Chapter 464

Fang Yuan settles his dilemma: he will spend one of his three chances now, on stargate Gu, rather than gamble on the flawed Blood Deity recipe the land spirit tries to tempt him with, or hold all three in reserve. He turns down the land spirit’s persuasion outright once he has decided. The land spirit accepts, noting there is no single strongest Gu, only the one that suits its owner, and stargate Gu suits a man who cannot use Immortal Gu at all. ^{ch. 464}

He teleports in five captured Gu Immortals to help with the refining, Gui Wang’s group, who had attacked Lang Ya blessed land and been lured in and captured once their own immortal essence ran short against the land spirit’s, without even a desolate beast needed to take them. Kneeling, the five submit and greet the land spirit as their lord. He introduces Fang Yuan to them as Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s inheritor, Chang Shan Yin, and their earlier contempt for a mere mortal turns to shock, then envy, once they place the name: across every age from the Immemorial Era to the present, only around ten Venerable level Gu Immortals have ever appeared. ^{ch. 464}

Fang Yuan receives their bows with total indifference. He privately reasons that status among the doomed means nothing, that nobility and lowliness are both self-deceptions among people equally destined to die, and that only immortality itself is worth anything: without it, he thinks, even a rank nine Gu Immortal is no better than filth in a gutter, and he refuses to let himself become that. He keeps this thought to himself. ^{ch. 464}

The land spirit dismisses the five as trash fit only to help him refine personally, and the first attempt at stargate Gu fails. Unbothered, he settles Fang Yuan in for a long wait, since a month inside Lang Ya blessed land passes as only a day outside, its time running thirty-six times faster. Souring at the failure, he orders one of the five, mocked for clumsiness, to serve Fang Yuan tea instead, and she turns out to be Fairy Huang Sha. Fang Yuan asks for wine instead, celestial horse wine and destitute wine both, and while she serves him he quietly stores both vats away in wolf swallow Gu, which the land spirit notices but, too proud to react, ignores. The second attempt also fails. ^{ch. 464}

As a third attempt begins, Fairy Huang Sha begs Fang Yuan in tears to save her, offering lifelong service. He privately judges her, beautiful as she is, no different from filth in a gutter, since these five all died as cannon fodder for their own greed in his previous life, and repeats to himself that he too would be nothing but filth without immortality. When she keeps pressing, he kicks her down, then kicks her again hard enough to break a tooth and fill her mouth with blood, stripping away her rank five Gu while she is defenseless under the blessed land’s suppression. Her tearful look turns to open malevolence, and Fang Yuan warns her that mere beauty will not move him, threatening to smash every tooth in her head if she looks at him again. She clenches her fists, tries to stand, then lowers her head and does not look at him again. ^{ch. 464}

The third refinement also fails. Furious and aware of what has passed, the land spirit offers Fang Yuan free rein to strip Fairy Huang Sha and force her to dance as an apology, exciting Gui Wang and Loner Hong Yu while Fairy Fen Meng and Fairy Qing Suo stay silent. Fang Yuan declines: dominating her holds no interest for him, and only the stargate Gu does. ^{ch. 464}