Number one in prestige and merit
Tai Bai Yun Sheng is tall and ancient looking, over eighty, his temples white and his face deeply lined. His eyes still hold a calm that has seen through the world. Since he was seven, he had been determined to travel the northern plains to help its common people. His tribe was destroyed and he became an enslaved Gu Master, was betrayed by his wife and taken captive by variant men, and only survived to a time path Gu Immortal’s inheritance and his brothers’ rescue at the edge of death. Now a living legend and a righteous path Gu Master by public acclaim, his reputation for benevolence has spread deeper across northern plains than Chang Shan Yin’s, Hei Lou Lan’s or Liu Wen Wu’s. ch. 524
Hei Lou Lan is at his wit’s end over the battle and considering retreat when Tai Bai Yun Sheng arrives at his camp alone, letter in hand. Hei Lou Lan reads it and understands at once: Hei tribe’s supreme elder Hei Bai, who once guided and rescued Tai Bai Yun Sheng, has written asking him to help. Overjoyed, Hei Lou Lan hosts a banquet for him that night. By the next morning, he has his army arranged and ready. ch. 524
Gu tribe specializes in earth path mastery, and piling loose stone into a whole mountain should be an impossible feat on Earth, yet they have raised it in roughly ten days. The narration states Gu tribe was long famous throughout northern plains for that mastery. Gu Guo Long knows the mountain rests on foundations his own earth path Gu Masters built, and that it can still be broken. Battered by repeated defeats and his ambitions dimmed, Gu Guo Long decides to side with Liu tribe instead. The narration states Liu Wen Wu was wise and benevolent, lenient to his people and strict with himself, and that his reputation stood far above Hei Lou Lan’s. He secretly sends Liu Wen Wu a letter offering his allegiance, and Liu Wen Wu agrees to march to his relief; Gu Guo Long only needs to hold seven more days. ch. 524
Tai Bai Yun Sheng extends his callused hands. A weak silver light grows steadily brighter as he channels his mountain as before Gu. Gu Guo Long recognizes the Gu’s name in horror as the silver light bursts into a pillar and rams the mountain peak; every defense and counterattack the Gu tribe Gu Masters throw at it fails to stop it. The stones melt away like snow in sunlight, taking the mountain’s whole height with them, and Gu tribe’s army plunges to the ground from five hundred to six hundred feet, dying in droves. ch. 524
Survivors recognize Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s mountain as before Gu, and some, remembering he once restored their own tribe’s spirit spring, struggle to understand why they must fight their own benefactor. The mountain’s collapse and his reputation together break Gu tribe’s will to keep fighting. Hei Lou Lan laughs in delighted surprise. He had not expected such a hidden expert in his own ranks. Super tribes’ elders sometimes cultivate promising mortal Gu Masters as seeds, taking them in as external elders if they reach Gu Immortal rank. Tai Bai Yun Sheng was one such seed of the rank six Gu Immortal Hei Bai, who believed him capable of reaching that realm. ch. 524
Seeing the enemy routed, Hei tribe’s morale surges. Many laugh aloud and more shout to slaughter everyone in the Gu faction, even the old and the young. The Gu Master experts in the main tent are excited, and only Fang Yuan stays calm, Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s appearance already within his expectation. From his previous life, he already knows Tai Bai Yun Sheng joins Hei tribe here, and that Hei Lou Lan’s eventual victory in the struggle for Imperial Court owes mostly to him. He also recalls that Tai Bai Yun Sheng, once he sees Hei Lou Lan’s savage nature up close during the campaign, later refuses Hei Bai’s request that he become Hei tribe’s external elder after advancing to Gu Immortal. ch. 524
When Hei Lou Lan calls for Gu tribe’s slaughter, Tai Bai Yun Sheng frowns, holds his attack, and privately urges him instead to accept Gu tribe’s surrender and let him do the persuading. He could have reduced Gu tribe’s army by over half with a single careless strike. Gu tribe would not simply wait to die, but once the mountain fully collapsed, it would have almost no battle strength left and its final charge would carry no threat. Tai Bai Yun Sheng does not make that move. Hei Lou Lan, seething, still has to mind Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s standing as one of the extremely rare time path Gu Masters, rank five peak stage, whose prestige across northern plains is like the sun in daytime, reaching the whole region. He agrees to listen, but insists on sending six rank four experts to guard him up the mountain. ch. 524
Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s reputation alone parts a path through the enemy troops as he climbs. Gu Guo Long greets him ruefully, recalling how Tai Bai Yun Sheng once restored Gu tribe’s dried spirit spring free of charge and became the whole tribe’s benefactor. Gu Guo Long still favors Liu Wen Wu, but yields to circumstance and lets himself be persuaded. Tai Bai Yun Sheng spends only a quarter of an hour on the mountain. He climbs with six escorts and comes down with over a hundred thousand soldiers newly pledged to Hei Lou Lan. ch. 524
His single act of persuasion turns the battle. It saves those hundred thousand plus lives, and by that same day he tops Hei tribe’s battle merit list. Exactly opposite him, at the very bottom in scarlet red for a negative score, is the name Wolf King Chang Shan Yin, Fang Yuan’s own identity within Hei tribe. ch. 524
That night, Hei Lou Lan holds a bonfire banquet in his honor. He toasts that with Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s help, every defense line in the world is now useless. The line is literal: his two rank five time path Gu, mountain as before and river as before, restore land and water to their original shape. That is how the mountain Gu tribe raised on once flat grassland disappeared, and how their dried spirit spring was made to yield primeval stones again in the past. Under mountain as before Gu, any wall an earth path Gu Master raises for defense reverts to bare grassland the same way. ch. 524
