Chapter 469

Relic Gu can raise a Gu Master’s cultivation realm directly, and they run rank one to five: green copper, red steel, white silver, yellow gold and purple crystal, all mortal Gu with nothing above them. The first three sell openly. Yellow gold and purple crystal are restricted by the large organizations, because they shift the battle strength of rank four and five Gu Masters, and both stay scarce even inside treasure yellow heaven. Fang Yuan buys three purple crystal relic Gu and, at greater cost, an immediate success Gu to raise his refinement odds. He buys further low rank Gu and materials besides, planning to refine rank five breath concealment Gu and others himself rather than trust a purchase treasure yellow heaven cannot fully vet. ^{ch. 469}

After selling his remnant recipes and buying up resources, Fang Yuan has twenty-eight immortal essence stones left once treasure yellow heaven’s fee is taken. A recipe’s treasure light fades the more it sells and only recovers with time, so seller and buyer both gain by waiting between sales. Only Spring Autumn Cicada, second aperture Gu and the Blood Deity remnant recipe remain worth holding back this way; his method for turning divine travel Gu into fixed immortal travel Gu is already known to everyone and earns no treasure light at all. ^{ch. 469}

He still must supply rockmen to Immortal Crane Sect, holding off their suspicion and buying time. Dang Hun Mountain is dying, so its guts Gu production keeps shrinking, and the sect’s patience is thinning with every smaller shipment. He is confident they read him as a trapped fish defending Hu Immortal blessed land from within, never suspecting his trips to northern plains and back, not even Old Man Yan Shi, since a wisdom path Gu Immortal needs traceable clues and cannot deduce from nothing. His own advantage is Spring Autumn Cicada’s rebirth: five hundred years of memory give him stargate Gu and moving perspective cup Gu, worms a generation ahead of the present five regions. ^{ch. 469}

Fang Yuan has one more thing to sell: gruel mud, the rotten remains of Dang Hun Mountain’s rock after the earthly calamity spread the gruel mud Immortal Gu’s pollution through it, and now a prized ingredient for refining that same Immortal Gu. He offers it in treasure yellow heaven for nothing but the gruel mud Immortal Gu’s own remnant recipe, and only the highest treasure light offered wins it, a demand the Gu Immortals first mock as greedy. The opening bid reaches only about four meters of treasure light, short of his standard, so he has little Hu Immortal add a jin of gruel mud for every further remnant recipe offered. All the gruel mud had already been cleared from Dang Hun Mountain years before and moved into the blessed land’s west area rather than discarded, slowly turning into a swamp; the old disaster is now a resource. More recipes pour in, and the treasure light climbs from four meters toward about six meters and still rising. Fang Yuan judges his own marketing sense, carried from his soul’s origin on Earth, ahead of anything this world has, and calls the whole trick a small one even as it works. ^{ch. 469}

With the matter handed to little Hu Immortal, Fang Yuan judges it time to leave, having tracked that his stay in Hu Immortal blessed land runs five times longer than the same span in northern plains. Little Hu Immortal walks him to the west area and activates the stargate Gu under starlight firefly light, and he steps through carrying his refinement materials and low rank Gu, arriving back at crescent lake in northern plains at almost exactly the dawn he calculated, dew still on the grass and birds spreading their wings over the water. He reflects that between Ma Hong Yun’s fortune, Lang Ya land spirit’s help, and connecting heaven Gu solving Hu Immortal blessed land’s resource shortage, his stalled plans finally have room to move again. Escorted back to Ge tribe camp under the wolf group as the sky brightens, he orders no one to disturb him and locks himself into the lizard house to refine Gu, since Gu worms belong to the region where they are refined and not to where their materials came from. The first Gu he refines is a fresh set of moving perspective cup Gu, rank five, his old set nearly spent. ^{ch. 469}

Meanwhile at crescent lake, Yan tribe’s nine Gu Masters find wolf footprints on their hump wolves’ trail, a mixed pack of poison beard wolves, wind wolves, turtleback wolves and night wolves too large and too varied to be a wild grouping. Yan tribe leader judges the newly migrated, diminished Ge tribe could not feed such a group itself, guesses a demonic Gu Master controls it, and states their objective this trip is to seek reinforcements from Ge tribe: if Ge tribe is in trouble they will retreat quietly, and if they can help encircle the wolves cheaply, they will do that instead. ^{ch. 469}