Chapter 458

Ge Guang howls at the sight of his father crushed under the night wolf king. Brave fight Gu’s effect fades and the wolf king’s battle intent breaks under the troop’s attacks, and Fang Yuan seizes the moment to reveal that he was never truly unconscious. He unleashes rank four wolf enslavement Gu as a cloud of smoke over the wolf king’s head; its consciousness, already close to collapse from its wounds, wavers against Fang Yuan’s soul, which already exceeds the strength of a hundred-man soul, then yields as it senses a kindred wolf aura in him. Fang Yuan follows with wolf smoke Gu to stabilize its wounds, and its howl scatters the rest of the wolf group into retreat, ending Ge tribe’s crisis. ^{ch. 458}

No one celebrates. Ge tribe leader lies in a deep pit, his body reduced to a mush that healers only partly restore before their primeval essence runs out, and his wounds are fatal. Ge Guang kneels sobbing at his side. Trying with his last strength to warn his son to be wary of Chang Shan Yin, the old tribe leader stops short when Fang Yuan pushes through the crowd in tears, and changes course to name Ge Guang the new tribe leader instead. With one final surge of strength he tells his son to remember the title and never let emotion sway him for the tribe’s sake, then dies. He became tribe leader at thirty-eight and dies in battle at eighty-seven, having given everything he had to Ge tribe. ^{ch. 458}

At dawn Man Tu reads a letter Gu from the battlefield and learns Chang Shan Yin subdued the night wolf king and saved Ge tribe. Man Duo proposes spreading rumors to turn Ge tribe against Chang Shan Yin, since a Gu Master who now commands the whole wolf group is a danger any wary tribe leader would fear, but Man Tu tells him it is already too late: the old tribe leader is dead, Ge Guang has succeeded him, and with Chang Shan Yin’s wolves grown past twenty thousand and no pretext left to act on, Man tribe has already lost. Man Tu still sends the third and final wolf wave in against Ge tribe, hoping to watch the Wolf King fail if it too falls under Chang Shan Yin’s control. ^{ch. 458}

Days later Fang Yuan wins big against that wind wolf group, killing its myriad wolf king and subduing more thousand and hundred wolf kings, and his wolf group reaches thirty-five thousand after the three battles. Ge tribe pays dearly for it: countless mortals dead, more than half its elders gone, and its own leader sacrificed. Ge Guang visits Fang Yuan with a rank four impermanence bone Gu as a gift and, changed and steadier since his father’s death, admits the tribe can no longer feed his wolves. Fang Yuan offers to lead the wolves out to hunt for themselves, thin their numbers deliberately, and feed the meat to Ge tribesmen, reducing the group to thirty-two thousand and moving with the tribe as its protection. Watching Ge Guang walk away, Fang Yuan sneers at how naive the young man is: he already has the strength to wipe out all of Ge tribe. ^{ch. 458}