Chapter 379

The instant Tie Mu Bai falls, Fang Yuan pounces on the headless body, grips its arm and pushes his mind into the aperture. Rank five Gu Masters carry purple crystal primeval essence, graded from light purple at the initial stage through violet and deep purple to crystal purple at the peak, and Tie Mu Bai, a rank five peak stage Gu Master, holds crystal clear primeval essence at ninety eight percent. The gap is so wide, the narration notes, that even a hundred Fang Yuans could not match him. ^{ch. 379}

Inside the primeval sea Fang Yuan finds three rank five Gu: turn gold Gu, a golden light that turns anything it hits to pure gold and kills it, so feared that even Ku Mo and Wu Gui would not take it head on and rank four peak stage cultivators like Yi Huo and Kong Ri Tian avoided watching Tie Mu Bai fight at all; liquid metal Gu, a shape changing defense that reforms itself like water and that even all of Fang Yuan’s strength could not have broken; and vajra stare Gu, a hidden soul attack never used even against Ku Mo and Wu Gui, which needed only a second of eye contact through golden eyes to destroy Fang Yuan’s unfortified soul. Four rank four metal path Gu round out the set, golden dragon, golden breeze, golden coat and golden aurora, all of them Gu Fang Yuan himself had once excavated. ^{ch. 379}

After confirming Tie Mu Bai carries nothing else, Fang Yuan activates the beast strength placenta Gu over his stomach; the corpse’s already shrinking aperture is pulled free and devoured by the beast inside, which grows noticeably more solid and lustrous. Continuously absorbing a Gu Master’s aperture this way, killing to build toward the second aperture Gu, was the ancient strength path Gu Immortal’s own design, and the narration calls it proof he was not a kind person. Fang Yuan feels no such weight: in his previous life refining the Spring Autumn Cicada he slaughtered across more than ten thousand miles of land until blood ran like a river, and by his own later account killed over ten million people, more than he could ever count. One Gu Master now means nothing to him. ^{ch. 379}

Tie Mu Bai’s aperture alone raises the second aperture Gu’s aptitude to forty percent. Killing Tie clan’s people was never random, Fang Yuan realizes aloud: it was meant to enrage the clan into sending a rank five Gu Master, whose arrival would upset the inheritance’s balance and pull in still more rank five Gu Masters as fresh material. Delighted, hair flying and a demonic blaze burning in his eyes, he laughs that every rank five and rank four Gu Master left is now his prey, and calls it the best feeling there is. ^{ch. 379}

In raw battle strength, the narration states, rank five peak stage Tie Mu Bai was over a hundred times stronger than Fang Yuan; a single hit from turn gold Gu would have killed him outright, and even Tie Mu Bai’s rank four Gu alone outmatched Fang Yuan’s own primeval essence. But inside the three kings inheritance every Gu Master is bound by the land’s own heavenly power and stripped of Gu and defenses alike, fragile as livestock, while Fang Yuan alone, helped by the land spirit, keeps free use of his own Gu. Unable even to self detonate, Tie Mu Bai stood as a living target, and everything he built across his whole life passed to Fang Yuan in a moment. ^{ch. 379}

Fang Yuan keeps all of Tie Mu Bai’s Gu in his aperture, though the Spring Autumn Cicada’s aura can only suppress rank four Gu, leaving the three rank five ones unusable for now. Warned by Ba Gui that transporting him and shielding the kill cost real immortal essence, Fang Yuan proposes splitting what remains into sixteen portions, with half a portion already spent; he estimates at least eight portions for the refinement itself, four to sustain the blessed land, a bit more than three for killing further Gu Masters, and the last kept in reserve. Ba Gui disagrees, insisting the refinement needs ten portions and the inheritance only two, and proposes closing the entrance once enough people are dead. Fang Yuan refuses: closing it would expose that he is killing rank five Gu Masters and draw stronger enemies, and it could not expel the Gu Masters already inside without wasting more essence than it saved. He also points out that primeval stones can replace some of the immortal essence the refinement needs, saving two more portions. Ba Gui warns that doing so would take at least thirty million primeval stones; Fang Yuan, holding only a million on him, laughs that the rest will come from the rich Gu Masters he is about to kill, and Ba Gui, conceding the point, agrees to follow his plan even as its own help shrinks. ^{ch. 379}