Chapter 527

In Hei tribe’s main tent after the first clash, the mood is stifling. Nearly everyone present, Hei Lou Lan included, carries wounds. Cunning Gentleman Sun Shi Han tallies the day’s toll: Liu tribe fields rank five experts in Liu Wen Wu, Luo Bo Jun and Nie Ya Qing. Mo Shi Kuang and Ouyang Bi Sang are rank four peak stage fighters with the battle strength of rank five, and Pei Yan Fei and Chang Biao stand out among the day’s other strong experts. He names such a concentration of talent rare across the past ten struggles for Imperial Court. Rank four Gu Masters are already rare, each is the head of a small or mid-sized force or an elder in a large-sized one, and rank five demands such aptitude that even a super force counts only two to three of them openly. ^{ch. 527}

Hei tribe in fact holds the edge in raw ranks, with Hei Lou Lan, Tai Bai Yun Sheng and Gu Guo Long at rank five. More than twenty rank four experts stand behind them, Chang Shan Yin, Tang Miao Ming, Hao Ji Liu, Bian Si Xuan and Pan Ping among them. But strength does not add up like numbers. Ouyang Bi Sang alone killed five rank four Gu Masters and twelve rank three elders in the day’s fighting, and Liu tribe’s assault cut Hei tribe’s rank four ranks down to almost half. ^{ch. 527}

Hei Lou Lan wishes aloud for time to annex armies and call on his father’s prestige to close the gap. Tai Bai Yun Sheng offers a faster route. He can write to Gao Yang and Zhu Zai, demonic path’s twin demons. He once rescued them, rank four peak stage fighters who swore to repay him and are said to have killed a rank five expert together before. Hei Lou Lan credits the day’s real turn to Wolf King’s wolf group, which cut down enormous numbers of Liu tribe’s lower ranked Gu Masters and forced Liu Wen Wu into a hesitant retreat. ^{ch. 527}

Fang Yuan sits untouched, having commanded the wolves from hiding, and walks away with the greatest merit of the battle, drawing envy that no one dares voice. He has spent the time since searching his five hundred years of memory for how Hei Lou Lan came to defeat Liu Wen Wu, and finds nothing. It is a reminder that this whole campaign is a small thing lost inside a much longer, half-forgotten life. He judges the standoff even. Liu tribe’s own enslavement master, Bei Cao Chuan, and his grass soldiers amount to little, and while Liu tribe outmatches Hei tribe at the top, his wolves can cut down its lower ranks in exchange. Tipping that balance, he says, means fielding a full group of strong wolves as trump cards. But doing so at full strength will burn through the rank four lurking soul coat Gu that currently hides his soul fluctuations and marks him as a target. ^{ch. 527}

Northern plains’ five beast kings each command a mutated group: Horse King Ma Zun’s pegasi, Eagle King Yang Po Ying’s thunder eagles, Rat King Jiang Bao Ya’s mountain drilling rats and the newly risen Leopard King Nu Er Tu’s glimpse leopards. Only Wolf King Chang Shan Yin commands none. A mature mutated beast fights at rank four strength on its own, and a whole group outmatches the same number of Gu Masters. Beasts charge without self-interest, where even a poison vow cannot force a Gu Master to fight to the death. ^{ch. 527}

Such a group stands a real chance of killing rank five experts. Even at its deepest, their primeval essence still runs dry, and assembling such a group from nothing takes years, leaving a request to Hei tribe’s own Gu Immortals as the only fast path. Hei Lou Lan agrees to try, vaguely enough that everyone reads it as an appeal to the Gu Immortal standing behind him. Envy spreads through the tent at Fang Yuan’s luck. Building such a group alone might take him twenty to thirty years. ^{ch. 527}

Fang Yuan carries the identity of Chang Shan Yin, an enslavement master able to turn a war’s tide, so Hei tribe favors him with resources while it fights Liu tribe. Sun Shi Han, dressing jealousy as a kindly reminder, points out that Wolf King still sits last on the battle merit rankings. Fang Yuan answers that the rules are the rules, so he will trade merit for the wolves and simply borrow what he lacks. That leaves the rest of the tent silently fuming that he already owes one million three hundred thousand battle merits and carries a rank five amplify effect Gu without a trace of shame. He adds that the wolves alone will not do. He also wants a rank five lurking soul coat Gu, since the three rank four Gu he has gathered carry too low a success rate to risk fusing. Hei Lou Lan grinds his teeth, since each request drains the tribe’s regard for him, but agrees, seeing no other way to beat Liu Wen Wu. ^{ch. 527}

Across the line, Liu Wen Wu weeps in his own tent and names Wolf King Chang Shan Yin the source of the day’s disaster, blaming his own incompetence for losing at least thirty thousand Gu Masters to the wolves’ jaws. Mo Shi Kuang insists the fault lies with the dead men’s own weakness, and Ouyang Bi Sang dismisses Wolf King outright, scorning a man who hides like a rat instead of fighting as no true hero. Neither has a plan. Bei Cao Chuan does: he proposes working the blood tie Wolf King can never sever. Chang tribe’s current leader Chang Biao, once Chang Shan Yin’s best friend, married his wife and raised his three year old son after Chang Shan Yin vanished, and that son, Chang Ji You, now stands as Chang tribe’s young leader. Liu Wen Wu’s eyes light up at the idea. ^{ch. 527}

Back in his large lizard house Gu, Fang Yuan turns the rank five lurking soul coat Gu’s low success rate over in his mind. He hopes to land both it and the Gu Immortal’s help at once. He cannot recall this campaign’s finer details, but he remembers clearly enough that Hei Lou Lan’s eventual entry into Imperial Court depended on the Gu Immortal behind him. The two armies will rest and reorganize for at least three days, time enough, he reckons, for Hei tribe’s Gu Immortals to receive the request, and he smiles at his own plan as he begins to prepare. ^{ch. 527}