Chapter 487

Fang Yuan asks Lang Ya land spirit to accept him as a disciple, and the land spirit refuses at once, declaring he has already taken eighteen hairy men as disciples and will only ever take hairy men. An old agreement still binds the land spirit, though, and he hands Fang Yuan the second aperture Gu he has just finished refining: a fist sized beetle shaped Immortal Gu, blue and jade like, with a golden eye that flashes with lightning on its back. Fang Yuan cannot activate it yet, since he remains only rank five and lacks the immortal essence a Gu Immortal would have. He recalls observing that the final step of refining such a Gu is extremely dangerous, needing at least a thousand man souls to control the swelling and contracting light ball. ^{ch. 487}

Fang Yuan then produces the divine travel Gu he still holds and invokes the old rule that an Immortal Gu is traded for another Immortal Gu, asking for one of rank six to match it. Lang Ya land spirit resists, calling divine travel Gu impractical and of no use to a land spirit, though his fixed stare at it gives away his real interest. After some haggling Fang Yuan settles for one of the land spirit’s own expendable rank six Immortal Gu, and among the five the land spirit produces, he chooses Immortal Gu Gruel Mud, startled to find that Lang Ya land spirit was the one who had refined this very type of Gu responsible for Dang Hun Mountain’s slow death. ^{ch. 487}

Fang Yuan next offers the semi-finished second aperture Gu he refined himself, first asking a thousand old hairy men and then dropping to eight hundred. Lang Ya land spirit refuses outright. He calls every one of his hairy men his own child. Fang Yuan switches his request to the recipes for wolf enslavement Gu instead, and the land spirit hands over a thick stack covering ranks one through five, including eight separate recipes for rank five alone. Fang Yuan judges the trade worthwhile, since buying such recipes openly from treasure yellow heaven risks letting Old Man Yan Shi deduce his intentions. ^{ch. 487}

Fang Yuan then offers one more transaction: information about exactly when he will use the second aperture Gu, since only after he uses it can the land spirit refine another. Lang Ya land spirit is outraged at being pressed this way, but cannot afford to refuse. Fang Yuan proposes trading that timing for everything the land spirit knows about the Eighty-Eight True Yang Building in Imperial Court blessed land, and the land spirit is shocked that Fang Yuan even knows the building has anything to do with him. ^{ch. 487}