzy from the impact, her Biao phantom already gone and her earlier dominance with it. Fang Yuan activates bitter strength Gu and all-out effort Gu, and eight beast phantoms, boar, brown bear, crocodile, green bull, horse, stone turtle, white elephant and black python, roar out above him. Strength qi Gu pours his primeval essence into a formless strength that solidifies the phantoms, and at his will they charge down into the crater and rain attacks on Xue San Si before she can pull free of the ground. She resists as best she can as a rank four Gu Master with strong foundations, but in under three minutes the sounds of battle stop; five of the eight phantoms remain and are recalled. Xue San Si’s corpse is left in pieces across the crater, her blood and brain matter mixed with white bone fragments on the ground. ch. 343
The crowd erupts, calling this another rank four Gu Master killed by little beast king, and accusing him of breaking the three strike agreement by running rather than standing still; by their own read, breaking the agreement makes it his loss. Bai Ning Bing laughs at the outcry. She had already known the agreement was only a trap, and the Gu Masters who had surrounded her to stop her from intervening quietly withdraw. ch. 343
In contempt of those who prize reputation above their own lives, Fang Yuan privately calls reputation only a tool to be used and dismisses Xue San Si as foolish for letting hers drag her into this fight, admitting to himself that he used some tricks to win. He stands unmoved by the crowd’s rebukes, hands behind his back, his face tranquil and his eyes narrowed as though enjoying it; to him such demands for sincerity are only the fearful trying to bind others to their own standards, and on the demonic path he sees no reason to keep any restraint or taboo. The agreement was his plan from the start: Xue San Si, unlike Tyrant Heng Mei and Fei Li, could fly to safety if the fight turned against her, so Fang Yuan proposed the three strike terms specifically to keep her grounded, never intending to honor them. He let his injuries after the second strike draw her forward, healing himself in front of her so that, unwilling to see her effort wasted, she would commit to her strongest attack rather than hold back. Had the fight been fair, with Xue San Si free to use her wings, she would absolutely not have been so easily killed. ch. 343
Called shameless and despicable, and told he is the loser for breaking his own agreement, Fang Yuan loudly concedes defeat and asks what that changes. The valley quiets, then erupts louder once the crowd registers that his admission means nothing when the winner has been reduced to a puddle of blood and flesh unrecognizable even to her own father. Fang Yuan laughs and invites anyone seeking revenge for Xue San Si to attack him all together, and the criticism dies into silence. No demonic Gu Master steps forward, since they are mutually suspicious loners who rarely stand up for one another; some righteous path Gu Masters privately want this devil dead, but cannot move without the act reading as revenge for a demonic figure. Fang Yuan presses the crowd once more, asking if anyone will avenge her, gets no answer, and walks away laughing. ch. 343
