Chapter 553

Fang Yuan rides the azure wolf king through a golden sky, the azure wolf group moving with him as the wind blows his hair back, while he ponders a quote from the Di Qiu inheritance he has spent days failing to decipher. A glorious palace rises out of the plain horizon. Relief crosses his face as its full shape slowly reveals itself: the sacred palace, reached at last. ^{ch. 553}

It rises in eight levels, each about two kilometers tall and walled into a seamless, hollow tube nine meters thick, ringed by towers of different colors at set intervals, the lowest level widest and each level stacked smaller above the one below. Stacked together, the levels look like a mountain, and as Fang Yuan approaches it seems to rise from the ground and pierce the heavens. Even with his depth of knowledge, Fang Yuan gasps in admiration at the sight. ^{ch. 553}

Gu Masters inside notice him arriving and call out that Wolf King has come, the azure wolf group matching what reports already told them to expect. Almost ten thousand people are already inside, having landed close to the sacred palace after entering the blessed land and so arriving ahead of him. Hei Lou Lan has already given instructions, and the escort Gu Master assigned to welcome him meets Fang Yuan at the first level’s gate the moment he lands. He tells him his residence is ready on the eighth level. Fang Yuan asks to be shown around first and gets off the azure wolf; Gu Masters may not ride their steeds inside the sacred palace, out of respect for Giant Sun Immortal Venerable, so they walk. ^{ch. 553}

Inside, pavilions and terraces, palaces and courtyards connect to each other, their roofs curved and colored silver and gold, some stretches open and grand and others a crossing maze of paths and halls. Carved pillars and supports inside the halls give the place an air of prosperity. The escort proves an eloquent guide, and Fang Yuan finds the walk interesting. ^{ch. 553}

He names the entertainment palace first. There, Giant Sun once held a daily music festival, with concubines competing to dance for his attention. Next is the spring soup hall, home to the largest hot spring in Northern Plains, where Giant Sun came weekly with a thousand concubines to soak. Last is the floating scent yard, once home to a wine pool and a meat forest that Giant Sun moved there: each morning the forest produced meat fruits, and each night the pool produced fragrant wine. ^{ch. 553}

At the fourth level, the escort brings him into the drawing palace, one of the sacred palace’s eight main palaces. Only Giant Sun himself could use its main doors, and his descendants still honor that rule after his death, so the escort opens a side door instead. Giant Sun drew every image in it himself. Inside, a wall of eighty thousand drawings fills Fang Yuan’s view: women in every pose and mood, alluring, innocent, smiling, or lost in thought. The escort calls it a woman’s greatest honor to be hand-drawn by a venerable, and says the ones kept here were Giant Sun’s favorites, preserved forever. ^{ch. 553}

Fang Yuan privately disagrees that anything here is eternal: he recalls that in his previous life, Central Continent Gu Immortals later destroyed Imperial Court blessed land, and the sacred palace passed into history. He reflects that true immortality is beyond even an Immortal Venerable’s reach. Where other visitors feel only the palace’s grandeur, Fang Yuan senses decay under the brilliance. Without eternal life, he judges, a venerable’s strength counts for nothing. Giant Sun himself is now ash, and his traces here read to Fang Yuan as proof of failure rather than of triumph. His interest wanes, and he asks the escort to take him to his eighth level residence instead. ^{ch. 553}

The escort protests that they have barely started: the sacred palace still holds the beauty palace, young girl palace, alluring palace, innocent palace, and unique scent palace, once home to female variant humans and hairy men. It also holds a jade statue palace, where sculptors made images of beauties to offer to Giant Sun. None of these places are open to someone of the escort’s own status, and he had hoped to satisfy his curiosity on this visit. Fang Yuan does not grant him the chance. ^{ch. 553}

In his final years, Giant Sun Immortal Venerable rarely visited the mortal realm, living instead in seclusion in Longevity Heaven. Northern Plains kept sending him girls to fill the sacred palace all the same. On his last visit, he did not meet them: instead he built Eighty-Eight True Yang Building and set the rules for the Imperial Court contest before vanishing from the world completely. The sacred palace faded out of history, and though Imperial Court blessed land is vast, its women lived there with no freedom, in effect a prison. They lived out their lifespans there, unable to escape, with no one willing to risk saving them, buried in pain, grudge and sadness under Giant Sun’s glory. ^{ch. 553}

To Fang Yuan, the sacred palace itself holds little value: it is only Giant Sun’s inheritance, and no Gu Master has dared set up an inheritance of their own here. Its precious resources are long gone, taken by earlier generations, and even the Central Continent Gu Immortals who came after found nothing worth having. The one thing of real value in the whole of Imperial Court blessed land sits at the peak of the eighth level: Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, a Gu house Long Hair Ancestor made in person at Giant Sun’s suggestion, and a rank eight Immortal Gu. But it is not yet time. For now the peak stands empty; the building appears only during the ten-year blizzard. ^{ch. 553}

In the days that follow, Fang Yuan lives in seclusion, cultivating while he waits for the building to open, and leaves the azure wolf group in others’ care. Hei Lou Lan sends people to invite him and reveals a wish to recruit him as an external elder of Hei tribe. Fang Yuan says he will consider it, though he already means to refuse. Human skin Gu can disguise him as Wolf King, but it is only a mortal Gu, and an Immortal Gu’s investigation could expose him. Recruiting external elders is a common trick among Northern Plains’ super forces, one that lets a demonic path Gu Immortal pass as righteous and helps the Huang Jin tribes manage the region. ^{ch. 553}

Of the Xing Jiu peak incident, Hei Lou Lan says nothing, but a rumor already describes Wolf King as overbearing and cruel to the weak, a biased account that still reads as convincing. Fang Yuan suspects Pan Ping, Sun Shi Han, or even Hei Lou Lan behind it, but does not care. He recalls that Giant Sun himself once had a terrible reputation as a demonic Gu Master who toyed with women, yet no one now questions his standing as an Immortal Venerable. He reasons that in this world, strength decides everything. Unlike Earth, where mortal rumor and a society mortals cannot outgrow can ruin a life, individual strength here outweighs society, one reason Fang Yuan loves this world. ^{ch. 553}

Half a month later, the golden sky ripples like water and the ground shakes. A piercing light shines from the sacred palace’s peak before it disperses, and a tower stands where there had been bare ground: Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. ^{ch. 553}