Assassination (Long Chapter)
Fang Yuan sits in meditation beneath strength of ten jun Gu until half of it is spent. He can still use it twice more. Fully spent, it would give him seventy jun of strength, only passable for a rank four initial stage strength path Gu Master. With all-out effort Gu suppressed to rank two, his strength path battle strength is not useful to him for now. ch. 504
Fang Yuan reviews his apertures. His first aperture’s vital Gu, Spring Autumn Cicada, is still concealed and recuperating above a rank five peak stage, ninety percent purple crystal primeval sea. Wolf smoke Gu drifts above the sea; the repaired battle bone wheel and snow wash Gu float on its surface; rank five hints and clues Gu dives through it like a cuttlefish, playing with wolf swallow Gu. At the bottom sit large numbers of wolf enslavement Gu, many strength of ten jun Gu and some wolf soul Gu. Nearby lurk stargate Gu, moving perspective cup Gu, east window Gu, soul burial Gu and instant success Gu, currently his most important Gu. Wolf howl Gu, wolf care Gu, eagle rise Gu, wolf sprint Gu and breath concealment Gu sit in different places on his body. His first aperture’s cultivation has recovered to rank five middle stage, though he keeps using breath concealment Gu to suppress his outward aura to rank four peak stage. ch. 504
The second aperture is a different scene. A ninety percent true gold primeval sea ripples inside a crystal membrane that has grown from rank three to rank four peak stage over these days of cultivation. Rank three all-out effort Gu sits at its center, beside rank three strength qi Gu, which can condense beast phantoms into solid form, and rank four bitter strength Gu, which increases his strength the more injured he is. Rank four charging crash Gu, rank three tusita flower, primeval elder Gu, rank four expend strength Gu and the healing rank three self-reliance Gu round out the aperture. Vajra stare Gu, turn gold Gu, pitch black Gu, blood skull Gu, bone flesh unity Gu, yin yang rotation Gu and others stay behind in Hu Immortal blessed land, unusable to him here. Because his second aperture entered northern plains through Lang Ya blessed land, it receives no regional suppression, and relic Gu bought earlier drove its rapid growth, but with his immortal essence stones running low, further gains now depend on his own effort. ch. 504
With time to spare, Fang Yuan decides to push the second aperture to rank five initial stage that night. It already has sufficient foundation and, thanks to Lang Ya land spirit’s refining, ninety percent aptitude, enough for most Gu Masters to attempt the breakthrough after some failures. Fang Yuan skips the failures on the strength of his experience, and because both apertures are his own, their primeval essence, unlike essence exchanged between two different Gu Masters, can be transferred between them without exploding either aperture. He wills his first aperture’s rank five peak stage purple crystal essence into the second, and by dawn breaks through to rank five initial stage in the easiest such breakthrough he has ever managed. The cost is that the second aperture now also carries the region’s suppression. He judges the suppression on the second aperture will fade in just over half a month, while the first aperture will fully adapt to northern plains and shed its own suppression in three months, right as the struggle for the Imperial Court reaches its climax. ch. 504
Tired after a night without rest, Fang Yuan leaves the secret room, where two rank three Gu Masters guarding it greet him. They tell him his men have captured a shark fin wolf alive and caged it at the supply camp, on the tribe leader’s orders, for him to subdue once his cultivation is done. Shark fin wolf is a mutated beast with the battle strength of a rank four Gu Master, elephant sized, armored like a crocodile, with a row of shark fins running from head to tail down its back. It fights on land but has even greater battle strength underwater. At the supply camp, the fawning rank three Gu Master Tu Bo tells Fang Yuan that capturing it alive cost four rank three Gu Masters and at least over two hundred rank two Gu Masters. He adds that it would have escaped without Wang tribe leader and Fang tribe leader’s timely reinforcement. ch. 504
Fang Yuan notes the wolf carries old injuries, which is why it could be captured rather than killed. He questions the explanation and finds nothing wrong with it. Even so, an unease he trusts, built from centuries of prior experience, keeps growing in him regardless. ch. 504
Rather than subdue the wolf himself, Fang Yuan hands his rank four wolf enslavement Gu to the startled, only rank three Tu Bo and orders him to do it. Tu Bo pours in primeval essence until sweating, and the Gu slowly activates. At a soft, regretful sigh from an unseen woman, Fang Yuan’s warning instinct spikes and he retreats at once. Tu Bo dies with a single cry; one of the two guards flying back with Fang Yuan loses his life in midair, and Fang Yuan recognizes the cause as a soul explosion. An unseen woman’s rank four multiple sword shadow Gu binds him next, and rank five turtle jade wolf skin Gu darkens and patterns his skin like a turtle shell as the blades ring uselessly against it. ch. 504
At the same instant she spits a thread like snake toward his ear. Fang Yuan grabs the last rank three guard and pulls him in front of himself and the wolf. The guard convulses and foams at the mouth, but the snake slips into Fang Yuan’s own ear regardless. He grunts, then pounds the sword shadows hard enough that the attacker recalls them rather than absorb the blows. She shadow steps twenty paces away onto a tent’s shadow, where she reveals herself as Bian Si Xuan, called Shadowless Sword, and bows to him as a junior to a senior. ch. 504
Fang Yuan demands to know what Gu struck him. Bian Si Xuan explains she found brain explosion Gu, which she named herself, in some ruins: once inside the ear it waits for its target to think even slightly faster, then expands rapidly until the brain bursts. She praises him for sensing Lord Dong Fang’s trap and dodging most of the soul explosion, calls taking his life her greatest honor, and vanishes into the building’s shadows before the alerted Gu Masters can block her. ch. 504
The crowd surrounds Fang Yuan, apologizing for their slow response; his skin and hair are cut by the sword shadows but he takes no serious wound, and he shouts at them as incompetent trash for letting an infiltrator come and go unchallenged. Privately he is secretly pleased rather than shaken: the attempt hands him a clue to one of Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s inheritances. He mocks the assumption that he could not have blocked brain explosion Gu. He dismisses Bian Si Xuan inwardly as an inexperienced junior. From his previous life, he recognizes Bian Si Xuan as a figure who becomes one of Ma Hong Yun’s wives and a rank six Gu Immortal. He knows it was brain explosion Gu that let Ma Hong Yun obtain one of Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s inheritances, though Ma Hong Yun always kept that inheritance’s nature and details to himself. What Fang Yuan actually carries forward from his previous life is only the knowledge of how to properly activate the Gu. ch. 504
