He is dead (Double Chapter)
Fang Yuan calms down and reasons that refining second aperture Gu will consume so much immortal essence that the blessed land can no longer face the coming earthly calamity and heavenly tribulation. Even if he becomes its owner he will have to give the land up, so second aperture Gu becomes his greatest reward for the trip. The situation is extremely complex. Once refinement starts, the remaining immortal essence falls sharply, the blessed land weakens greatly, and the land spirit can help less and less. Gu Masters inside the blessed land would also attack together, as in his previous life, if they found this main hall. ch. 378
Fang Yuan demands the recipe, and land spirit Ba Gui recites it in full. The recipe is huge, close to ten thousand words. It has up to a thousand steps, from hundreds of kinds of materials early on to large numbers of rank four and rank five Gu in the middle, and at the end another rank six Immortal Gu. Fang Yuan finds the difficulty many times higher than he estimated, because his previous-life intelligence covered only the early stage, and his fifty percent confidence falls to about thirty. ch. 378
Ba Gui tells him not to worry too much. Materials and Gu worms for the refinement are already stored in the main hall. Dark blue light makes the hall’s relief sculptures turn solid, revealing at least five thousand Gu worms of ranks one to five, with over six hundred at rank four and no less than eighty at rank five. Over ten yellow gold relic Gu and eight purple crystal relic Gu are among them, and Fang Yuan judges that using them would advance him to rank five peak stage within moments. Many strength path Gu among the stores would definitely raise his battle strength by over ten times, and he briefly considers dropping the refinement to take everything. He abandons the idea, since the land spirit guards the stores and second aperture Gu would give enormous help even at rank six. ch. 378
Ba Gui says one extremely crucial Gu worm remains, and the immortal essence begins to drain. In the blue light Fang Yuan sees a confined rank six Immortal Gu named Divine Travel, a yellow hollow gem holding shifting purple smoke. Its wine fragrance makes him drunk until he holds his breath. From The Legends of Ren Zu, the first classic of Gu, he knows it formed from the liquor aura of Verdant Great Sun after he drank four top wines. It sends a Gu Master anywhere in the world, but activation needs a drunken state and the destination cannot be controlled, which endangered Verdant Great Sun’s life several times. It may rank among the four great movement Gu, but its flaw is extremely big, so Verdant Great Sun refined this Gu into Fixed Immortal Travel Gu, also one of the four, which needs a concrete impression of a destination not hugely changed. Fang Yuan understands that the ancient strength path Gu Immortal who first owned the blessed land chose it for second aperture Gu because every use carries extremely high risk and little worth. ch. 378
Ba Gui reseals the Gu, and Fang Yuan sits to study the recipe, which shows him that ancient owner’s insights and deepens his grasp of the Great Dao. A second aperture would truly defy heaven, since a Gu Master has only one from birth, and he now sees why Divine Travel was chosen. After a long while he orders the refinement to start. ch. 378
Ba Gui hands him green pond rotten soil, extremely toxic and from ten thousand feet under a poisonous marsh, plus eight desolate blood powder, ground from the blood of eight kinds of immemorial desolate beasts, and an earth treasury flower Gu. Earth treasury flower is a common storage Gu, the kind Flower Wine Monk planted to hold Gu worms Fang Yuan later obtained. Fang Yuan mixes soil and powder and plants the flower. It dies at once, but spare material allows more attempts, and after several failures one survives and completes the first step. The next steps use jade bone Gu, ice muscle Gu and yellow golden relic Gu, then stellar fire prairie Gu together with snowy plain Gu, a pairing that is easily misread. ch. 378
The fourth step tests his multitasking: yang cloud Gu with elixir fire Gu below, and yin cloud Gu with golden sand Gu above. He sacrifices white elephant and black python beast phantoms into the clouds, then stone turtle and horse phantoms, but the four will not fuse and the whirlpool shrinks. Fang Yuan realizes each phantom must show its true nature: the elephant steady and simple, the python coiling and cold, the turtle still as a mountain, the horse running with the wind. Once he controls them that way, thunder crackles, the clouds merge, and the mist explodes, leaving one rank five Gu, a disk with a rough surface like an embryo of grass and soil and a ferocious beast at its center. He recognizes beast strength placenta Gu and relaxes. He falls asleep, extremely exhausted after a total of five days and five nights without rest. ch. 378
Fang Yuan sleeps for a day and a night, then recalls that the next step is gathering apertures, and Ba Gui agrees to send him anywhere in the blessed land. Fang Yuan picks a spot and appears before Tie Mu Bai, who is exploring the inheritance and is slightly surprised. Before Tie Mu Bai can speak, Fang Yuan summons a rock crocodile phantom, whose tail smashes Tie Mu Bai’s head. Tie Mu Bai is dead. ch. 378
