Chapter 488

Fei tribe elders on terror claw horses stand over the very swamp where Fei Qing and his son Fei Cai are hiding, tracking them toward rocks pool, and only after the riders move on do the two climb out of a burst silkworm cocoon in the mud, exhausted and gasping. Fei Qing’s face has already turned purple: his cousin Fei Chang poisoned him to seize the clan leader position, and Fei Qing gave up his own swift ghost cloud Gu, letting it fly off as a decoy, once he sensed it had been tampered with. Losing his movement Gu and paralyzed by poison, he has no way to flee himself. ^{ch. 488}

Fei Qing tells Fei Cai the truth: he carries the thick, rare bloodline of the Huang Jin family through Giant Sun Immortal Venerable, qualifying him to one day enter the Eighty-Eighth True Yang Building. Fei Qing urges him, if he ever gets the chance, to go there and claim the Ancestor’s legacy and avenge him. Fei Cai begs to flee together, but Fei Qing pushes him away and orders him toward a hidden path, then has to shout him back onto course twice as the boy, panicking, runs the wrong direction each time. ^{ch. 488}

Fei Chang returns to find Fei Qing alone. He has him bound and dragged by rope, and vows to make Fei Qing watch his son tortured to death once caught. Fei Chang forces a rank three soul search Gu on Fei Qing, a technique that returns only disordered fragments and risks his own mind with repeated use, and tears loose the memory of a hidden path, but even after locating it he finds no trace of the boy there. ^{ch. 488}

A bugle horn signals that Ma tribe has launched a surprise invasion of the tribe camp, and Fei Chang abandons the chase to defend it. Ma tribe’s invasion was planned to exploit Fei tribe’s internal turmoil, and despite warm pond valley’s defensible ground, Fei tribe cannot hold: the Huang Jin family branch occupying it is exterminated. ^{ch. 488}

On a nearby slope, Ma tribe’s leadership watches carts of plunder and columns of captives file out of the ruined camp, and an elder credits the victory to young tribe leader Ma Ying Jie’s scheme to sow discord inside Fei tribe. Ma Ying Jie, a rank four middle stage enslavement path Gu Master known as Little Ma Zun, accepts the praise. ^{ch. 488}