Chapter 491

Fang Yuan checks on the air bubble fish. They are hatching well in three lakes Little Hu Immortal chose and protects, where water wolves are absent and blue crucian carp are few. He expects the Eastern Sea’s air bubble sea to be poisoned by a fight between Gu Immortals by the end of the year, driving up prices, but knows he lacks enough fish yet even for his own use. Both the air bubble fish and the starlight fireflies are long term investments needing at least a hundred years to pay off. His past life knowledge already lets him raise the fish’s reproduction rate by thirty percent, though, putting him at the forefront among Gu Immortals in the craft. Pleased with the inspection, he praises Little Hu Immortal, whose face reddens with happiness as her tail wags. ^{ch. 491}

Dang Hun Mountain’s dying aura is worse than before, and it leaves Fang Yuan grave, since the mountain matters to him more than either the fireflies or the fish. He returns to Dang Hun palace and links with treasure yellow heaven through connecting heaven Gu. Numerous Gu Immortals are already bidding, offering recipes and hairy men for the gruel mud he has put up for sale as material to refine Immortal Gu Gruel Mud. Fang Yuan judges the bidding has peaked. ^{ch. 491}

He settles on Immortal Mudfeet’s offer, a remnant Gruel Mud recipe with a treasure light only sixty-five feet high, lower than rival bids, but sweetened with hairy men. Fang Yuan insists on old hairy men rather than young ones. After haggling, Immortal Mudfeet agrees to over three thousand old hairy men and over seven thousand young ones, plus half an immortal essence stone from Fang Yuan to close the gap. The recipe he receives is only sixty percent intact and shows signs of deliberate tampering, which Fang Yuan takes in stride since he would have done the same in Immortal Mudfeet’s place. ^{ch. 491}

With this remnant as a foundation, Fang Yuan expects deducing the complete Gruel Mud recipe will be far easier. He alone holds the actual Immortal Gu Gruel Mud, and has not used it. No buyer of his recipe or material can therefore ever refine one for themselves, leaving him free to keep selling and profiting. Unable to bring the real Immortal Gu Gruel Mud into Hu Immortal blessed land yet, he has already masked its aura and buried it after leaving Lang Ya blessed land. ^{ch. 491}

Turning to his wolf groups, depleted from the battle against the three tribes, Fang Yuan is pleasantly surprised to find a wolf emperor for sale. It proves to be an old, badly wounded night wolf emperor with only two or three of its wild Gu left intact. A younger wolf emperor’s challenge had crippled it, and its owner chose to sell it off rather than let it die outright, exactly as Fang Yuan guesses. He outbids two rivals with two immortal essence stones, winning the old emperor along with over eighteen thousand night wolves. ^{ch. 491}

He goes on to buy thirty thousand turtleback wolves and ten thousand wind wolves, with two turtleback myriad wolf kings and one wind wolf myriad wolf king among them. His wolf group’s total reaches a hundred thousand. Ma Zun, Yang Po Ying, and Jiang Bao Ya each command at least four hundred thousand beasts, and Jiang Bao Ya’s group once exceeded six hundred and fifty thousand at its height. Weighing this, Fang Yuan decides a hundred thousand is still too small for the coming heroes assembly. His identity as Chang Shan Yin makes competing with such men unavoidable. ^{ch. 491}

He buys another ten thousand water wolves, with one water wolf myriad beast king and six thousand wolf kings among them. He then turns to the rarer vermilion flame wolves, whose fiery red fur and flame path Gu worms can set the grassland ablaze and inflict heavy losses if used well. Wanting a hundred thousand of them, he buys eighty thousand himself and leaves Little Hu Immortal to find the remaining twenty thousand. By his own count the group now holds six vermilion flame myriad wolf kings, one water wolf myriad beast king, three turtleback myriad wolf kings, two wind wolf myriad beast kings, one mutated white eye wolf, and one night wolf beast emperor. Fang Yuan surmises its battle strength has grown tenfold at a stroke. Ordinary Gu Masters backed by a large tribe would need six or seven years scouring the plains for wolf groups this large. Small groups run only a few hundred strong, and large ones, numbering in the tens of thousands, are difficult to take down. What looks like an effortless leap for Fang Yuan is, in truth, a Gu Immortal’s methods at work. ^{ch. 491}