Chapter 445

Fang Yuan reads Man Tu’s invitation, its northern plains script wild but profound; the narration credits his having written it personally as sincerity. The letter frames the clash with Shi Wu as a misunderstanding among children and asks him to a banquet that evening, with a gift box of a hundred bone bamboo Gu attached. He agrees to old Ge tribe leader’s request to ease the tension between the two tribes at the banquet. ^{ch. 445}

Alone, Fang Yuan brings out the battle bone wheel. It is a rank five Gu nearly split through by one deep crack among many, a wild Gu that has survived only by eating skeletons off the battlefield since its original owner died and it turned feral. Because the Spring Autumn Cicada, a rank six Gu, could not easily overpower a rank five Gu, he and Ge Yao had to beat the wheel to the brink of destruction together to subdue it. ^{ch. 445}

Using ghost fire held beneath his tongue, Fang Yuan melts bone bamboo Gu one after another into smoke that the wheel’s crack draws in. Spending over thirty bamboo Gu, about a quarter of the gift box, seals only the deepest crack. The wheel is still unfit for battle, and even fully repaired, he judges, his own primeval essence could not yet activate it, so he sets the rest of the work aside. ^{ch. 445}

That night, Fang Yuan rides a hump wolf to the banquet with Man Duo and Ge tribe’s father and son. Ten li out, by northern plains custom, Man Tu’s party rides to meet them. A passing cloud swallows the moon mid-greeting, and Man Duo covers his father’s awkwardness by crediting the gathered heroes’ aura with stirring the sky. ^{ch. 445}

Man Tu names Fang Yuan the Wolf King, crediting him with dominating through wolf enslavement and with killing the rank five Ha Tu Gu to clear out a band of bandits, and recalls that Lord Chang stood at rank four peak stage twenty years earlier. Fang Yuan turns the praise back on him instead, naming him ruler of near a thousand Gu Masters and conqueror of Hong Yan valley. Privately, his heart tightens at the passing cloud, most likely a sign that Gu Masters are on the move. It has not yet been a month since he buried the fixed immortal travel Gu, and he hopes its aura, not yet faded, draws no Gu Immortal to it. ^{ch. 445}