Chapter 443

A month passes before Ge tribe learns of Ge Yao’s death, and grief spreads through the tribe: though known for a troublesome personality, she was kind-hearted and the tribe’s beauty, and people loved her, with many suitors of her own. The old Ge tribe leader falls gravely ill from the loss, and Ge Guang becomes stand-in leader with the elders’ support. Man tribe’s third son Man Duo, who had fallen for Ge Yao at first sight and had been demanding her hand, is left wondering where he will find another bride now that she is dead. A Man tribe grown arrogant on its recent conquests presses hard on the newly arrived, dependent Ge tribe regardless. ^{ch. 443}

In his room, Fang Yuan absorbs his ninth wolf soul Gu. It fuses with his human-shaped hundred man soul into a form with wolf ears, waist-length hair, wolf eyes, and a sharpened nose, a stage he judges will become a full wolfman soul once his stock of wolf soul Gu is spent. He reasons that a soul can strengthen without limit, recalls that Spectral Soul Demon Venerable, history’s foremost soul cultivator, must have surpassed a hundred million man soul, and judges his own new wolfman soul still an ant beside that scale. He also activates a third strength of ten jun Gu, raising his physical strength to twenty jun, six hundred jin, though he still cannot unleash it all at once; unlike beast strength Gu, he notes, jun strength Gu stacks without a separate beast fetus Gu. ^{ch. 443}

Ge Guang arrives wounded, a white bone arrow in his shoulder, and begs for help. Man Duo has brought Man tribe fighters to demand Ge Yao be handed over despite her death, killing the tribe’s third elder, injuring three more, and besting Ge Guang himself. Weighing that reclaiming Chang Shan Yin’s name needs a public stage, Fang Yuan agrees to go. ^{ch. 443}

Outside, Man Duo brands Ge tribe cowards and threatens to kill every single member of the tribe if Ge Yao is not handed over, then sets his fighter Shi Wu, rank three peak stage, against them. Shi Wu kills a sacrificed Ge tribe elder on the spot and offers a hundred thousand primeval stones to anyone who can beat him. No one steps forward until Fang Yuan walks out beside Ge Guang. Shi Wu freezes at the sight of a rank four Gu Master, and Man Duo, unsure who this stranger is, dismounts and greets him formally, asking why an outsider would interfere. ^{ch. 443}