Chapter 410

Fang Yuan counts the bowl: seventy-eight beads of green grape immortal essence, and with the layer of blue-green immortal liquid pooled beneath them, seventy-eight and a half in all, a hundred times what the three kings blessed land held. ^{ch. 410}

He takes one bead and summons fixed immortal travel Gu, a jade-like butterfly, meticulously made and elegant in flight. The summons costs him: his face pales, his body shakes, cold sweat breaks out and his sight darkens, and only the golden railing under his hand keeps him from falling. Little Hu Immortal cries out a warning, since his soul injury is severe and another careless summons could drop him back into a coma. ^{ch. 410}

Fang Yuan waves her off and lets the Gu land in his palm, where it settles onto the green grape immortal essence and slowly eats. The immortal in its name is not for show; immortal essence is its food, and it finishes one whole bead. This is its first feeding since Fang Yuan refined it. He slept seven days and nights without tending it, its wings gone dim with hunger; fed now, it flies off bright again, its wingbeats scattering green light like dust, an Immortal Gu’s aura returning with it. ^{ch. 410}

Feeding an Immortal Gu is costly, a full bead spent at once, but the interval before the next feeding is long: rank one and two Gu eat every few days, rank four every few months, rank five every year or two, each meal expensive. This one will not need feeding again for six years. Fang Yuan lets it roam Dang Hun palace freely, so long as it stays clear of the lightning shadow beyond the mountain. His aperture, still rank four upper stage, cannot yet hold a fully healthy Immortal Gu; Spring Autumn Cicada survives inside him only because it is weak, and because it is his vital Gu. ^{ch. 410}

With that settled, Fang Yuan turns to his own soul. He tells the land spirit to take him to find gutstones, and she agrees at once, saying he should have gone sooner. They cross Dang Hun Mountain’s broken ground, Fang Yuan swaying with every step. She offers to teleport him, but he refuses, unwilling to spend the immortal essence. ^{ch. 410}

She finds the first gutstone, a lump grown into the rock, mottled in color and easy to mistake for ordinary stone. Fang Yuan smashes it, and a Gu flies free as grey light and sinks into him. His mind clears, new strength settles into his soul, and the buzzing in his ears eases. ^{ch. 410}

Dang Hun Mountain shakes souls apart, a death ground for every living thing, and only the land spirit’s suppression lets Fang Yuan walk it safely. The souls of the dead scatter and fuse into the mountain over time, and gutstones form from them. Some hold guts Gu, which strengthen a soul, though a guts Gu lasts only an instant before it disperses or is broken down again, and a gutstone cannot be carried off, only used where it lies. ^{ch. 410}

The first guts Gu leaves Fang Yuan feeling like a desert traveller handed water. With the land spirit guiding him, he finds another dozen gutstones and smashes each in turn, gaining eight more guts Gu. His soul injury heals completely, its foundation ending up stronger than before he was hurt. Standing on the mountainside, he laughs, certain that with this many gutstones his soul’s foundation could reach a height no one has ever managed. ^{ch. 410}

Hu Immortal was fortunate to find Dang Hun Mountain and move it into her own blessed land, and unfortunate to die in the fifth calamity all the same. Without the blue charm lightning shadow, Fang Yuan judges she would have become the strongest enslavement path expert alive, holding a treasure she never lived to use. It is his now, and the most valuable thing in the whole blessed land. ^{ch. 410}

Guts Gu cannot strengthen a soul without limit. Too many, without enough concentration to hold them, can over-inflate a soul into a fatal disaster. But five hundred years of rebirth and near-death struggle have tempered Fang Yuan’s soul like steel, and a few hundred guts Gu pose him no danger. A strong soul foundation eases both refining Gu and enslaving beasts, and it means he need not fear a killer move like Mo Wu Tian’s purple eyes. ^{ch. 410}

Dang Hun Mountain first appears in Legends of Ren Zu, as a forbidden ground on the path a father once walked for his son. Verdant Great Sun flew toward the sky and fell to his death, and Ren Zu, grieving, sought wisdom Gu, the same Gu whose teaching had first led his son to drink. Wisdom Gu told him revival was possible: enter the Door of Life and Death, lead the boy out along the road of life, into sunlight. ^{ch. 410}

Ren Zu’s shock turned to joy and then to fury. He seized wisdom Gu and accused it of trying to finish what it had started, since the Door of Life and Death was a road with no return. Wisdom Gu answered that it alone knew the door’s secret and could teach it to him: as a living man he had to enter by the road of death, a road destiny Gu left behind on leaving fairness Gu, thick with suffering Gu, and he would need courage Gu to withstand it. ^{ch. 410}

Past the door, seeing fairness Gu would mean he was already dead, and there he would find his son’s soul and lead him out by the road of life, the same path destiny Gu once walked to visit fairness Gu. Three obstacles stood on that road. Dang Hun Mountain, crossed by smashing gutstones for guts Gu’s help. Luo Po Valley, crossed with faith Gu. The reverse flow river, crossed only by moving forward without ever stopping. ^{ch. 410}

Ren Zu accepted this and sought out faith Gu, the only light he could still see since losing his sight. It told him it felt his resolve and would help him, but warned that giving up the search would lose him its help for good. He found courage Gu next, a companion of hope Gu, which he already carried, and the two had an easy familiarity from it. With courage Gu beside him, he reached the Door of Life and Death and entered the road of death. ^{ch. 410}

The road was pure darkness, swarmed by suffering Gu like yellow fireflies, and courage Gu burned them back as he walked; only courage carries a man through death. Ren Zu made it down whole, his body whitening and hollowing into a ghost’s, and a kind of sight returned to him. At the road’s end, in the stillness, he found fairness Gu, so vast that he called a mountain a speck of dust beside it and the sea no more than a single drop. Fairness Gu answered that life and death were the world’s truest fairness, its own body swelling to match the door it guarded, and told Ren Zu his son was close by, free to go to him. ^{ch. 410}