Chapter 387

Wu Shen Tong and Wu Gui have to plan every round with care to advance. Bai Ning Bing simply moves forward, carried by the land spirit’s help. The grand rank four peak stage Wu Shen Tong never even sees her face before his end. Fang Yuan kills him for his aperture. Bai Ning Bing takes his enslavement Gu worms and the dog beasts he had massed instead, folding them into her army and growing it by ten percent. She is not surprised he is behind it: the land spirit has already told her. ^{ch. 387}

Looking over her swollen ranks, Fang Yuan judges them already an initial formation, one that could snowball to the final round without trouble. He warns her of what still waits ahead: mutated lion mastiffs, King Quan’s old trump cards and far stronger than her five great mountain dogs, and two ancient dog emperors who once served as King Quan’s left and right arms, each able to match a rank five Gu Master. She has to subdue them. ^{ch. 387}

The land spirit praises him for knowing the three kings’ inheritance inside out, thanks to Spring Autumn Cicada carrying him back from the future, then warns that its immortal essence portions are down to enough for two more kills. Asked who is next, Fang Yuan answers at once: Zhang San San. His beast placenta Gu already holds eighty nine percent aptitude, and two more rank four kills would carry it to ninety. Ninety percent is also a hard ceiling: a second aperture’s aptitude cannot exceed the Gu Master’s own first aperture, and Fang Yuan’s first aperture is A grade at ninety percent, so anything refined past that point would be wasted unless he later raises the first aperture too. ^{ch. 387}

Zhang San San ranks only rank four upper stage, weaker than Yi Huo or Kong Ri Tian, but Fang Yuan judges him the most dangerous enemy present, an enslavement path Gu Master second only to Wu Shen Tong and Wu Gui. His plan for Bai Ning Bing, a complete newbie at commanding dogs, is to have her hold a single defensive formation around the main hall rather than maneuver. That rigidity is itself a risk: a skilled enslavement rival could lure her dogs into disorder and tear a hole in the line. With Fang Yuan buried in the refinement and the land spirit weakening, the dog group would be the only defense left, so he means to clear out the enslavement path rivals first. ^{ch. 387}

Fang Yuan kills Zhang San San smoothly, joining Wu Gui, Wu Shen Tong and the others already dead by his hand. But his aperture holds an unexpected prize: a rank five slavery Gu. Slavery Gu run from rank one to rank five, and implanting one lets its holder control that Gu Master; a rank five one, rare enough to control a rank five Gu Master, was famously how Gu Yue clan’s fourth generation clan leader once turned the tables on flower wine monk, begging to be enslaved after losing to him, then killing him on Qing Mao mountain in a moment of the monk’s carelessness. Fang Yuan guesses Zhang San San had been saving his own slavery Gu for a rank five target, since using it on a mere rank four Gu Master would be a huge loss. ^{ch. 387}

He regrets not knowing sooner: used on Tie Mu Bai, Wu Gui, Ku Mo, Wu Lan Shan or Chou Jiu, the Gu would have paid off far more, but all of them are already dead. Still, despite the waste, Fang Yuan chooses to use it on a rank four Gu Master anyway, wanting a second one at his side while he faces the dangers of refining his second aperture. He weighs a long list of candidates, from Yi Huo and Kong Ri Tian to Tie Ruo Nan and the Tie clan elders, each strong in a different way, before settling on Feng Tian Yu. ^{ch. 387}

Feng Tian Yu kneels: the enslavement Gu leaves him no will of his own, and he becomes Fang Yuan’s loyal, devoted slave. Fang Yuan notes his fall: once famous for refining a rank five Gu at rank three, even though it died within half a day, he now watches his own clan dwindle toward extinction. Fang Yuan orders him to keep charging King Xin’s rounds and bring back the undefeated hundred battles Gu, the very prize Fang Yuan remembers him winning in his previous life. The deeper reason for choosing him is his gift for the refinement path: with his own second aperture refinement still untried, Fang Yuan wants a refinement grandmaster at his side. ^{ch. 387}

For his last kill, Fang Yuan passes over the strongest, Yi Huo, and the influential Hu Mei Er and Tao Zi, and thinks instead of Tie Ruo Nan. Like Tie Mu Bai, he rates her a genius who, if allowed to grow, would end up more terrifying than Yi Huo. Yet her threat to him right now is smaller than Yi Huo’s or Kong Ri Tian’s, and killing Yi Huo would help the aperture refinement more. He is still weighing safety against the future, kill Yi Huo now or root out Tie Ruo Nan for later, when the land spirit interrupts him. ^{ch. 387}

A rank four Gu Master has stumbled onto one of the blessed land’s weak points, torn open by an old earth calamity, and is spending a rank five Gu to spread poison there, threatening to tear a passage to the outside world in about eight minutes. Fang Yuan, a rank six Gu Immortal in his previous life who once owned a blessed land himself, understands the stakes at once: an open hole doubles immortal essence expenditure, and left unrepaired it grows until it draws the winds of assimilation that destroy a blessed land outright. The land spirit has already sealed off most such weak points, but three crucial ones cannot be cut away, and it is startled anyone has even noticed this one. The scene it shows Fang Yuan is Long Qing Tian, thin and gloomy in a dark blue robe, activating his sole rank five poison Gu, jade sky, an immemorial era Gu now extinct, its pale green light already spreading across the land and sky around him. Long Qing Tian has already used jade sky Gu to earn a fearsome reputation across Southern Border, poisoning countless people, and now he is poisoning this stretch of the blessed land. ^{ch. 387}