Chapter 389

October 20th finds Fang Yuan pale and haggard in the main hall, watching every change in the light lump with red eyes as the last relief sculptures on the bronze tiles vanish by more than half. Everything is silent. ^{ch. 389}

October 21st brings worse news: a rank five expert, Xiao Mang of the Xiao clan, has entered the blessed land, a light path Gu Master Fang Yuan recognizes from his previous life’s memory of San Cha mountain. His rank five extreme light Gu can summon the light of glory from the immemorial era, when nine colored heavens once carried it through the world; seven of those heavens are gone now, leaving only white and black, yet the light Xiao Mang can still call up has no attacking power of its own and can pass through anything, even a blessed land’s own barrier. The land spirit is badly worried, but Fang Yuan reassures it: the Gu is incomplete, looted from a tomb, limited to three uses a month before it will self destruct. Relieved, the land spirit admits it is weakening by the day and that Fang Yuan will have to stand alone at the very end; he laughs that he always has. ^{ch. 389}

October 22nd brings failure and a mouthful of blood, his eyes gone black, the ground spinning under him. It is his third failure at this step, he reflects once the nausea passes, not from bad skill but because the step itself comes down to a one in ten chance; there is no time to waste, so he begins a fourth attempt despite the backlash. By then the immortal essence in the bronze cauldron has fallen below four portions. ^{ch. 389}

October 23rd, he succeeds: a small vague Gu, shaped like a beetle with no legs or antennae, grey and lifeless as carved stone. The land spirit is overjoyed; only one step remains, turning this false Gu into the true second aperture Gu. Fang Yuan’s mood is heavier than the moment deserves. This final step needs an Immortal Gu, divine travel Gu, to refine an Immortal Gu, something he has never once done even after succeeding with Spring Autumn Cicada, and though he can recite the recipe by heart, he understands only slightly what this last part actually requires. ^{ch. 389}

The land spirit reports new arrivals: two armies, dozens of rank three Gu Masters each led by a rank four, sent by the Che and Zuo clans whose own leaders and most elders have now come in person. The two clans have spent recent years fighting over San Cha mountain itself, a rivalry the sudden three kings inheritance has wrecked, and they have held back until now. At the final hour every faction will converge on the main hall, and these troops are only part of it. ^{ch. 389}

Fang Yuan weighs two dangers at once. Outside, Che and Zuo’s forces, plus Li Xian, Hu Mei Er, Yi Huo, Kong Ri Tian and others, will close in while he can spare no attention from the refining, leaving the defense entirely to the land spirit, Bai Ning Bing and Feng Tian Yu. Inside, the final step needs two third watch Gu back to back, making time flow nine times faster around him and driving Spring Autumn Cicada’s pressure to a level that could endanger his own aperture. He chooses to bet everything on it anyway: a second aperture, and rank six cultivation to follow, will keep him from falling too far behind Feng Jin Huang, and Qing Mao mountain and the Shang clan have only ever been a launching platform for this next step. ^{ch. 389}

October 24th, Fang Yuan wakes from real rest for the first time in days, ready for what he calls the great battle. Feng Tian Yu kneels outside the hall and offers up the undefeated hundred battles Gu, plain as a round piece of limestone, reporting that he has cleared King Xin’s hundredth round and taken in several hundred hairy men who follow him there, drawn by their own nature to whoever refines Gu best. Fang Yuan is not surprised, and praises him only briefly. ^{ch. 389}

He then goes to Bai Ning Bing, who recognizes the bronze hall at once as the blessed land’s center and reminds him, coldly, to keep his promise. Behind her stretches a disordered mass of nearly a hundred thousand dog beasts, some idle, some brawling, none of them still. Fang Yuan sees the gap plainly: a trained enslaver like Zhang San San, Wu Gui or Wu Shen Tong could have held that many dogs frozen in formation, but Bai Ning Bing, never trained in the enslavement path, is visibly straining just to hold what she has, dizzy, lagging, her body feeling to her like a puppet’s. He orders her into a strict defensive posture and forbids any attack no matter the provocation. She agrees only because it is his arrangement, indifferent to success or failure either way, and he promises her the Yang Gu regardless of the outcome. ^{ch. 389}

At San Cha mountain’s peak, the crowd reacts as two light pillars vanish, proof that King Xin and King Quan’s inheritances have already been claimed. Guesses fly: Tie Mu Bai, Wu Gui, the Wu clan’s own Wu Shen Tong, even the demonic enslavement master Zhang San San. Then someone notices the truth: not one of the rank five Gu Masters who entered has come back out. A voice explains they are trapped inside a dying blessed land whose passage will soon open wide to everyone, and the righteous path Gu Masters recognize it as Xiao Mang’s. He smiles, promising to open that passage himself, then activates extreme light Gu, heaven’s will Gu and empty fist Gu together as the killer move Immemorial Light Fist. Light rays form into a mountain sized fist that strikes and vanishes in an instant. It tears a formless membrane apart, and an enormous hole opens straight through the blessed land into the outside world. ^{ch. 389}