Chapter 361

The fight rages on, and Tie Mu and Tie Dao Ku both marvel from the sidelines that seven of them still cannot pin down one man whose strength keeps climbing. Watching from a boulder, Tie Ruo Nan calls the outcome already decided by their numbers and urges Fang Zheng to surrender while he still can. Healed and back on her feet, Tie Xian Hua echoes her, and Tie Mu adds that escape is impossible for him even if he grew wings, calling it the price of overreaching. Fang Yuan repeats the taunt back with a mocking smile, forces Tie Ba Xiu off him, and says he will try it anyway. His bone wings tear free of his back in a burst of pain and lift him off the ground; Tie Mu’s jab has turned, to his own bewilderment, into an accidental prophecy. ^{ch. 361}

Tie Xian Hua realizes at once that no intelligence on him ever mentioned a flying type Gu, and Tie Dao Ku sees in the same instant why he dared face them alone. Tie Ruo Nan’s face turns ugly: her rattan shell grass soldiers cannot touch a target in the air, and a hole opens at once in the encirclement she had built. Tie Ba Xiu rallies the group instead, arguing that flying type Gu demand years of painstaking practice to control and even more to fight with. Even Verdant Great Sun, son of the great Ren Zu by his own telling, died while flying, he reminds them; a Gu obtained this recently, he reasons, cannot yet be truly mastered. The group’s spirits rise again, and they turn to ranged attacks, only to find their limited use Gu already thinned by the earlier melee. Tie Ao Kai’s golden needle mosquitoes are spent, one Gu Master’s star arrow Gu lies destroyed, and another has only two flower rain Gu left. Tie Ba Xiu realizes only now that Fang Yuan meant to bleed their ranged methods dry from the start. Blade qi Gu and snowball Gu still remain to some of them, and they throw everything they have. Fang Yuan folds and whirls between the attacks and is not touched, and their strikes grow sparser still as primeval essence runs low. ^{ch. 361}

Tie Ruo Nan, reading his evasions as an attempt to flee, offers to let him withdraw this time in tribute to his talent, and warns him of their next meeting. Fang Yuan laughs as if he has heard the world’s best joke and answers that he has no intention of running, since the real battle has only just begun. He activates all out effort Gu and strength qi Gu together, and five beast phantoms, green bull, horse, stone turtle, white elephant, and black python, turn solid and slam down at once. The ground shakes, the rattan shell grass soldiers scatter, and the Tie clan group is driven back. Tie Ba Xiu answers by punching from a distance, his fist energy cracking the air into a sonic boom, but Fang Yuan simply climbs higher and the blow passes under him. The strength path rarely reaches this far at range; only Fang Yuan’s own strength qi Gu, drawn from the ancient qi path, lets him do the same. The rest of the group follows Tie Ba Xiu’s lead into the air regardless. ^{ch. 361}

Fang Yuan’s flying proves unmatched, weaving like a butterfly, climbing like a goshawk, arcing like a swift, and hanging motionless like a dragonfly before he strikes. Most attacks miss him outright, and golden shield Gu turns aside the few that land. The group can only compare his control to three of Southern Border’s most famous flyers, Lan Mei He, Hong Fei Yu, and Fei You Wang, and find him no worse. The whole earlier brawl, it becomes clear, was only ever the setup for this. Tie Ruo Nan’s face goes ashen: her carefully grown grass soldiers can only stand and take hits now, and the primeval essence they cost her is already spent. ^{ch. 361}

Fang Yuan hovers, waits, and drops without warning onto Tie Mu, whose warning shouts from the others reach him a moment too late. Fang Yuan grips his shoulders and wrenches his arms free at the sockets with beast phantom strength, and blood sprays as Tie Mu howls through a face twisted with agony. A second blow bursts his head apart, spattering blood, brain matter, and even his eyes across Fang Yuan’s own body and hair. The stench would make anyone else retch, but Fang Yuan breathes it in as though it were the world’s most fragrant scent. A fierce and intense excitement rises deep inside him as he roars out that death smells sweet and improvises a bloodthirsty verse about killing and flowers blooming bright in blood. Seeing Tie Mu dead, the rest of the group burns with a fury that seems fit to scorch the sky and sea. ^{ch. 361}