Chapter 399

Fang Yuan looks up through the broken hole in the hall’s ceiling at the setting sun of southern border, and wonders whether it is 5:45pm and Feng Jin Huang has just inherited the Hu Immortal blessed land. ^{ch. 399}

In his previous life he fought alongside demonic Gu Immortals against that same blessed land, seizing Dang Hun Mountain only at the cost of killing Feng Jin Huang and barely surviving himself. After her death the righteous path mourned her in a biography crediting her three great opportunities in life; the first came at three years old, when she gained the Immortal Gu dream wings in a dream, and the second was this Hu Immortal blessed land, ascended that day at 5:30pm. ^{ch. 399}

With Dream Wings behind her, Fang Yuan thinks, the inheritance was always going to be Feng Jin Huang’s, and only the second aperture Gu could have kept her from such a lead, a chance his failed refinement just cost him. The thought sinks him for a moment, but his face hardens again: he has not lost yet, because he still has Spring Autumn Cicada. Infinite search and lock can seal a rank five Gu, he reasons, but not a rank six Immortal Gu. ^{ch. 399}

He takes a last, calm look at Bai Ning Bing and the others, nothing left worth saying either way, and his calm alone unsettles them before he detonates himself on the spot. Spring Autumn Cicada bursts into green and orange light as a strange, profound aura spreads outward, consuming every one of his Gu worms, all his primeval essence, his flesh and his soul. Every use of the vital Gu is a great gamble, and cornered as he is, he bets everything he has left. ^{ch. 399}

The released energy carries him, a brilliant point of light bearing his remaining will, tearing into the river of time, the most feared forbidden ground in a world otherwise made of southern border, northern plains, western desert, eastern seas and central continent. Countless pale droplets crash and spin through that river, throwing off light as they collide, and Spring Autumn Cicada moves through them like a traveller finally coming home, wings beating against the current, carrying Fang Yuan’s consciousness with it. ^{ch. 399}

This is his third use of the Cicada. The first time he had no experience of the river at all; the second, he was forced to detonate with too little time to spare. This time he is prepared, and for the first time truly feels what it is to swim against the tide, countless reversed images flooding his mind until a second feels like it could be years. The dangerous currents wear the Cicada down fast, and once its stolen energy runs dry it dives into one of the droplets and disappears. ^{ch. 399}

Fang Yuan blinks and the scene has changed. A familiar voice is begging for its life beneath him, offering to reveal a true path and mentioning a poison vow Gu in exchange for safety, and he looks down to find Wang Xiao under his feet. Stunned for a moment, he breaks into open joy, laughing that he has won his bet and rebirthed again. Wang Xiao, unnerved by the outburst, decides he must be dealing with some mentally unsound demonic maniac and only begs louder. ^{ch. 399}

Fang Yuan checks his aperture and finds Spring Autumn Cicada spent again, its once-lustrous body withered like autumn leaves. He wills it into hiding to recover through the river of time, easing the danger the vital Gu poses while it sleeps. Looking around, he confirms he is still in the blessed land, still standing on Wang Xiao, with Yun clan’s young clan leader Yun Luo Tian’s corpse nearby, killed earlier by Bai Ning Bing and sent over at the cost of immortal essence. Thinking of her stops his laughter cold. ^{ch. 399}

It was Bai Ning Bing, after years of planning, whose betrayal had cost him everything even after he finished refining the second aperture Gu, plunging him into despair; without Spring Autumn Cicada and no small amount of luck, he would have lost for good, to death or to the Demon Suppression Tower. He tells himself the demonic path is a tightrope where one misstep means the abyss with no way back up, and admits he had been careless, chasing Feng Jin Huang’s Immortal Gu while ignoring the true demon hiding at his side; her acting had been convincing, her patience had numbed him for years before the final blow, and he is only a mortal after all, not an invincible god. ^{ch. 399}

He and Bai Ning Bing had both been growing ferociously, he reflects, the harshness of reality and the beauty of fate in the same breath, everyone at once a main character and a side one. Each rival had an edge he lacked: Bai Ning Bing her Northern Dark Ice Soul physique, Tie Ruo Nan her Tie clan backing, Feng Jin Huang an Immortal Gu found in a childhood dream, while he had only hundreds of years of bitter cultivation behind the Spring Autumn Cicada. He recites a poem to himself about mountains and rivers and the creatures racing under an autumn sky, asking who truly commands the world’s fate, and follows it with the thought that an impartial Dao gives every living thing its chance to rise, that no one is born purely a side character or an eternal lead, and that it is exactly this competition among rivals that makes history so vast and strange. His bitterness, hatred, shock and grief dissolve like smoke; his resolve sharpens, and he starts thinking with a clear head. ^{ch. 399}

He races back through what followed this exact moment in his previous life: grilling Wang Xiao for the path into Wu mountain, only to have him die without telling it, forcing Fang Yuan to kill him and devour his and Yun Luo Tian’s apertures with beast strength placenta Gu; exposing Spring Autumn Cicada to win the land spirit over; killing killer ghost doctor Chou Jiu, Wu Shen Tong and Zhang San San, unexpectedly gaining a slavery Gu from the last of them; being forced to break off and kill Long Qing Tian, coming away with nothing because of the jade sky Gu poison; and finally refining Gu, defending the hall, and being betrayed by Bai Ning Bing. ^{ch. 399}

With that knowledge in hand, the situation now looks perilous rather than promising. Bai Ning Bing already knows the details of his Immortal Gu refinement and has secretly allied with Tie Ruo Nan, so the Tie clan has almost certainly prepared in advance, with Tie Bai Qi perhaps already hidden on San Cha mountain: the enemy hidden, and Fang Yuan exposed. During the last days of refinement Xiao Mang will arrive, and Mo Wu Tian will unexpectedly join too with a freshly reached rank five cultivation that, last time, reunited a demonic faction Fang Yuan had left leaderless and hastened the assault on the hall: the enemy strong, and Fang Yuan weak. Worst of all, Bai Ning Bing has secretly planted a fixed star Gu in his left forearm, so once the four old-timers loose infinite search and lock, there will be no escaping it, not even to the edge of the world. ^{ch. 399}

He reasons the Tie clan held back before now for three reasons: his killing of Tie Mu Bai had already overturned their plans, they preferred to let others exhaust each other first, and their own caution kept the fixed star Gu in reserve as a final trump card, wary that an arrest alone might not turn up the Yang Gu. With it already secretly in place, Fang Yuan is like a fish already swimming into the net, the situation nearly hopeless unless something changes. ^{ch. 399}