Chapter 383

The land spirit, whom Fang Yuan calls Ba Gui, notices the immortal essence spent has already deviated from his stated plan and tells him to stop. Fang Yuan refuses. Eighty-three percent was never his target, his plan was ninety. The land spirit accuses him of being blinded by greed and starting to lose his rationality. ^{ch. 383}

Fang Yuan cannot use the immortal essence without the land spirit’s cooperation, so he works to win it back over. He lays out his plan for the total sixteen portions: eight for the Gu refinement itself, four to sustain the three kings inheritance, three portions and a bit more for killing Gu Masters, and the remainder held in reserve. The land spirit, though born of lingering thought, argues back with real intelligence. It says the reserve exists precisely because the refinement could fail, and spending it now would leave no room for a second attempt. ^{ch. 383}

Fang Yuan has not passed the land spirit’s test and cannot command it directly, so if it refuses to cooperate there is nothing he can do. He still wants the last rank five Gu Master in the blessed land dead, a healer known as one of the four great doctors of southern border with wide influence, calling it necessary for his own safety. The land spirit refuses again. It reminds him that a girl and her beast groups are already positioned to hold off attackers, that it will risk itself to protect him too, and that the success of the refinement matters above all else. It warns that if he keeps pushing, it will stop cooperating entirely and hand his chance to someone else. ^{ch. 383}

That Gu Master is Chou Jiu, the killer ghost doctor. His healing once sustained the demonic faction’s morale at Yi Tian mountain until Shang Yan Fei brought in Doctor Su Shou and Divine Doctor Sheng Shou to counter him, and he was later killed by Shang Yan Fei after being captured, refusing to submit, and exposing old secrets instead. Fang Yuan reasons that a rank five Gu Master survived brutal competition to get there and cannot be underestimated, and worries Chou Jiu might strike during the final, most vulnerable step of the refinement. At only rank four upper stage now, he reflects that with his previous life’s rank six he could kill any number of rank fives like livestock. ^{ch. 383}

The land spirit again refuses to let him kill, and lectures him that the righteous path thrives on stability while the demonic path’s greed and extremity court disaster. Fang Yuan answers that demonic cultivators are forced into extremity just to survive at all. Greed, selfishness and risk, he says, are simply the demonic path’s laws of survival, a life spent walking a tightrope, intense and alluring like wine. When the land spirit calls his nature too entrenched to be saved and warns that a self committed sin deserves death, Fang Yuan laughs it off as an idea weaklings spread to protect themselves. He declares he means to sin freely, slaughter living beings and enjoy all he can get, and still win everything: the deaths of these Gu Masters and the second aperture Gu both. ^{ch. 383}

To prove his point, he activates the Spring Autumn Cicada and lets its aura leak out for the first time. The land spirit is stunned to recognize a rank six Immortal Gu and names it the Spring Autumn Cicada, the seventh of the world’s mysterious Gu, demanding how a mortal could own one. Fang Yuan tells it plainly that he refined the Gu himself. The land spirit works out that he must be a Gu Immortal who used it to travel back and change history. ^{ch. 383}

Asked what it knows, the land spirit explains that space path and time path form the basis of heaven and earth. Its own blessed land once spanned six thousand square kilometers at six times outside time, though only three times remains after its long decline. It names the Spring Autumn Cicada as a time path Gu once held by Demon Venerable Hong Lian, the most mysterious of history’s rank nine Venerables, who defied the Immortal Court and gave later generations hope of controlling their own fate. Fang Yuan, even with his previous life’s memory, had known only of Hong Lian’s existence until now. The land spirit describes history as a line of still images strung along the river of time, and the Spring Autumn Cicada as a way to step outside that line and travel back to change one image, with consequences rippling into every image after it. The explanation sharpens Fang Yuan’s own grasp of the Gu he has already used twice. ^{ch. 383}

Recognizing Fang Yuan as a future Gu Immortal, the best possible candidate to complete this refinement, the land spirit lowers its estimate of how much essence he might waste and agrees to trust him. It asks who he wants to kill next. Fang Yuan promises the refinement will succeed, since he needs the second aperture Gu to reclaim his Gu Immortal rank. The land spirit, satisfied, agrees that as a Gu Immortal he already understands the Gu’s worth better than any mortal could. ^{ch. 383}