What level of proficiency in enslavement path is this!
Fang Yuan finishes his tenth battle inside King Quan’s inheritance on San Cha mountain, commanding a smaller but tightly disciplined dog army that shields, retreats, and attacks in coordination against a larger, scattered enemy pack, from a hill above the field. He used twenty eight dogs this round and sacrificed nine of them to withstand nearly sixty attacking dogs, leaving nineteen still standing. His mind feels slightly exhausted afterward. His long experience with the inheritance from his previous life has let him sprint through the earlier rounds without incident, though he admits this round held some alarming moments of its own. ch. 347
The three kings inheritance divides Gu Masters by path. King Quan tests enslavement path skill, King Xin refinement, and King Bao fire, and the barriers grow so severe that by the thirtieth round no Gu Master of another path remains. Past the ninetieth round, only rank five Gu Masters have any chance of clearing the barriers, and the narration states that even a monster like Fang Yuan cannot cross the final ten rounds. In his previous life the inheritance ran for close to ten years and touched countless people, both demonic and righteous, heroes and villains. Fewer than one year has passed since it opened this time, and it remains in an early stage, though already many find it remarkable to have cleared a dozen barriers. Fang Yuan knows ten years is absolutely not enough time for him to reach rank five. Cultivation only grows harder at higher ranks, and on top of that this blessed land’s quickened time flow speeds Spring Autumn Cicada’s own recovery, which the narration calls an enormous threat to him. ch. 347
Heavenly power carries him into the next round’s grey fog. Three shadows show through it: an orange glow on his left he reads as a chrysanthemum akita dog, an indistinct black human figure ahead, and a crackling ball of blue lightning on his right he reads as a lightning symbol dog. He walks straight toward the human figure, choosing an opposing Gu Master over either dog group. ch. 347
The figure is Han Bu Liu, a forty eight year old righteous path Gu Master at rank four middle stage who has entered King Quan’s inheritance many times. He once reached the twenty first round, a feat that surpassed many Gu Masters at rank four’s upper and peak stages. He expects an easy win that will carry him to the twenty second round. Recognizing Fang Yuan as the little beast king by reputation, Han Bu Liu panics for a moment. He then reasons that only dog enslavement Gu can be used inside the blessed land, and that a young strength path Gu Master could not also have mastered enslavement. Righteous path inheritances test gently and rarely kill, but King Quan’s is a demonic inheritance, and killing here is normal. Unlike the outside world, a Gu Master who dies here cannot detonate his own Gu worms first, so a killer keeps nearly everything the dead man carried, a discovery that has already driven the inheritance’s death toll sharply upward. Sure that killing this one youth alone would leave him almost all of Fang Yuan’s Gu worms, Han Bu Liu lets his killing intent show without restraint and sends eleven dogs forward. Fang Yuan answers with nineteen, a gap wide enough that Han Bu Liu first assumes it must be luck. Fang Yuan spots a flaw in his opponent’s shifting formation, drives his strongest dogs through it in an arrow strike, then closes both flanks in two arcs and seizes control of the field. ch. 347
