Chapter 528

In Xiao Hun blessed land’s forest of female-shaped trees, its tree king rises a thousand feet with roots that reach for ten thousand li, cradling a treehouse hung with vermillion fruit where two Gu Immortals in black now sit. One is Hei Bai, called ‘Hei tribe stoneman’ in his youth for a plain look; he is awkward at conversing but smart and careful inside. The other is Hei Cheng, Hei tribe’s supreme elder, Hei Lou Lan’s father and, by reputation, the husband from the story of Su Xian’s night elopement. Hei Cheng asks after Dong Fang Chang Fan, whom Hei Bai has just visited at Ni Yu blessed land. Hei Bai reports a man with two or three years of life left, no lifespan Gu sought, and a broad enough view of things that he has turned wholly to raising his successor Dong Fang Yu Liang, calling this magnanimous. Hei Cheng scoffs at the word. ^{ch. 528}

He calls Dong Fang Chang Fan a genuine petty schemer against the northern plains, hated by every Gu Immortal who knows him, and says a man that insidious could easily have bought lifespan Gu were he not universally despised. He then discloses what years of quiet investigation have turned up: some hand of Dong Fang Chang Fan’s in the death of his own wife, Su Xian Er. He admits the evidence is too thin to name him outright as the culprit. ^{ch. 528}

Over two hundred years earlier, she was no more than a concubine’s daughter in Su tribe, and while she poured wine for Hei Cheng at a banquet, he fell for her at first sight. When he was poisoned at that same banquet by Su tribe’s leader and left to be hunted, she alone, with only rank one cultivation, braved the night grassland’s beasts and found him. She told him her own heart had been taken as well. She asked nothing but a place to stay and mercy for her own tribe. Hei Cheng, moved, swore to make her his only wife and never betray her, and the two lived and loved as equals until, a hundred years on, both became Gu Immortals, their story spreading through northern plains as Su Xian’s night elopement. ^{ch. 528}

Hei Bai now asks whether she really died in the blessed land’s earthly calamity over twenty years back. Hei Cheng answers that the calamity happened but was steered by human hands. He points to old ancestor Giant Sun Immortal Venerable’s known methods. He also points to Dong Fang tribe’s repeated entries into Imperial Court as bearers of Huang Jin bloodline, which could have carried such methods back from Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. Hei Bai, still a Gu Immortal of less than ten years by his brother’s reckoning, sits stunned at how deep the circle’s conspiracies run beneath its surface. ^{ch. 528}

A rank five butterfly letter Gu slips through the blessed land’s briefly loosened defenses, and Hei Bai reads Hei Lou Lan’s request in it with his eyes closed. Hei Cheng, displeased, asks whether his disappointing son wants help again. Hei Bai defends him at length: Su Xian Er’s strength never recovered from a difficult birth, and she died in the calamity years later, the boy innocent of any of it. Hei Cheng gave him away to the childless Fairy Jiang Yu to raise, forbidding him even to honor his own mother. ^{ch. 528}

Hei Cheng only snorts. Hei Bai presses further, laying out that the adoption was meant to shelter Hei Lou Lan’s life under Fairy Jiang Yu’s dark limit Immortal Gu. He adds that the boy carries the Great Strength True Martial physique, one of the ten extreme physiques. He also lays out that Hei Cheng set reaching Gu Immortal rank as the price of lighting incense for his birth mother, a spur Hei Bai admires but warns will only deepen the rift between father and son. ^{ch. 528}

Hei Cheng, sighing, does not answer that and instead asks what the letter wants: a mutated wolf group and a rank five lurking soul coat Gu. The Gu he already owns and calls no trouble. Hei tribe holds no wolf group at all. ^{ch. 528}

Hei Bai explains the stakes: Liu tribe’s leader Liu Wen Wu, who holds the Harmony Immortal’s inheritance, commands two sworn brothers each said to match ten thousand soldiers, and Hei Lou Lan’s own hope now rests on his general, Wolf King Chang Shan Yin. Hei Cheng agrees the wolves must come through treasure yellow heaven and asks his brother to buy them. Hei Bai waves off the favor, since he still needs his nephew to reach Imperial Court and retrieve the Immortal Gu Wooden Chicken from Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. Hei Cheng adds, worn down, that the Great Strength True Martial physique needs a strength path Immortal Gu to carry it to Gu Immortal rank, and that such Gu are hard to find and Hei tribe has none. What remains now depends on Hei Lou Lan’s own effort and luck. ^{ch. 528}

Hei Bai returns to his own Ku Mu blessed land. He starts buying mutated wolves through treasure yellow heaven at once. True wolf emperors are scarce, but ordinary mutated wolves, worth only rank four, are common enough to buy in bulk with sufficient immortal essence stones. Hei Bai treats the expense as an early investment toward the Immortal Gu waiting in Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. Imperial Court blessed land itself, built by Giant Sun Immortal Venerable, bars entry to any Gu Immortal below rank nine. ^{ch. 528}

Word of his high buying price draws a divine sense from a seller calling itself Fox Immortal, who offers more than a hundred mutated wolves at a steep markup, plainly working Hei Bai’s difficulty. Hei Bai had expected someone to try this, if not quite this fast, and grits his teeth and buys the lot. The seller is in fact Little Hu Immortal, acting on Fang Yuan’s own instructions. Earlier profits of a dozen or so immortal essence stones from reselling Immortal Gu recipes had funded orders to buy a purple crystal relic Gu and any wolf groups going cheap. ^{ch. 528}

That built Hu Immortal blessed land’s own stock past a hundred wolves, blood forest, berserk, shark fin and white-eyes wolves among them. The resale to Hei Bai now turns that stock into a solid profit. Fang Yuan himself rests calmly in camp, waiting for Hei tribe’s help to arrive. ^{ch. 528}