Big Lightning Symbol Dog
Fang Yuan clears the thirteenth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth rounds in quick succession, his dog army growing with each barrier. By the end of the nineteenth round he commands over eighty dogs: more than forty chrysanthemum akita dogs, over twenty lightning symbol dogs, and nineteen hedgedogs. Somewhere in that stretch he kills another challenger, a rank three peak stage water path Gu Master. He does not encounter Bai Ning Bing. ch. 349
The twentieth round marks a threshold: past it, hundred beast kings appear, and hundreds to nearly a thousand beasts can attack at once. Three shadows show him his choices by size. The orange shadow in the center, around two hundred chrysanthemum akita dogs, he rules out at once, since a dog king would make so large a group even more dangerous than before. The green white shadow on the right, around a hundred Yin dogs, he also rules out, since Yin dogs have no physical body, can pass through rock, earth, and water, and cannot be killed by any attack his own dogs can land. He chooses the eerie blue shadow on the left, around a hundred and fifty lightning symbol dogs. ch. 349
A rank two dog enslavement Gu falls into his palm as the fog clears on the lightning symbol dog group, loitering across the ground. Asleep on a nearby mound lies a beast twice the size of an ordinary lightning symbol dog, its fur deep blue, spiky, and crackling with static: the hundred beast king, Big Lightning Symbol Dog. Calling it a godsend opportunity, Fang Yuan commits his whole army at once, over eighty dogs charging together while most of the king’s subjects, summoned by its howl, are still scattered and racing to reach its side. His tight formation overwhelms the few defenders who arrive first, and the enraged king itself charges in to fight. He splits his troops to trap it: twenty lightning symbol dogs flanking from both sides, nineteen hedgedogs charging the front, and his over forty chrysanthemum akita dogs staying close around him while spreading out to advance alongside the hedgedogs. ch. 349
The trapped king fights back with a rank two plasma Gu, spitting blue plasma that chars the ground and paralyzes dogs caught in it without killing them outright, its only weakness a five breath cooldown between casts. Fang Yuan is forced to redeploy, since the current only speeds the lightning symbol dogs’ own movement, so he pulls them inward against the king while sending his slower chrysanthemum akita dogs out to hold the wider ring against the king’s rallying subjects. The cost is heavy: he loses fourteen lightning symbol dogs, down to nine, his hedgedogs fall to eleven, and his chrysanthemum akita dogs collapse from around fifty to fewer than twenty. No other Gu can be mobilized inside the blessed land, and even his final trump card, Spring Autumn Cicada, stays sheathed: activating it in its current condition risks a self-detonation that would kill him for nothing, so he holds it back unless forced to the absolute extreme. Unable to confirm whether the king carries a second Gu and unwilling to wait any longer, Fang Yuan gambles that it has only the one and strikes with his rank two dog enslavement Gu as it fires another plasma bolt. A wave of mental backlash from the king’s resisting soul leaves him dizzy and his body wavering, but he grits his teeth through it. The connection settles, the king wags its tail at him, and its scattered subjects stop fighting the instant they sense its surrender. Fang Yuan counts at least a hundred and twenty lightning symbol dogs now standing around him, plus the hundred beast king itself and its plasma Gu, and feels his battle strength surge. ch. 349
