Chapter 404

Tie Ruo Nan steps forward, her gaze sharp as a knife, and tells Fang Yuan to be clear about his situation; he answers, tranquil, that he is clear about hers as well. Smiling coldly, he says the Immortal Gu refinement has not finished, but that failure has let him keep enough immortal essence in reserve to kill everyone present. ^{ch. 404}

Ba Gui appears in tears and stops him: killing them all would burn through too much essence to continue the refinement anyway, and the blessed land, riddled with holes now, will soon collapse into smoke regardless. The land spirit’s whole obsession is finishing the second aperture Gu, and it does not care about its own end. Fang Yuan has reached only this stage, with the hardest step still ahead and no time left to take it, and Ba Gui howls that the refinement is a failure. ^{ch. 404}

Yan Jun strolls into the hall unhindered this time, where in Fang Yuan’s previous life Feng Tian Yu had blocked him. Wary of the land spirit but sensing an opening, Tie Ruo Nan presses on with her psychological attack, telling Fang Yuan that with Yan Jun already here, the rest of the reinforcements cannot be far, and his defeat is certain. ^{ch. 404}

Fang Yuan smiles that there is still hope. His glance drifts toward Bai Ning Bing, who braces for him to force her into a fight to the death with the Yang Gu, but passes over her to settle on the grieving land spirit instead. ^{ch. 404}

He asks Ba Gui, mind to mind, whether it still wants the second aperture Gu refined. Hope flickers in the land spirit, and it asks whether Fang Yuan, a reborn Gu Immortal with a full previous life of experience, has found some way through. Frankly, Fang Yuan admits the situation is beyond even his foresight: he is only a mortal now, and, telling Ba Gui he has failed it, admits the refinement has genuinely failed this time. ^{ch. 404}

The land spirit wails louder, and Fang Yuan changes course: the failure, he says, is only temporary. Once Ba Gui dies, he alone will hold the recipe and the half-finished Gu, so Ba Gui must protect him until then. The land spirit agrees at once, since Fang Yuan is the only one who meets the blessed land’s conditions and, as a reborn Gu Immortal, gives the recipe a real chance of succeeding someday. ^{ch. 404}

Fang Yuan points out that Ba Gui can only shield him for a short while longer before it dies, that the remaining essence cannot clear every enemy in the blessed land, and that even carried outside he would still face the crowds massed on San Cha mountain. The corner of his lips curls into a sinister smile: since his rebirth this time, everything has gone smoothly, and with success closing in he cannot help a trace of excitement. Asked how he means to be protected, Fang Yuan invokes the third section of the second chapter of Legends of Ren Zu. ^{ch. 404}

Dazed, the land spirit guesses his meaning and says two conditions go unmet, starting with the light of glory of the immemorial era. Fang Yuan laughs and points overhead: the light is already there. From the moment he stood, he had been quietly sharing Ba Gui’s vision of the world outside, and his talk with the Tie clansmen had only ever been stalling for the right opening. ^{ch. 404}

This is the third time Fang Yuan has used the Spring Autumn Cicada, and each life deepens what he understands about rebirth. Change follows a butterfly effect, but historical inertia pulls just as hard: most great events are conflicts built up over time that need only a trigger, so a new spark tends to replace a missing one, beyond what any one man can easily redirect. ^{ch. 404}

Outside, growing impatient in his fight with Ying Ming, Xiao Mang takes to the sky and unleashes a second killer move, Torrential Light Stream, built from a rank four gather light Gu, a rank five extreme light Gu and a rank five river under the sun Gu. A river of light crashes down onto the blessed land, so blinding that everyone below is forced to shut their eyes. ^{ch. 404}

Tie Bai Qi tries to stop it but only manages to soften the blow. The waterfall of light smashes through the hall’s roof and pours toward Fang Yuan, and the land spirit cries out that this is the light of glory of the immemorial era. ^{ch. 404}

Fang Yuan pours his essence into a rank four bone wings Gu and a rank five liquid metal Gu, growing black wings and a coat of gold, and flaps straight into the river of light while everyone below stares. The impact throws him back at first, but drawing on movement Gu such as golden aurora Gu, taken from rank five Gu Masters he has killed, he claws higher against the current until he clears the hall entirely. Below, the crowd mistakes the golden shape for a bird, then for a warrior soaked in molten gold, as his primeval essence drains fast from running so many Gu at once. ^{ch. 404}

He calls the divine travel Gu to his palm, then the jade sky Gu, which shapes itself into a hollow, jade-green bamboo in his hand. ^{ch. 404}

Watching him fly straight at a killer move, onlookers wonder if he means to end his own life. Bai Ning Bing, her unease deepening, insists everything Fang Yuan does carries deep meaning and that they have to disrupt him; Tie Ruo Nan agrees and calls the four old-timers into position. ^{ch. 404}

Kneeling at the four compass points, the old-timers perform their killer move, Infinite Search and Lock, and space tears into four chains that snake toward Fang Yuan. At the same moment, the fixed star Gu on his left arm, an eight-sided crystal fragment of the immemorial era, glows an eerie blue. ^{ch. 404}

Calling their move too late, Fang Yuan lets the divine travel Gu pierce his own arm and swallow the fixed star Gu. The four old-timers cough blood as the link breaks, and the chains, now without a target, scatter and burn up in the river of light. Having consumed the fixed star Gu, the divine travel Gu dives into the hollow jade sky Gu and spins itself rapidly into a cocoon. ^{ch. 404}

Li Xian frowns as recognition tugs at him, and Feng Tian Yu, looking up, realizes with a shock that Fang Yuan is refining a Gu. Mo Wu Tian marvels that refining Gu in the middle of a killer move means his courage knows no bounds. ^{ch. 404}

This had been Fang Yuan’s plan from the start. Enslaving Chou Jiu, the killer ghost doctor, already guaranteed the second aperture Gu’s refinement would fail, since the final step of merging with the divine travel Gu had only succeeded before with Feng Tian Yu and the land spirit both helping, and working alone this time doomed it outright. Since his rebirth, Fang Yuan had never truly meant to refine the second aperture Gu. He deceived the land spirit and stalled on purpose to engineer this exact situation and win its trust, so he could refine this other Gu instead. Its recipe sits, like the second aperture Gu’s, in the same chapter two, section three of Legends of Ren Zu, the first classic of the Gu world, a text that states some Gu plainly and hides others behind description obscure enough to reward careful study. ^{ch. 404}