Chapter 500

Twelve days into seclusion, Fang Yuan finishes refining the turtle jade wolf skin Gu into his own body. The Gu dissolves into light and is gone. It is consumed in a process Fang Yuan expected would leave imprints on his body similar to bronze skin Gu and iron bone Gu. Testing the result with a dagger, he finds his skin turns jade green and ripples with faint turtle shell lines wherever the blade lands, and the defense needs no primeval essence and no active use, only an attack to trigger it. He judges the Gu remarkable precisely because most rank five Gu Masters own only one rank five Gu of their own, some none at all. So, Hei Lou Lan’s gift, though it is not difficult for a Gu Immortal like him to acquire a rank five Gu even as they stay rare for mortal Gu Masters, still reads to him as a real signal of Hei Lou Lan’s sincerity. ^{ch. 500}

He turns next to raw strength, tracking his gains in jun: ten jun equal three hundred jin. After spending his stock of five strength of ten jun Gu he has stored sixty jun, one thousand eight hundred jin, well past the eighty two jin the narration gives for Earth’s Green Dragon Crescent Blade. With his body now refined by turtle jade wolf skin, he judges it can hold about a hundred jun of strength. A hundred jun or more marks rank five territory. He favors jun strength Gu over the older beast strength Gu because a rank seven Gu Immortal’s recipe makes it cheaper and more common across the north, and using it over his old beast phantom Gu also helps disguise his identity. ^{ch. 500}

Jun strength Gu alone cannot unlock the strength he stores, so he needs all-out effort Gu as well. It is only a rank three Gu, suppressed to rank two in this foreign land. But he holds the recipe for a rank four version that would escape the suppression while he stays in Northern Plains, and he means to make it his second aperture’s vital Gu. He weighs a strategic bind: turtle jade wolf skin helps him bear the strength he gathers but does nothing for enslavement path, while wolf totem Gu, which stores wolf packs as tattoos on the skin, would have served that path better. Yet he has only one body for two apertures and two paths at once. ^{ch. 500}

Fang Yuan counts his other burdens: Spring Autumn Cicada, gradually recovering, again threatens him with death. His repeated trips into Hu Immortal blessed land have thinned his supply of starlight firefly Gu. He still carries Immortal Crane Sect’s interest in Hu Immortal blessed land, the mysterious force drawn by Fixed Immortal Travel Gu, and the unfinished recovery of Fixed Immortal Travel Gu and gruel mud Immortal Gu. He also carries Hu Immortal blessed land’s own earthly calamity, Dang Hun Mountain’s dying crisis, and the strain of keeping the Chang Shan Yin disguise without a slip. He tells himself the crisis is also what will let him cut through the thicket and break free of it. He leaves his secret room. ^{ch. 500}

Two rank three guards report that Hei Lou Lan has called a banquet for important business; Fang Yuan, who spent Hei Lou Lan’s three day feast and five day smaller feast alike buried in seclusion, changes his mind this time and goes. The banquet turns out to be the alliance’s blood oath. Leaders across the assembly bind themselves with poison vow Gu as the contract’s guarantee, and Fang Yuan takes the vow along with everyone else, since he alone holds eating one’s words Gu. He already used that Gu once before in Shang clan city to break a poison vow with Bai Ning Bing, and can now refine it again through treasure yellow heaven whenever he wishes. He is seated at Hei Lou Lan’s immediate left, with Ge Guang behind him and the leaders of Wang tribe, Fang tribe and Ye tribe ranked below him. ^{ch. 500}

Hei Lou Lan proposes that the new alliance grow itself by gathering wild wolves rather than annexing weaker tribes outright, and Fang Yuan judges that he is plainly banking on his night wolf emperor to draw them in. Fang Yuan recalls that in his previous life Hei Lou Lan’s alliance turned on Dong Fang tribe five hundred years before. He agrees to do his part. No one present objects, since more wolves promise more benefit for fewer of their own tribes’ casualties. The assembled leaders, unaware that eating one’s words Gu lets Fang Yuan set his own vow aside, trust the poison vow completely and put every tribe, large and small, to work expanding his wolf pack. ^{ch. 500}