Chapter 544

Ma Ying Jie wakes to Fei Cai’s relief and, fighting through pain, learns from him that Ma tribe has lost the battle, with many dead, fled or surrendered. Grief overtakes him, but he orders the group back toward Warm Pond Valley, land Ma tribe had taken from Fei tribe before the heroes assembly by stirring internal disorder and swallowing it whole. There, Ma tribe had left its old, weak, sick and crippled behind as a hedge against exactly this outcome. Along the way he gathers scattered Ma tribesmen, most of them mortals, and finds rank three elder Ma You Liang alive but badly hurt, one arm gone and a leg broken. Ma You Liang tells him old tribe leader Ma Shang Feng died on the battlefield. Ma Ying Jie declares himself the new tribe leader on the spot, invoking Ancestor Giant Sun’s rule that Huang Jin family’s bloodline can never be exterminated. He vows Ma tribe will climb back from this defeat. ^{ch. 544}

In Hei tribe’s camp, victory is celebrated with feasting, wine and dancing. Fang Yuan now sits in the first seat left of Hei Lou Lan, a rank he had been pushed back from earlier by the arrival of Tai Bai Yun Sheng and several rank five tribe elders. His performance in the third battle against Ma tribe changed that: fighting alone, he beat three enslavement masters, beheaded Cheng Long and Wu Ye, and cut down other experts besides. Fang Yuan is at least seventy percent of the reason Hei tribe won against Ma tribe decisively. No one present, all of them at least rank four, objects to the reseating. Sole Blade General Pan Ping, who took Ma Shang Feng’s head and now ranks second on the merit board, toasts him, and Fang Yuan answers every toast with a single sip. ^{ch. 544}

Fang Yuan privately measures how far he has come: a flying master and an enslavement path master both, his dual cultivation now enough to stand at the summit of the mortal world. In three kings blessed land he needed the blessed land’s own power to kill rank four and rank five Gu Masters; now his own strength does the same work. By his own estimate he could kill even a resurrected Tie Mu Bai, former leader of Tie clan. It is still not enough. Anything short of Gu Immortal status leaves him a chess piece, and his immediate goal, saving Dang Hun Mountain, still needs Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s Immortal Gu Landscape As Before. ^{ch. 544}

Taking a Gu worm from a body is unreliable, since its owner can make it self-destruct with a thought, as Fang Yuan’s own Spring Autumn Cicada would for him. Capturing Tai Bai Yun Sheng now and soul searching the recipe from his mind is one option. Fang Yuan judges it too risky: capture is not guaranteed, and even if it succeeds, Tai Bai Yun Sheng might destroy the Gu regardless. The recipe itself might not even exist. Rumor from Fang Yuan’s past life says Landscape As Before formed on its own when Tai Bai Yun Sheng ascended, with nothing for a mortal to steal beforehand. The alternative is to wait for Tai Bai Yun Sheng to become a Gu Immortal and deal with him afterward, which leaves a mortal setting out to entrap a Gu Immortal. ^{ch. 544}