All of you, get lost!
A Gu Master’s very first Gu worm usually becomes their vital Gu, bound closely enough to their own life that harm to either side echoes in the other. Unlike other Gu, a vital Gu survives even the worst backlash of a failed refinement. Changing it later is possible only by destroying the old one, and doing so risks anything from heavy injury to death. ch. 494
Fang Yuan’s own vital Gu, Spring Autumn Cicada, has sat dormant at the center of his first aperture since his rebirth. His new second aperture opens the chance at a second one. He rules out any Immortal Gu for the role, since the second aperture is only a rank three mortal aperture and cannot store one, Spring Autumn Cicada being the sole exception; he rules out Gruel Mud too, an expendable Immortal Gu whose eventual use would trigger heavy backlash, and sets Fixed Immortal Travel Gu aside as being elsewhere entirely. He settles on the rank three All-out Effort Gu instead, the natural core of the strength path he cultivates alongside enslavement path. He notes that he had once meant to protect this Gu’s refinement with undefeated hundred battles Gu, but circumstances spent that undefeated hundred battles Gu on refining Fixed Immortal Travel Gu instead. ch. 494
Two days pass in the blessed land, whose time runs five times faster than the outside world, so only a single night passes in northern plains. Fang Yuan returns at dawn through stargate Gu, bringing only the newly taken water wolves, a myriad beast king leading six thousand wolf kings beneath it. He leaves the vermillion flame wolves, night wolves and mutated beasts behind, unwilling to expose so much of Chang Shan Yin’s strength at once. ch. 494
Three days later at crescent lake, Chai tribe leader Chai Zhang and Zhong tribe leader Zhong Fei You confront each other over five black skin fat beetles. Zhong tribe claims them by territorial right, since the beetles wandered onto ground both sides had already agreed marked the boundary; Chai tribe calls it deliberate extortion, since the only detour runs through the territory of at least three myriad beast groups. The smaller Chai tribe hesitates to fight the more recently risen, stronger Zhong tribe over goods meant to help them side with Liu Wen Wu. ch. 494
Wolf howls break the standoff as Fang Yuan’s army arrives: night wolves, turtleback wolves, wind wolves, and in the greatest numbers, white fur water wolves, moving with an army’s coordination. An onlooker puts the turtleback wolves at least at twenty eight thousand and the night wolves at fifteen thousand, with the wind wolves outnumbering the night wolves and the water wolves largest of all at about thirty two thousand, the whole mass spreading into a half-moon formation that surrounds both tribes against the lake. Recognizing Chang Shan Yin, whose reputation from challenging three tribes in one night still hangs over them, Zhong Fei You and Chai Zhang abandon their standoff and find themselves willing to ally instead. Zhong Fei You bows and begins to address him; Fang Yuan cuts him off, dismissing both tribes and telling them not to block his way. Only then, stung but silent, does Zhong Fei You order his own tribe to retreat, with Chai tribe following. Fang Yuan spares the abandoned beetles no more than a glance before sending his water wolves into the lake to attack the water wolf nest there. ch. 494
