Chapter 507

Fang Yuan fails again at refining nauseous crying baby Gu. He watches the half-finished product explode into a pool of blue blood after more than ten attempts, all failed despite skill close to a refinement master’s. The rank four Gu is meant to counter Three Hearts Combination Soul, a Dong Fang tribe killer move that fuses three Gu Masters’ souls into one. He mends the shattered window with his own primeval essence, while the walls of the large lizard house Gu that Hei Lou Lan gave him on joining Hei tribe absorb the rest of the wreckage on their own. ^{ch. 507}

From its window he watches mortals and Gu Masters dig canals, plant trees, and raise arrow towers and mud walls into a third line of defense. Dong Fang tribe, still about three thousand li off, builds its own new line every eight hundred to a thousand li as it advances. Inside Hei alliance the tribes compete openly for merit. Hao Ji Liu blocks the alliance leader’s tent for three days and defeats over a dozen rivals to win the vanguard’s post, and Cunning Gentleman Sun Shi Han schemes his way into Hei Lou Lan’s favor to become the army’s chief strategist. Hei Lou Lan, wary that Wolf King Chang Shan Yin already looks too strong beside him, agrees to hold Fang Yuan back from the coming battle rather than let him claim it outright. Fang Yuan welcomes the delay, since the imperial court contest is only a jumping board for him; with the blessed land already his, he has little need for its battle spoils, and his real motive here runs far bigger than anyone around him can imagine. What he needs now is not ordinary resources but precious materials and long stretches of time, and the standoff hands him time to cultivate freely. ^{ch. 507}

Hao Ji Liu leads the vanguard the next day, kills the enemy general and three sub-generals in the clash of commanders, and routs the leaderless troops that follow. Chasing them, he is heavily wounded by shadow sword expert Bian Si Xuan. He has to stop and make camp to recover. Over the following days Hei Lou Lan brings the central army forward, and the two camps close to within several hundred li of each other under a night sky thin on stars. ^{ch. 507}

Late that night, Fang Yuan sits in meditation and activates space thought Gu. He reaches toward the rank four brain explosion Gu still lodged in his skull since Spring Autumn Cicada once forced it to submit. It has spent these days absorbing his brain matter even as space thought Gu corrodes it, and that night the reverse refinement finally completes: it scatters into a lump of black light, a lump of white smoke, and a fist-sized space thought. The black light and white smoke settle into two ordinary rank three Gu that he sets aside without much interest. But reading the space thought leaves him shaking with undisguised joy: it reveals a Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable inheritance, and it leads to Luo Po Valley. ^{ch. 507}