Chapter 461

Ge tribe reaches crescent lake and camps around the sparse horseshoe trees. That night Fang Yuan leaves the tribe’s sight on the excuse of leading the wolf group to hunt. His thirty thousand half-starved wolves feed on small beast groups under his careful control. The lake also holds a larger water wolf group, a three-horned rhino group, a thousand mutated beasts and a worm group of up to a million insects, none troubling anyone outside its territory. ^{ch. 461}

By his past life’s memories, Fang Yuan goes east along the lakeside to a stone forest. Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable created it personally. He won a bet of three rounds out of five and forced Long Hair Ancestor to refine Space Escape Gu, an Immortal Gu for entering the space door. The two refined it over twenty-one years, and the Demon Venerable could activate it, yet it could not enter the Space Door. Research with Giant Sun Immortal Venerable made no progress either, and Space Escape Gu remained Long Hair Ancestor’s only failure. ^{ch. 461}

Long Hair Ancestor’s good friend Immortal Yi Yan, a rank eight wisdom path Gu Immortal, could not bear to watch him die with that failure unresolved and spent fifty years of his lifespan deducing the future. The prediction said that three great eras later, three venerables would come, one woman and two men: Spectral Soul Demon Venerable, Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable and Great Dream Immortal Venerable. The last would solve the Space Escape Gu problem. The deduction became the Prophecy of Three Venerables. Spectral Soul Demon Venerable has since come and died, Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable has risen on the righteous path and died too, and only Great Dream Immortal Venerable is yet to be born. Long Hair Ancestor died and became a land spirit whose one obsession is to see her, and if she solves the Space Escape Gu problem, the whole Lang Ya blessed land will be hers. ^{ch. 461}

Fang Yuan recalls the rest. Greatly embarrassed, Long Hair Ancestor had promised nine more Gu for Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable with all materials supplied, and six became Immortal Gu. Before vanishing, the Demon Venerable agreed with him on a secret code leaving the remaining three chances to his inheritor. In Fang Yuan’s previous life, more than a decade from now, one of the Demon Venerable’s inheritances activated, and nobody solved its riddle pointing to Lang Ya blessed land despite the craze it set off in northern plains. Later, Ma Hong Yun was defeated in battle, ambushed at crescent lake, and fled into a hidden passage in this stone forest to Lang Ya blessed land. The land spirit accepted his secret code and refined three rank five Gu for him, and with them Ma Hong Yun turned the tide and won the imperial throne a second time. ^{ch. 461}

At a purple pillar, Fang Yuan sees no woman’s shape, though the dying Ma Hong Yun had sat here and thought the pillar looked like his wife. Fang Yuan laughs that longing let Ma Hong Yun see Zhao Lian Yun everywhere. She will become a wisdom path Gu Immortal and help Ma Hong Yun strategise, but is currently only a little girl. Fang Yuan smears blood from a cut on the pillar and states his want aloud, the two criteria of the Gu worm there, and he disappears. He stands in a room smelling of an alchemy furnace before a sagely old man on a bed of cloud. ^{ch. 461}

Fang Yuan bows, introducing himself as Demon Venerable’s inheritor Chang Shan Yin. The land spirit sees through his outer skin and names human skin, shame plum, autumn voice grass, pill fire Gu and medicine strength Gu. He offers a similar grade Gu worm for the human skin Gu recipe, then remembers the secret code and demands it. Fang Yuan says there is no code and he will not exchange the recipe yet, so the furious land spirit crushes him with pressure and threatens to peel off his skin. Unmoved, Fang Yuan answers that as the Demon Venerable’s inheritor he cannot be touched before the agreement of the three Gu is completed. This land spirit scared Ma Hong Yun in the past life into refining only three rank five Gu and losing the chance at Immortal Gu, which Ma Hong Yun regretted endlessly. The land spirit finally deflates, climbs down from his bed of clouds and pleads for the exchange, leaving Fang Yuan speechless. ^{ch. 461}