Intense Battle (1/3)
Fang Yuan has just subdued a hundred wolf king and pulled several hundred turtleback wolves into his own force, turning part of the battlefield into a safe zone, and the camp cheers his name as Chang Shan Yin. Where others see the vast turtleback wolf horde as a threat, Fang Yuan sees it as gifts sent to him, since more wolves under his command means more battle strength for himself. Ge tribe has prepared well: three earth walls and water canals that split the incoming wolves apart, with Ge Guang leading a unified defense that Fang Yuan judges the most favorable condition he could ask for. He rallies the Gu Masters to follow him and moves the group toward another part of the battlefield. ch. 452
Nearby, a lone hundred wolf king battles a dozen rank two Gu Masters after the rest of its pack has died, and it has already smashed an arrow tower; three Gu Master corpses already lie nearby. Fang Yuan arrives and looses a rank two wolf enslavement Gu; the wolf king resists, but his hundred man soul suppresses it, and it becomes his pet, badly wounded. He orders a healing Gu Master to tend it. A young Gu Master, Ge Can, wants to kill it for having killed his brother, but Ge Guang shouts him down; Ge Can only kicks the beast before breaking into open sobbing, and the others around him feel the same grief, before he wipes his tears and calls them back to the fight. ch. 452
At the northwest wall, three hundred-rank wolf kings break through the earth defenses, and Fang Yuan takes command with Ge Guang’s backing, splitting the Gu Masters into three groups: one to lure a wolf king to the second defensive line, one to strip another’s defensive Gu, and one to follow him personally. His own target burns off his rank two wolf enslavement Gu’s smoke with a firelight Gu he had not been warned about, so he hands it to Ge Guang and instead enslaves the second wolf king, already stripped of its defenses. By the time he returns, Ge Guang has sealed the firelight wolf king’s mouth shut with vines grown from a tree-creation Gu, and Fang Yuan enslaves it too, then also takes the first wolf king lured to the second line. The Gu Masters begin to realize that following his orders costs them the fewest lives. ch. 452
Watching through an investigative Gu outside the battlefield, Man Hong credits Fang Yuan’s skill and his expression sinks, but Man Hao, trying to console him, dismisses subduing mere hundred-rank wolf kings with a hundred man soul as not hard, insisting the true test will still be Fang Yuan’s overall wolf manipulation skill. Enslaving wolf king after wolf king costs Fang Yuan little primeval essence but strains his hundred man soul, leaving it impatient and impulsive; left unchecked, it risks dizziness or worse, lost memories or dulled intelligence. He sits, recovers his essence with primeval stones, and meditates until the strain and his negative feelings pass, then resumes the hunt; his running total climbs to three hundred-rank wolf kings and eight hundred ordinary turtleback wolves. ch. 452
A thousand wolf king, seeing its subordinates turned against it, howls its group into a furious charge at Fang Yuan; such a beast commands thousands of wild beasts and several hundred lesser wolf kings, and killing one needs at least three cooperating Gu Master groups, or three rank three Gu Masters who could barely match it evenly. Ge Guang’s mostly rank-two escort is outmatched until three Ge tribe elders arrive to help, honoring an earlier agreement Fang Yuan struck with Ge tribe’s leadership. Against four rank three Gu Masters, one rank four Gu Master, and a number of rank two elites, the wolf king fights on with claws, teeth, and a summoned wolf strength phantom, mildly injuring two elders before Fang Yuan finds his opening. A rank three wolf enslavement Gu, its smoke thicker than the rank two version, lands on the beast, and after a dozen breaths of his hundred man soul bearing down on it, it fully submits: his first thousand-rank wolf king of the battle. Its own two hundred-rank wolf kings and several thousand ordinary wolves defect with it, and this stretch of the battlefield falls quiet; the whole horde held only around fifteen thousand wolf kings to begin with, and now one thousand-rank leader among them is his. ch. 452
Sensing the loss, the myriad wolf king howls and hurls a huge four-leaf windblade at Fang Yuan; three Ge tribe elders answer in turn with a three claw water dragon Gu, a fist stone Gu, and a lightning web Gu, weakening the windblade until it dissipates in the air. Fang Yuan does nothing throughout the exchange; Ge tribe’s Gu Masters keep him shielded as a matter of course, since an enslavement path Gu Master’s life is too valuable to risk even against a rank four cultivator like him. ch. 452
