Chapter 444

Man Duo offers Fang Yuan five hundred thousand primeval stones to stay out of the dispute. Fang Yuan declines it, framing an unearned gift as beneath a gentleman, and instead accepts Shi Wu’s earlier hundred thousand stone challenge as wealth fairly won in battle. Ge tribe’s elders praise him as an incorruptible hero. Man Duo, humiliated, turns to Shi Wu, who is only rank three peak stage against Fang Yuan’s rank four, a full-realm gap he knows is far larger than the two stages look, and who privately estimates he has less than thirty percent of his primeval essence left after the earlier fighting. ^{ch. 444}

On the stage, Fang Yuan grows a coat of azure wolf skin Gu and closes the distance with wolf sprint Gu. He breaks three summoned bone shields, then another three, before pausing to let Shi Wu catch his breath. Shi Wu answers with two iron bone broad axes; Fang Yuan evades every blow using wolf travel Gu, then knocks one axe aside with a single finger and drops him to the ground. He declines to kill Shi Wu, an external elder of Man tribe, not wanting to hand Man tribe an insult to answer or invite trouble on himself, and shrugs off Shi Wu’s killing of a Ge tribe elder as none of his own business. ^{ch. 444}

Man Duo kneels before his father, Man tribe leader, and confesses the defeat. Having already heard rumor of a second rank four expert in Ge tribe, the father has him confirm it, and reacts with alarm on hearing the name Chang Shan Yin, taking over the matter himself and dismissing his son. ^{ch. 444}

Days later, old Ge tribe leader offers Fang Yuan five hundred thousand primeval stones in gratitude. Fang Yuan refuses at first, then accepts it as a loan, since he genuinely lacks funds. As the old man speaks on, his own subordinate brings in an invitation and a gift; grim-faced, he hands them to Fang Yuan himself and tells him Man tribe leader is inviting him to Man tribe as a guest. ^{ch. 444}