Ancient Bronze Skin Gu
The dark purple qi barrier locks down a thousand meters around Bai Ning Bing. It does not hide her from view, and countless eyes watch from outside it. Tie clan’s four elders, spaced at the barrier’s four sides, demand she surrender; sitting cross-legged on a boulder and replenishing her essence, she answers with calm contempt, warning that killing her will cost them dearly and that things will go worse still if her partner appears, borrowing Fang Yuan’s name in a way that visibly strikes a nerve. One elder steps forward alone to test her while the barrier holds; she rises smiling, silver haired and snow clothed, with a confidence untouched by the danger she is in, and their fight breaks the ground around them in sand, snow light, and clashing steel. ch. 354
From a nearby peak, watching Shang clan Gu Masters credit her battle sense for holding four rank four middle stage attackers in rotation, while noting the four never fight at full strength for fear of her counterattack near death and of losing a member their team tactics cannot spare. One frets over her unused purple thorn token; another answers that reinforcement is already coming, Elder Yi Huo of Shang clan’s five great elders, rank four peak stage and an expert under Shang Yan Fei, news that visibly lifts the watchers’ spirits. ch. 354
Nearby, the assassins Meng Tu and Jiao Huang, both rank three peak stage and once killers of the rank four middle stage righteous Gu Master Xiao Fu Lu, worry that their Shang clan deal to kill Fang and Bai will collapse if Tie clan finishes her first. Their earlier attempt on Huo Tan mountain, setting lava crocodiles on the pair, cost the two nothing, and the assassins have simply trailed them to San Cha mountain since, waiting for an opening. Suited to ambush rather than open combat, and wary of being watched themselves, they decide to let fate take its course rather than risk a low-odds move; caution of this kind, the same instinct that made them give up on a poor bet before, is what has kept them alive this long in the demonic path. ch. 354
Li Xian watches too, delighting in Tie clan’s bind, since fighting Bai Ning Bing one by one while maintaining the barrier keeps the four from ever combining their full strength. His own confidence rests on a rare rank five Invisibility Gu, gained through fortuitous chance while he was still only rank four, detectable only by matching rank five investigative Gu that has no reason yet to be on San Cha mountain. He recalls that iron cabinet Gu was refined by Tie clan’s own Tie Yi Ban as a secure storage Gu, first given to Tie Xue Leng, the Divine Investigator, to test as a capture tool, and that paired with qi flow Gu it became Tie clan’s standing method for taking demonic Gu Masters. Watching little beast king never come to rescue her, Li Xian cannot decide whether he has seen through the trap or is simply that cold blooded, but either reading, he judges, only proves how frightening the man is; he resolves to bring him a Gu. ch. 354
That Gu, delivered soon after, is bedbug shaped, flat, small headed, and gleaming bronze: ancient bronze skin Gu, the rank four form of the bronze skin Gu series, with defense far beyond its rank three version. Fang Yuan welcomes Li Xian warmly, pours him wine in place of tea, tells him to simply call him Fang Zheng, and hands over fifty thousand primeval stones from his primeval elder Gu as a deposit against future dealings. He then asks a favor: melt bronze pieces into a stone vat using Li Xian’s own fire Gu, which Li Xian does, filling the vat nearly to the brim. Preparing the order, Li Xian had assumed it was all ordinary refining material and thought nothing more of it. ch. 354
Fang Yuan piles coal beneath the vat to hold the heat, then climbs into the boiling bronze liquid himself, his clothes burning away at once, only his head above the surface. Gritting his teeth through the smell of his own burning flesh, he explains to a stunned Li Xian that activating ancient bronze skin Gu while soaked in bronze liquid cuts the time the Gu needs by thirty percent. The method is agonizing, since a Gu Master must meet the scalding liquid with no defense at all, and Li Xian, riding home in a daze, keeps wondering whether little beast king is simply a masochist. ch. 354
Inside the barrier, Bai Ning Bing wonders the same thing about his absence from a different angle, certain the poison vow Gu between them means he cannot abandon her, yet troubled that he still has not come and unsure whether he remains trapped in the inheritance or has run into trouble of his own. ch. 354
