Influence
Ge tribe’s army retreats along crescent lake still flush with battle spirit. They never take Pei tribe, but they overrun Bei and Zheng tribe’s camps and batter Pei tribe badly, and the Gu Masters trade the story with pride. Credit settles on Wolf King Chang Shan Yin above all, and Fang Yuan’s standing in Ge tribe rises to an absurd height. As supreme elder he has the standing to remove tribe leader Ge Guang outright, but he has no wish to; Ge Guang remains exactly the obedient piece he needs. ch. 484
Passing back through Zheng tribe camp, the army loads its plunder onto thirty blue farm slug Gu, rank three mucus worms the size of elephants that simply swallow goods and swell; grown to five times their original size, the slugs now dwarf even a myriad beast king, though some resources are still too much even for that and have to be left behind. The gains are huge. Ge tribesmen celebrate the wealth and the fresh captives, while also fretting that the surrendered Gu Masters now outnumber the slave Gu on hand to bind them. A defense force stays behind at Zheng tribe camp with orders to withdraw rather than fight if Pei tribe counterattacks, and the army moves on through Bei tribe camp, gathering still more, before reaching home to a jubilant welcome, the returning Ge tribesmen’s cheers standing against the captives’ numb despair. ch. 484
Fang Yuan credits the unmolested return chiefly to having shown Pei Yan Fei and Bei Cao Chuan the white-eyes wolf. The truth is different: the wolf’s size comes only from third watch Gu, and it carries no wild Gu worm at all, so in a real fight it would be no more than an oversized wild wolf, nowhere near a myriad beast king’s strength. Fang Yuan weighs his own limits with the same honesty. He has already pushed the wolf group past what it is rated for, his own cultivation stands at only thirty jun of strength on the strength path, and he has not yet reached thousand man soul. Of the sixty thousand wolves he fielded that night, less than half survive. Of his three myriad beast kings, the night wolf king has died, the turtleback king lies unconscious under treatment for its wound, and the wind wolf king is battered and much diminished. He feels no regret; the loot, the captives, and above all Chang Shan Yin’s restored fame across northern plains serve his coming plans for the heroes assembly and for Tai Bai Yun Sheng, and the fallen wolves’ souls go to feed Dang Hun Mountain. He resolves to spend the coming lull growing the wolf group, cultivating his wolfman soul, and preparing rank five enslavement Gu, then sleeps, worn through by three battles fought in one night. ch. 484
By morning the battle is the talk of every camp near crescent lake, reactions ranging from suspicion to fear to fury. Wang tribe leader marvels that the man he had dismissed as a mere cat has proven a leopard: Bei Cao Chuan is left ruined, and Pei Yan Fei, northern plains’ famed general, costs a step of his cultivation. His strategist Wang De Dao is furious, calling the unannounced strike on three tribes a breach of the northern plains’ unspoken rules. A letter from Ge Guang reaches every nearby force soon after, casting Chang Shan Yin as the original victim of an old grudge who once had to face Ha Tu Gu’s bandits alone and now seeks revenge on his own Chang tribe, which already serves young master Liu Wen Wu; Yan tribe, itself tied to Liu Wen Wu by marriage but ignorant of the grudge, is the one that asked Chang Shan Yin for help and set the conflict off, so either tribe he strikes lands on Liu Wen Wu. Wang De Dao calls it a personal grudge dressed up to drag in the innocent, but Wang tribe leader judges the excuse serviceable enough, especially with three humbled tribes as proof, to keep the rest of the north from banding together against Chang Shan Yin. ch. 484
When Bei Cao Chuan himself comes to seek an audience, Wang tribe leader dodges him, claiming urgent closed-door cultivation. Bei Cao Sheng, the elder still waiting on Wang tribe’s answer after days of being turned away, is startled to see his own tribe leader and a band of elders arrive in person. Before he can hear why, he apologizes for failing to secure the alliance and insists the three tribes can still handle Ge tribe alone, leaving the freshly defeated elders grim-faced and Bei Cao Chuan unable to find the words to correct him. ch. 484
