Star Thought Gu
Dong Fang Yu Liang watches the rain and sighs. The assassination did not succeed after all. He paid a hefty price to capture the shark fin wolf intentionally and marked it in secret. He planted a rank five soul explosion Gu inside it, and sent the demonic path assassin Shadow Sword Expert to trigger it. He rehearsed the plan through several simulations until he judged every flaw and loophole removed, down to the wolf’s location, timing and even the discovering Gu Master’s likely attitude. Even so, it failed: Wolf King Chang Shan Yin sensed something wrong at the crucial moment and sent someone else to make the first move, forcing Shadow Sword Expert to trigger the formless, invisible soul explosion before her chance slipped away entirely. Restricted by her own sword attacks, Chang Shan Yin only reached the outer edge of the soul explosion’s range, but he stayed calm enough in that crisis to use an ally as a shield and block most of its force. ch. 505
Dong Fang Yu Liang hears Shadow Sword Expert’s report. He raises his opinion of the Wolf King. With a mutated beast before him, Chang Shan Yin controlled the temptation, judged correctly under danger, and spotted the soul explosion’s range. He showed the callousness to use an ally as a shield, and stayed calm enough afterward not to give chase. ch. 505
Shadow Sword Expert, standing in a corner of the study in black, tells him not to worry. Even shielded, she says, Chang Shan Yin was still caught within the soul explosion’s range, and her brain explosion Gu struck him as well; even if it does not kill him, it should leave him effectively crippled. This is the first Dong Fang Yu Liang has heard of brain explosion Gu. She explains its origin to him. He thanks her for the help, noting she has lost a great trump card in the process. She says nothing in reply, though she has relied on brain explosion Gu for many successful assassinations since testing it, and only the urgency of the moment and the arrival of enemy forces stopped her retrieving it before she had to retreat. ch. 505
He offers her the promised reward, rank four overlapping shadow Gu, fist sized, black, horned and square shelled, which could let her fuse her scattered sword shadows into one strong attack against a defensive opponent. She visibly wants it. But she declines it, telling him to keep it until Wolf King is dead, and dissolves into the shadows. ch. 505
Alone, Dong Fang Yu Liang reflects that Shadow Sword Expert always honors her word. This is why even righteous Gu Masters pay heavily to hire a demonic path cultivator of her standing, and he hopes brain explosion Gu alone finishes Wolf King off. But he cannot be sure: Chang Shan Yin chose to deal with the soul explosion first and let brain explosion Gu enter his ear anyway, which suggests he already had some countermeasure for it. With the Wolf King confirmed hit by the soul explosion at least, but the rest uncertain, Dong Fang Yu Liang decides there are now more variables to weigh, and he needs to make new deductions. ch. 505
He opens a hidden tunnel behind his bookshelf. He descends into an earth bacteria king Gu he has planted there, a Gu house with a cramped but defensible interior lined like a soft, thick carpet. Sealed inside, he sits, closes his eyes, and channels rank five primeval essence into star thought Gu. ch. 505
Under the Gu’s effect, each question he poses becomes a visible thought that glows with blue starlight and can leave his head to hover above him. Asking how to deal with Wolf King if brain explosion Gu fails, he generates a first star thought, then three more circling it. The three circling thoughts are pitting an enslavement path master against Chang Shan Yin as the supreme method, charging in to take his life directly as the domination method, and using bribes or kinship against him as the peculiar method. The four thoughts collide and coil around one another without ever merging. He then feeds in the two armies’ strength, both sides’ rations, Chang Shan Yin’s personality and motives, every expert Gu Master on both sides, the weather, the terrain, nearby beast groups and the chance of outside interference. So thousands of star thoughts burst out at once, densely filling the space around him while his primeval sea level falls sharply. ch. 505
Working with these thoughts for four hours, some colliding into three, four, five or six new orbs, some fusing, some splitting apart, he narrows thousands down to eight fist sized thoughts carrying a complete plan. Reading them back into his brain fills his eyes with the light of wisdom. What would take an ordinary person a month or two to reason out, and might never resolve at all, he reaches in four hours. Recovering his primeval essence with stones, he runs the same question again, and this time spends only an hour to reach seven star thoughts, whose answers largely match the first set but differ in small detail. ch. 505
Recovered to peak essence, Dong Fang Yu Liang still carries a deep soul fatigue he cannot shake, since wisdom path deduction burns not only primeval essence but the soul itself, and a harder or larger deduction can damage the soul or even kill its user. As a rank five wisdom path Gu Master trained by a Gu Immortal, he has rank four refine essence spirit Gu for this. It thins his body visibly, converting his own vitality into nourishment for his soul. The fatigue fades quickly, replaced by a fierce hunger. Rubbing his stomach, he thinks bitterly that refine essence spirit Gu, a Gu secretly passed down in Dong Fang tribe, treats the symptom rather than the cause. He wishes for the legendary guts Gu, which would let him deduce freely and heal soul damage with ease, though he reflects that it can only be found on Dang Hun Mountain. ch. 505
