Chang Shan Yin, be my husband!
By the fire that night, Fang Yuan pays more attention to the moving perspective cup Gu than to Ge Yao or the meat soup cooking between them. The rank five Gu, suppressed to rank four in northern plains, is costly to feed and heavy on primeval essence, and it traces back to Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable, the wealthiest Venerable in history, who spent his life hunting the legendary space cave described in The Legends of Ren Zu, a forbidden realm holding countless space path Gu worms and reachable anywhere through omnipresent space doors. He built the cup meaning to steal Gu out of the space cave and failed at that goal, though four hundred years after his death Gu Immortals competed over his excavated blessed land and spread the recipe through every region. ch. 434
Before leaving for northern plains, Fang Yuan had split a paired set of these cups, carrying one and leaving the other at Hu Immortal blessed land. He loads a golden dragon Gu into his cup and feeds it primeval essence until it glows and vanishes. Far off at the blessed land, Little Hu Immortal feels a summons and rushes to Dang Hun palace’s secret room just as the matching cup there glows and vanishes in turn. A cup then reappears in Fang Yuan’s own hands, and Ge Yao is sharp enough to notice its colors have swapped from gold top and silver bottom to silver top and gold bottom. Fang Yuan only laughs; the narration explains what he never tells her, that the two cups exchange contents through the space cave no matter the distance between them. ch. 434
A letter arrives from Little Hu Immortal, reporting that apart from Dang Hun Mountain all is well, and that on Fang Yuan’s standing order she has turned down another trade Immortal Crane Sect proposed, since more dealings would risk exposing his absence. Only five or six days have passed for Fang Yuan in poison grassland, against a full month at the blessed land. He writes back and sends golden coat Gu, charging crash Gu and bone wings Gu along with the reply, and the exchange leaves his aperture’s primeval essence nearly spent. Once he recovers it with a primeval stone, he sends the rest of his southern border Gu worms across the same way, for Little Hu Immortal to keep. ch. 434
Ge Yao keeps asking what he is doing; Fang Yuan only smiles and says nothing, which needles a girl used to being doted on and pursued. Watching his borrowed, weathered face by the firelight, she turns over what she knows of Chang Shan Yin’s story instead, a tale told widely across northern plains: a righteous and beloved young hero who lost his mother, his sworn brother and his wife to betrayal and disaster, and rebuilt himself from ruin through his own effort. Thinking of the pain such a man must carry, Ge Yao wants to comfort him. ch. 434
When Fang Yuan finishes his cup exchange, Ge Yao stands and asks him to marry her. Fang Yuan is caught off guard, unable to anticipate her even with five hundred years behind him, and he laughs it off, pointing to their age gap of over twenty years and joking that his own son would suit her better. Ge Yao refuses to be turned aside and insists she wants him. ch. 434
