Chapter 462

The land spirit, playing the doting grandfather, personally brews tea for Fang Yuan and begs him for the human skin Gu recipe, weeping and rolling on the ground when refused. Fang Yuan holds firm until the display wears him down, and he agrees to hand the recipe over five hundred years later, an offer the land spirit accepts gladly. ^{ch. 462}

Fang Yuan then offers a recipe for connecting heaven Gu. He stops mid page once the land spirit confirms it is new to him, and finishes the rank five recipe only after the land spirit produces the Gu itself, which Fang Yuan keeps. He tries again for divine sense Gu, but the next several recipes he sketches are already in the land spirit’s collection, or turn out to be older recipes someone has since improved on, so nothing changes hands. Reflecting on Long Hair Ancestor’s long career of collecting, Fang Yuan concludes his own memories are less novel than he had assumed. ^{ch. 462}

He then writes out the recipe for stargate Gu, a Gu of his own design, and trades it for the divine sense Gu. The land spirit is genuinely impressed, judging it able to rival hole earth Gu and connecting heaven Gu for crossing the five regions, and asks whether Fang Yuan created it himself. Fang Yuan claims full credit, for this recipe and the earlier ones alike, and the land spirit warms to him, dropping “young lad” for “little friend.” ^{ch. 462}

The land spirit explains stargate Gu’s weaknesses: it needs gathered starlight to activate, its success rate is otherwise low, and rare supplementary materials can raise that rate by about thirty percent. He names starlight fireflies as its ideal pairing, since they let the Gu work regardless of time or place. He calls them extinct outside the immemorial era, then admits he recently saw a swarm for sale in treasure yellow heaven, likely belonging to a Star Lord Wan Xiang. Fang Yuan, eager to secure them, offers more recipes purely for the fireflies, but the land spirit refuses: he can only trade for Gu currently held inside his own blessed land, and he owns no starlight firefly Gu to give. No amount of arguing moves him. ^{ch. 462}

Fang Yuan then asks whether the same rule lets him trade an Immortal Gu recipe for the land spirit’s own Heavenly Essence Treasure Imperial Lotus. The land spirit does not yet answer. ^{ch. 462}