Chapter 409

Fang Yuan asks how many Gu the blessed land holds now. The land spirit answers with a count: over eight hundred and sixty thousand rank one Gu across about fifty-two types, over a hundred and thirty thousand rank two Gu across forty-eight types, five thousand rank three Gu across twelve types, only over sixty rank four Gu across eight types, and a single rank five Gu, fox skin Gu. ^{ch. 409}

Since Hu Immortal died, her lingering obsession fused with the land’s own heavenly power into the land spirit, in a sense a continuation of her own life, and she knows the blessed land completely. As its master now, everything in it belongs to Fang Yuan. Rank one and rank two Gu together come to nearly a million worms. Fang Yuan thinks back to Qing Mao mountain, where he once had to scheme and fight just to win two or three rank one or two Gu. ^{ch. 409}

A blessed land, something only a Gu Immortal can create, is the foundation of real wealth. This one alone could support a super clan, or five or six clans the size of Gu Yue clan. The Gu drop off sharply past rank three, rank four staying under a hundred with only the one rank five worm, the same pyramid every population of Gu Masters follows: rank one and two common, rank three rare, rank four rarer still, and only one or two rank five Gu Masters in a million people. ^{ch. 409}

Fang Yuan calculates that reaching ten million rank one and two Gu would not be difficult with good management, though whether he can raise them well turns on the rank four and five types he ends up with. A mortal Gu Master typically raises five or six Gu; a Gu Immortal can raise a million, even ten million. What the blessed land holds now is only passable. The numbers are modest and the Gu themselves ordinary, worth far less than something like liquor worm or breath concealment Gu, and even the rank five fox skin Gu, a common defensive worm good against wind and water path Gu but clumsy in a real fight, does not hold his attention. ^{ch. 409}

What does move him is the flow of time: five days pass inside for every one outside, so his cultivation runs five times faster here, a year and three months of practice for three months lost to the outside world. That is enough to put him ahead of most Gu Masters. The cost is steep: his own roughly hundred year lifespan will burn five times as fast as well. ^{ch. 409}

The land spirit describes the beasts: around a thousand fox groups, red, golden, cloud, wind, autumn and flowing light foxes among them, the three largest groups holding about eight hundred thousand foxes each, some four million seven hundred thousand foxes in total. Three groups that large make three myriad beast kings, though nothing here has grown into a beast emperor yet, the rank above myriad beast king on a ladder that runs hundred beast king, thousand beast king, myriad beast king, beast emperor. ^{ch. 409}

Fang Yuan regrets that the foxes are all ordinary rather than mutated, since a mutated beast like thunder boar or kunlun bull far outclasses its plain counterpart. Above mutated beasts sit desolate beasts, then ancient desolate beasts and immemorial desolate beasts such as the nine-tailed fox recorded in Legends of Ren Zu. Song Zi Xing’s violent blood dragon bat, one of Blood Sea Ancestor’s nine true inheritances, is an ancient desolate beast. Raising a nine-tailed fox here is a dream, and an ancient desolate beast out of reach, but an ordinary desolate beast like hurricane fox or phoenix wings fox might be possible with luck. ^{ch. 409}

Owning this blessed land forces Fang Yuan to revise his plans after rebirth. Jia clan’s internal strife should already be burning, and the great battle at Yi Tian mountain is beyond his reach now. Instead he means to use Hu Immortal blessed land to climb to the Gu Immortal realm, both surviving its calamities and managing it well. ^{ch. 409}

The land spirit adds that the fox population once stood at least three times its current size. The second earthly calamity brought a meteor fire rain that ruined the land’s eastern reach and burned hundreds of thousands of foxes, its black flames still burning; the fourth was a flood that drowned most of the northern grassland and killed still more. She shows him both scenes: the east a field of craters and silent black fire, the north a drowned plain under endless rain, grass, broken flowers and fox corpses adrift on the water. These are named the dark flame meteor and clouded white sea calamities. ^{ch. 409}

Every ten years an earthly calamity threatens the blessed land, and the damage from the earlier ones remains uncured; Hu Immortal held it off five times before she died. Fang Yuan does the math on what is left: four thousand square kilometers of land, but the ruined north and east together cost over thirteen hundred of it. Settling both problems, he decides, will take a great deal of immortal essence to hold back the black flame and the flood. ^{ch. 409}

The land spirit has worse news still. What remains from the fifth calamity is a scorched black prairie holding a human figure of blue lightning, seated cross-legged, small in build but radiating a terrifying, glorious light. Fang Yuan names it at once, the earth calamity blue charm lightning shadow, strong enough to match a rank six Gu Immortal, and guesses it is probably what killed Hu Immortal. ^{ch. 409}

Hu Immortal was an enslavement path Gu Master who commanded fox groups, a path strong in numbers but easy to break by cutting down its master. Her foxes could not hold the lightning shadow off, and she died fighting it directly. Fang Yuan can work at the first two problems slowly, but this shadow is already beyond him. The land spirit warns him to stay wary when he wanders the land, since the shadow roams freely but does not dare come near Dang Hun Mountain. He reasons it is a calamity but also a living thing with a soul, and any soul that nears the mountain takes shockwaves until it turns to ash. He wonders whether he might lure it there himself, but the buzzing returns to his ears before the thought goes further, and he lets it drop. ^{ch. 409}

He asks the land spirit for whatever bad news remains, all at once, with a bitter smile. Feng Jin Huang, with Gu Immortal parents and Spirit Affinity House behind her, never has to face troubles like these, though her own biography records that she must hand over a large share of her blessed land’s resources to her sect. Fang Yuan, as a lone force, has no sect to pay that share to. ^{ch. 409}

The land spirit says the worst is already told, and what is left is good. A tribe of rockmen, a variant human that lives underground and eats ore, lives in the blessed land’s south, a discovery that catches Fang Yuan off guard. And the blessed land holds abundant immortal essence. Deep in the palace on Dang Hun Mountain sits an enormous golden bowl of green liquid, most of it congealed into grape shaped beads known as green grape immortal essence, a form only rank six Gu Immortals possess, each bead worth more than the whole store the three kings blessed land held. Seeing it, Fang Yuan allows himself real relief. ^{ch. 409}