Chapter 384

Chou Jiu lies on the ground as Fang Yuan beats him, exclaiming that the true winner of the three kings inheritance was Fang Yuan all along. Ugly, with hair like dry yellow grass and eyes of different sizes, he has a plotting mind ordinary people do not. He stops resisting entirely, praising Fang Yuan’s talent and offering information about a Door of Life and Death to buy his own life. The land spirit warns Fang Yuan privately to kill him quickly, since Chou Jiu is frantically activating his Gu worms and suppressing them is costing heavily in essence. ^{ch. 384}

Startled by the mention of the Door of Life and Death, Fang Yuan warns Chou Jiu that activating his Gu again means instant death. The door is a forbidden ground from the Legends of Ren Zu comparable to the river of time, where Ren Zu once sought to revive the dead Verdant Great Sun, and legend says total comprehension of it grants control over life and death itself. Chou Jiu, startled that Fang Yuan can sense his Gu use at all, reasons his way to the truth. The land spirit must still be alive and subdued, he guesses, and weak enough that its holders could not simply drive intruders out. He drops the act. In exchange for his life, he offers to reveal an enormous secret. ^{ch. 384}

Fang Yuan, though he carries his previous life’s memories, admits this is new to him and presses for details. Chou Jiu says he has explored the Door of Life and Death repeatedly, capturing life Gu and death Gu there and refining a one life one death Gu from them, a Gu that converts every death he causes into lifeforce and gives his healing its uncanny power. But he says the location is bound by a vow before a sea oath Gu: speaking it to an outsider turns him to dust, and only fellow members of his Shadow Sect may be told. ^{ch. 384}

Fang Yuan knows sea oath Gu and its twin, mountain pledge Gu, as repeatable rank six Immortal Gu unlike the single use poison vow Gu, but Shadow Sect is unfamiliar to him. The thought of Chou Jiu having a secret organization behind him unsettles him. Chou Jiu claims it was founded by a rank eight Gu Immortal of the Immemorial Era who found the Door of Life and Death and made it his own, and promises endless benefits from joining. Fang Yuan mocks the offer instead: bowing to a senior brother, swearing restrictive oaths, surrendering his gains on San Cha mountain, and serving a sect too weak, if it were real at all, to have kept its own members from fighting alone. ^{ch. 384}

Chou Jiu reassesses him as no ordinary young man but a monster in a young body. Fang Yuan presses further: sea oaths are not unbreakable, since destroying the very sea or mountain sworn upon voids them. Chou Jiu answers that his oath was sworn to a sea inside Shadow Sect’s own blessed land. Fang Yuan would need the location to destroy it, and would need to destroy it to be told the location, a dead loop by design. ^{ch. 384}

Fang Yuan declares there is nothing more to be done and fires a bone spike at Chou Jiu’s heart. Chou Jiu, certain the threat was only meant to scare him, dodges too late, and the spike tears through his shoulder inches from a killing blow. Terrified now, he offers a poison vow, then an enslavement Gu binding himself as Fang Yuan’s slave. Fang Yuan rejects both: he needs no oath of trust, and a rank five enslavement Gu is rare and would still not free Chou Jiu to speak the blessed land’s location past his sea oath. Chou Jiu’s expression freezes. Fang Yuan reads the truth in it: his own killing intent had only ever been a test. ^{ch. 384}

Cornered, unable to lie without exposing himself and unable to speak the truth without dying by his own oath, Chou Jiu laughs bitterly at his own end. He tells Fang Yuan that dying by his hand, rather than to the enemies waiting outside, is no small honor. He says he has one more plan left, one that could still hand Fang Yuan the Door of Life and Death. ^{ch. 384}