Chapter 441

Fang Yuan walks the crowded market alone, past food stalls, tea and kumis sellers, and racks of sheep, dog and bull skin robes alongside finer fox snow robes and metal studded wolf skin worn by warriors. Children crowd the food stalls, men haggle over weapons, women pick over gems and gold. ^{ch. 441}

At a slave square, caged children go unclothed and thin, and chained men kneel with lowered heads while a fat rank one Gu Master hawks five male slaves for half a primeval stone. When the crowd only watches, he drags a dirt streaked woman out of her cage, rips her torn clothes open to bare her breasts, and slaps her buttocks in public while pricing her at three taels of primeval stone for her breeding and labor. She stays numb throughout, handled like a puppet with no will of her own. A mortal who balks at the price is crudely mocked into silence and slinks away once he realizes he is arguing with a Gu Master. Fang Yuan watches with interest, then looks away; the narration notes that mortal slaves fetch little next to variant humans, and that a captured Gu Master brings the highest price of all. ^{ch. 441}

The sight turns his thoughts to Ma Hong Yun. Born a slave, the boy saved a young tribe leader by sheer luck while fleeing a lost battle and was freed and given the surname Ma for it. Tripping over a rock while hunting badly for a living, he smashed it in anger and found a White Silver Relic Gu beneath it, a find that won him his tribe leader’s favor and a chance to cultivate. His aperture woke to B grade aptitude but no useful Gu, and bullying Gu Masters once threw him into a river; unable to swim, he drifted downstream into the bathing spot of Sheng tribe leader’s third daughter, Sheng Ling Er, whom Sheng tribe’s own rules then bound to marry him. She kept him supplied with Gu and stones and even stole from her own tribe to raise his aptitude to A grade, and when that theft came out, her father’s hired killer died to a stranger’s blade before ever reaching Ma Hong Yun. Married, he was hated and secretly plotted against by jealous Sheng tribesmen, so he fled to poison grassland and, on the edge of death by poison beard wolves, found and saved Chang Shan Yin, becoming his subject. His luck carried him on: overlord of the imperial court more than a dozen times across more than a hundred years after Hei Lou Lan’s death. He then became a Gu Immortal on partial inheritances from Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable and Giant Sun Immortal Venerable, was gifted a blessed land, and gained renown resisting central continent’s armies. ^{ch. 441}

Fang Yuan reckons Ma Hong Yun should be thirteen years old by now, admits to himself that he does not know the boy’s birth name, and wonders whether Ma tribe, part of the Huang Jin bloodline and expanding fast to contest the imperial court, has already made him a slave. Passing a gambling den whose signs celebrate luck turning with the times, Fang Yuan is tempted by the crowd inside, remembering again how the worst looking rock Ma Hong Yun was ever handed to gamble with still turned up a rank five Gu. He has other business first and walks on. ^{ch. 441}

The market’s inner ring holds only Gu Masters and their attendants, split from the outer ring by strength alone rather than any guard. His rank four aura draws murmurs about the unfamiliar expert and wary talk of demonic Gu Masters who sometimes use the crowd to offload stolen goods, since rank three Gu Masters are only a tribe’s middle pillar while rank four are its leaders, free to roam the mortal world unchallenged. At the refinement quarter, Fang Yuan buys the recipe for rank one through rank three Wolf Enslavement Gu, the rank four recipe being kept too closely by the large tribes to appear here. ^{ch. 441}

Finding no fine wine at the restaurant, he goes to the market’s largest shop, where an elderly rank three shopkeeper leads him to a private room on the third floor. There he buys five rank three and thirty eight rank two Wolf Enslavement Gu. Of the defensive Gu offered, only an ill fitting rank four piece stands out among the ordinary stock, and he passes on all of it. Flying Gu prove rare too, since only well resourced young tribesmen train the skill from childhood. The shopkeeper’s boast of the market’s only rank four Flying Cloud Gu does not tempt him either, its poor maneuverability suited to a novice rather than a trained flier, and he buys a rank three Eagle Wings Gu instead for its tighter turns. He also asks for Bone Bamboo Gu and Ghost Fire Gu to repair his rank five Battle Bone Wheel. The shop stocks rank two Ghost Fire Gu freely, but every rank one Bone Bamboo Gu in the whole market has already been bought up by Man tribe’s new external tribe elder. Fang Yuan asks who this person is. ^{ch. 441}