Chapter 36

Word spreads through the Academy that Fang Yuan killed a man and even chopped the corpse into paste. The group of fifteen year olds, who have known only sparring and killing chickens, whisper the story in fear through the morning. Gu Yue Mo Bei goes pale once he learns the dead man is Gao Wan, the family servant he once sparred with himself. ^{ch. 36}

The rank three Gu Master who serves as Academy Elder summons Fang Yuan and studies him in silence, recalling that guards had already reported Mo Yan’s attempt to drag Fang Yuan from the dormitory the night before, a conflict he let stand since no student had died. He remembers his own first kill at age nineteen, when he was already a rank two Gu Master and still lost his appetite and sleep for days afterward. Fang Yuan shows no such disturbance, calm as if he had slept perfectly, and the Elder judges that not even an A grade talent could ordinarily kill a grown man after only a few days with the Moonlight Gu. He weighs admiration for the boy’s battle talent against worry that his rising reputation and the Mo family’s anger will be impossible to manage. ^{ch. 36}

Fang Yuan admits only to breaking the clan rule against using his Gu inside the Academy, and he offers to pay thirty pieces of primeval stones as punishment for a first offense. The Elder is not satisfied. He presses Fang Yuan on Gao Wan’s death, and Fang Yuan claims self defense, accusing the dead man of being a spy for the rival mountain villages. Pressed further, he admits he diced the corpse and left it at the Mo family’s back door. The Elder, stunned by the provocation and unable to resolve the matter on the spot, sends him away to await punishment in the coming days. ^{ch. 36}