Sea of Ghost Face Sunflowers
The wolf king’s death breaks the pack’s morale, and the fight ends as abruptly as it began. Ge Yao runs to Fang Yuan, alarmed by his injuries, though he has them under control; he activates self-reliance Gu, a rank three Gu whose effect is suppressed to rank two in northern plains, and his wounds begin closing. When Ge Yao offers her spring rain Gu, a wide-area healing cloud, Fang Yuan tells her to stop it rather than waste such a Gu on one man, and instead activates golden breeze Gu, a rank four healing Gu he got from Tie Mu Bai that shows only rank three strength here; a golden whirlwind spins around him and every wound disappears. ch. 428
He searches the wolf king’s corpse and finds three wild Gu, all dead. Irritated at the lack of loot, he calls Ge Yao utterly stupid and asks whether she has the brains of an ox, since her careless attack earlier drew most of the pack onto herself and nearly broke his control of the fight. She admits the fault, saying she only meant to help, and Fang Yuan relents, promising to teach her so she will not hinder him again. ch. 428
As they push on, he gives her running tips on managing her primeval essence, warning her against wasting water dragon Gu and against using spring rain Gu on so small a group; her fighting steadily improves through several more wolf packs. His real reason for coaching her, though, is less generous than it looks: he means to learn every Gu she carries. By the end, Ge Yao has revealed her whole kit, a rank three middle stage water path Gu Master’s set: fog sparrow Gu for scouting, water dragon Gu and spiral water arrow Gu for attack, water armor Gu for defense, water trace Gu for speed, spring rain Gu for healing, cleansing Gu against poison, and return heart Gu for direction, with no storage Gu since her big stomach horse is already dead. ch. 428
Ge Yao praises his teaching as sharper than her tribe’s three elders and offers to make him an external elder of Ge tribe if he will only visit. Fang Yuan agrees to be a guest but refuses the elder title outright, and Ge Yao sulks behind him, still turning over where she has heard the name Chang Shan Yin before. ch. 428
Their path ends at a field of ghost face sunflowers, each stalk dark purple and each basin-sized black stamen bearing a pale human face. Ge Yao grabs his sleeve and begs to go around, certain that ghost cry Gu and ghost face Gu live among flowers grown from so many unjust deaths. Fang Yuan says nothing of it aloud, but the field’s presence quietly confirms he is walking the right line toward the battlefield he is seeking. Northern plains offers no mountains to steer by, and with only Ge Yao’s return heart Gu giving a direction and no fixed position, he grows a rank three grass puppet Gu, an enslavement Gu native to southern border, into close to a thousand rattan shell grass soldiers armed with bamboo blades and rattan shields. He leads Ge Yao into the sunflower sea surrounded by a hundred more soldiers as escort, while the rest clear a path ahead; the ghost cry Gu shriek in voices by turns sharp, sheep-like, and grieving, the front soldiers collapse, pale ghost faces rise out of the flowers, and Fang Yuan calmly regroups the puppets, sending some off to draw the ghost faces away. ch. 428
