Surrender
Four hours into the assault, Yan tribe’s camp lies in ruins, its ambushed and leaderless Gu Masters unable to hold the line. A thousand wolf king breaks through the defenders in the center and starts killing the old, the women and the children sheltering behind them before anyone can reach in time. One gravely wounded Gu Master, down to a single hand and leg, hurls himself into the wolf’s jaws and detonates himself, killing the thousand wolf king and himself together. Ge tribesmen surrounding the camp watch and call Yan tribe’s sons brave. Fang Yuan only nods: bravery counts for nothing against the defeated, he judges, calling it simply the cruelty of the fight for the imperial court’s throne, and orders the survivors told to surrender. ch. 474
The order chills Ge tribe’s own Gu Masters, who realize defeat would leave them in Yan tribe’s place, but the sight of the Wolf King beside them settles their nerves again. The wolf group draws back and opens a path, and a Ge tribe elder walks through it to call on the Yan tribesmen to surrender for the sake of their families. Some refuse and vow to die first, but hesitation spreads once they picture their wives and children paying for it. The Yan tribe elder alone despises the tactic, but he forces the words out anyway: Yan tribe surrenders. ch. 474
Reactions split among the Yan tribesmen, some in disbelief, some weeping, some relieved, while Ge tribe’s Gu Masters rejoice at having annexed so large a force. Ge Guang reckons that digesting the spoils will triple Ge tribe’s strength, surpassing even what it held back at Hong Yan valley, and credits Fang Yuan for it. He recalls his own brief hesitation on first reading Fang Yuan’s letter and judges, now, that siding with the Wolf King was the right call: his reverence for Fang Yuan deepens further. ch. 474
Surveying the wrecked camp from his hump wolf, Fang Yuan watches every hiding Yan tribesperson hunted down and captured, and the surviving Gu Masters shackled, their Gu worms seized and their primeval essence sealed under guard. He stays unmoved: his previous life’s great battle of the five regions was far more bitter than this. With Yan tribe annihilated, he plans to return to Hu Immortal blessed land, attend the coming heroes assembly, and visit Lang Ya blessed land beforehand if his luck holds. ch. 474
Three days later, on a night filled with stars, Fang Yuan leads the wolf group to a remote spot, reaches Little Hu Immortal through moving perspective cup Gu, and uses stargate Gu to bring thousands of wolves, mostly old, injured or weak, back into Hu Immortal blessed land. Rather than spend them as cannon fodder the way an ordinary enslavement path Gu Master would, he settles them in the blessed land’s western reaches to breed: wild beasts reproduce readily, and with the blessed land’s time already running six times faster than northern plains, his troops will now replenish themselves. The west becomes wolf farmland, the north stays sealed off, the east sits under dark clouds and lakes, the south belongs to the stonemen, and Dang Hun Mountain, still dying from the Immortal Gu Gruel Mud’s damage, holds the center. ch. 474
Little Hu Immortal greets him happily, having finished settling the starlight worms as instructed, and leads him east to look up at clouds turned pale blue by fields of star fragment grass, starlight fireflies drifting among them and some already blossomed into starlight firefly Gu. Fang Yuan approves and pets her. He recalls buying the grass in bulk from treasure yellow heaven and ignoring Fairy Yao Guang’s advice to buy cloud soil instead, since the blessed land already carried enormous dark clouds, born of the water and fire he collided to strip the earthly calamities, that had long blocked light over the eastern ecology; turned to use, they save him the expense and promise a growing surplus of starlight firefly Gu to sell once the battle of the five regions raises demand for them. ch. 474
Back at Dang Hun Mountain, Fang Yuan releases the souls he gathered in soul burial toad Gu during the Yan tribe campaign, and Dang Hun Mountain draws on them as nutrient the moment they are freed: gathering souls, he notes, was one of his reasons for the attack. With his cultivation free of any suppression here and himself already at true rank four peak stage after holding it a long while, he decides, with his A grade aptitude behind him, that tonight is the time to attempt a breakthrough to rank five. ch. 474
