For tomorrow!
At the river digging site, an elderly rockman kneels before Yan Yong and cries that the work cannot continue like this. Three tribesmen died of exhaustion the day before, and a rockman who dies of exhaustion has his soul dissipate and leaves no young rockmen. Yan Yong answers that heroes have sacrificed for a bright tomorrow. He claims the growing fox groups show the male immortal regaining immortal essence, so the digging must go on to cut off his source of power. He points to the many gravestones he ordered built for the dead. The old rockman, one of the few left who understand the situation and deeply worried, warns that the tribe must reproduce. ch. 415
Yan Yong says nothing. He walks off to inspect the other areas while the young rockmen around him mock the old man. The old rockman sees the slogans carved on the gravestones and cannot speak, since the crazed atmosphere has engulfed the tribe, and even rockmen dying of exhaustion smile. He slams his fist on the ground and silently goes back to work. ch. 415
At the next site the channel is forming, and the weaker young rockmen patrol as rock guards, formed by Yan Yong personally. They report another 25km dug, a hundred and twenty tribesmen sacrificed and three found sleeping on the job. Yan Yong orders gravestones for the dead and public criticism for the sleepers. The young rockmen, extremely spurred on, answer with fanatic slogans, and their enthusiasm makes him fearful. He knows he built this scenario himself, and that the fox groups, the slogans and the rock guards all serve Fang Yuan’s plot to cut the tribe’s resistance to a minimum. He feels like a puppet whose strings are in the hands of that demon, and would rather not know the truth, wondering if living in the lie is bliss. ch. 415
Elsewhere, Fang Yuan injects primeval essence into the last Estrus Gu and shoots it over the fox group. It bursts into pink powder, and the foxes breathe it and begin to mate. From the start of the digging he has used estrus Gu every day, and the fox army has grown several times over. Hu Immortal had no Immortal Gu, and in the fifth earthly calamity the blue charm lightning shadow killed her, her enslavement path Gu perishing with her. Her leftover Gu in Dang Hun mountain include burial soul toad, estrus Gu and fox enslavement Gu, and he has used up most of them. The blessed land cannot sustain so many foxes, and in less than two years many would starve. He does not care, for his mind is on the sixth earthly calamity. ch. 415
A few months pass, and the river connects the north and east. The overflowing lake floods into the fire pit, and almost half the black flames are doused, leaving three burning areas at the edges. Fire and water wipe each other out, the north flood is alleviated, and the ground surfaces, and the water fills tens of pits into many lakes. On Fang Yuan’s instructions, Yan Yong leads the hundred or so rockmen, tired and injured, home to the south area. ch. 415
Little Hu Immortal asks what to do with the clouds, water vapor that many rains have not cleared, which block the light and darken the east area. Fang Yuan tells her to ignore them. He expected the clouds and counts them a minor detail beside the sixth earthly calamity. If the blessed land survives it, he will settle the clouds slowly, and if it fails, thinking of them is pointless. ch. 415
