Ge Tribe Camp
Fang Yuan rides west with Ge Guang’s party, and the mood along the way stays warm. He is cultivating the friendship on purpose: Chang Shan Yin has been gone twenty years, and a bare claim to the name would be hard for anyone to accept. Fang Yuan is also short of primeval stones and has no defensive Gu, none having turned up on Chang Shan Yin’s corpse after his fight with Ha Tu Gu. Within two days the two men are close. ch. 439
Ge Guang’s feelings toward him run three ways: gratitude for his life saved, respect after a little guidance from Fang Yuan breaks his own cultivation bottleneck, and curiosity at the reminiscent, weathered way Fang Yuan speaks of the past, though he does not dare press for the story. Fang Yuan, for his part, has already read Ge Guang completely from their talk on the road: brave, forthright, deeply patriarchal, prizing glory over his own life, and furious and disgusted with his sister for fleeing her marriage. That anger does not mean the sibling bond has gone cold: he would go at Fang Yuan with his teeth and limbs if he ever learned who killed her. Fang Yuan understands this because he lived in northern plains in his previous life. ch. 439
Five days on, the party reaches Ge tribe’s camp, ringed by a green wall some six meters tall and grown over with vines bearing grape like fruit that are really Wood Path Mind Confusion Gu, bursting into a confusing juice against attacking beasts. Watchtowers rise behind the wall, each manned by three rotating Gu Masters, one on defense and two on watch. Scouts have already carried word of the wind wolf fight and the enslavement expert ahead of them, so the gate opens to a crowd already curious about the middle aged stranger and his wolves. ch. 439
Past the mortals’ tents, robes mark status: gold or purple thread for the better off, patched rags for the poor, and for the enslaved almost nothing at all, kept kneeling and chained. Free men salute only with a hand to the chest, since northern plains men kneel to heaven, ancestors and elders alone, never to a tribe leader. The tribe treats slaves as it treats livestock, and their trade is the busiest business in northern plains. ch. 439
Deeper in, Gu Masters live not in tents but in Gu houses; a Gu house can be a single Gu or many combined, and Fang Yuan recalls the towering three star cave tree that Jia clan once brought to Qing Mao mountain. Northern plains avoids such trees, easy lightning targets in storms, and favours instead the House Lizard Gu, a huge multicolored lizard with window eyes, a mouth for a door and a corridor of rooms inside, needing at least one Gu Master in the household to keep it. Wealthier families and elders live in Mushroom Gu houses instead, grey capped and stable against wind and lightning, several grown together into a small mushroom forest where children run out to touch the passing wolves. ch. 439
At the camp’s center, over a hundred Mushroom Gu mark Ge tribe’s king tent, and the old tribe leader comes out to meet them, thanking Fang Yuan for saving his son and the tribe’s future, and promising kumis, grilled meat and feed for his wolf pack. Inside, guests are seated by rank, and the old leader personally carves the eyes and choice cuts from the roasted cow and sheep to present to Fang Yuan on a golden plate. By northern plains custom, draining a host’s toast is respect and refusing it is insult, so Fang Yuan drinks every cup offered to him, first the old leader’s, then Ge Guang’s, then each elder’s in turn, winning the room’s favor. ch. 439
Loosened by drink, the old tribe leader asks whether Fang Yuan belongs to Chang tribe, mentioning his own second daughter married there and wondering if they might be kin. Fang Yuan answers with his prepared history: a Chang tribe man of the Yuan Feng faction, Shan generation, an only child, son of Chang Sheng Dun and Chang Cui. The old tribe leader’s eyes go wide with shock. ch. 439
