Fang Yuan flies for three more days without sighting the sacred palace on the plains. He judges that he must have been carried far from the sacred palace on entering Imperial Court blessed land, since his own speed would otherwise have reached it within three days. Along the way he meets many Gu Masters and mortals from the Hei tribe alliance, who gather at the sacred palace if they have the ability and settle down elsewhere if they do not. Imperial Court blessed land holds large numbers of wild Gu worms and vicious beasts, and is not safe. The Hei tribe army’s arrival disturbed the territories those beasts and worms had already sorted out, so conflict and killing follow naturally. Even so, the blessed land is far better than the fierce blizzard outside. Fang Yuan passes several slaughtering scenes on the way, some beast group corpses and some humans with broken limbs. ch. 549
Imperial Court blessed land has a much greater foundation than Hu Immortal blessed land. Hu Immortal blessed land has no weather changes, but Imperial Court blessed land has them, including a true day and night. Northern plains mortals take day and night for granted, but only someone like Fang Yuan grasps its real value. Weather changes are rare in a blessed land, and a day and night cycle means the underlying heaven and earth has deep foundations, with a largely complete time path law. ch. 549
Blessed lands with astronomical phenomena rank as first-rate, a level Fang Yuan’s own Hu Immortal blessed land has not yet reached. Day and night is a trait of grotto-heavens, the more complete and refined worlds that sit above ordinary blessed lands. Imperial Court blessed land already carries that trait, making it a quasi grotto-heaven. Lang Ya blessed land was originally a grotto-heaven that fell, and has since lost its day and night trait. ch. 549
Night descends, and Fang Yuan watches the sky turn from a glorious gold to a light, elegant silver. Imperial Court blessed land’s daytime is a dazzling gold, and its night is never fully dark, lit by falling silver light with a sharper edge than the day’s rays. Flying, Fang Yuan watches the whole change happen. ch. 549
His speed slows, and after searching he spots a gentle slope, which his years of experience mark as a good place to camp. He is in no hurry to land, circling the slope several times like a bird before he confirms the area is safe. He lands and dismisses his pitch-black eagle wings, which vanish into a few black feathers drifting down onto the grass. He then activates big lizard house Gu, whose tongue unrolls like a red carpet ladder and opens a door for him to enter before the lizard’s mouth closes without a gap. Though energetic, Fang Yuan is still of mortal body. He needs rest to stay at peak condition. ch. 549
Inside the lizard house, Fang Yuan hears noises outside and recognizes them: as night falls, large groups of blissful snow bats always fly out. The bats are pure white, furry, and rather cute, not ugly like ordinary bats. Each such group numbers several hundred thousand, with beast kings common among them, myriad beast kings frequent, and even snow bat beast emperors present. Even with his dual aperture and the killer move four arm wind king, Fang Yuan cannot fight such a group and can only avoid it. The snow bats hunt only in the air, eating airborne particles and flying worms, so the big lizard house Gu is not part of their food chain. Out of caution he still moves it to the back of the slope, where curled up it resembles a huge rock from the sky. ch. 549
Fang Yuan sleeps, but is soon woken by the snow bats’ cries turning erratic, mixed with wolf howls. He rises and goes to the window, where he sees two beast groups fighting in the silvery night. The snow-white mass is the blissful snow bats; the dark-green mass is a pack of azure wolves, fewer in number but fierce and well coordinated. Under the wolves’ attacks, the far more numerous bats suffer heavy losses. Fang Yuan’s brows lift, and he feels a flicker of shock. ch. 549
Azure wolves carry a trace of the desolate beast heavenly wolf’s bloodline, which lets even a cub float in midair, and a mature wolf run freely through the sky. They are elites among wolves, each at least a hundred beast king. Azure wolf packs run small but fight hard, though no wolf group can outlast time and mortality forever. Azure wolves are already rare in the present sky and heading toward extinction. As the largest blessed land in the northern plains, Imperial Court blessed land holding such a huge azure wolf group is no surprise. ch. 549
The wolves grow more energetic as they fight, and the bats, at a growing disadvantage, flee after leaving tens of thousands of corpses behind. The azure wolves lose few of their own; most land to feed on the bat corpses, while some stay airborne and watchful. Fang Yuan reflects that his own wolf group scattered on entering the blessed land. By his estimate, the land is too wide for him to gather it back quickly. He judges this azure wolf group timely: fast enough to keep his pace, able to protect him, and useful for charging through future bat groups. ch. 549
Several wolves find Fang Yuan’s big lizard house Gu and surround it. He leaves the Gu, stows it away, and charges toward the myriad wolf king in the sky. ch. 549
The wolf group attacks him from every direction in a commotion. But the wolves that just finished eating are sluggish and less eager to fight, which makes it the best moment to act. Fang Yuan snickers and circles evasively, and with his flying master attainment the wolves can only chase him fruitlessly. He targets one particular myriad wolf king, already hurt and stripped of some of its wild Gu worms earlier in the fight, whose remaining wild Gu he has already tracked. He beats it into a daze with the killer move four arm wind king, then subdues it with rank five wolf enslavement Gu. Once it joins him and howls, a third of the azure wolf group changes sides with it. ch. 549
Fang Yuan laughs, since subduing a wolf king mid-attack was dangerous, and the situation has now turned in his favor. Under his direction, the wolf group attacks from both sides and surrounds the second azure myriad wolf king. The wild wolves attack furiously, and Fang Yuan uses his own wolf group as a defensive line while he personally engages the wolf king. After fifteen minutes he subdues the second myriad wolf king, and victory is assured. The last myriad wolf king sees this and flees at once with its subordinates. ch. 549
Fang Yuan first stops his bleeding and checks his own injuries, then checks the battlefield and stows the big lizard house Gu. He shifts campsite, since the heavy smell of blood would otherwise draw endless waves of beast groups. About ten li away he rests four hours before flying on. He now travels with two azure myriad wolf kings, thirty-eight thousand beast kings, and two hundred fifty-six hundred beast kings. It is a huge force. Six days of travel pass in a blink. ch. 549
In that time he finds three small inheritances, as good as nothing to him. More notably, his wolf group keeps growing: with the two azure myriad wolf kings as its base, he subdues a third, giving him three in total. Imperial Court blessed land is a true land of treasures, holding huge beast groups within it, where even the rare azure wolf is a common species. Besides azure wolves, he subdues batches of night wolves, wind wolves, turtleback wolves and vermillion flame wolves along the way. These wolves were originally his own, scattered after he entered the blessed land, and he has so far recovered only a small portion of them. ch. 549
