Crucial problem
Just past the guest halt stele, a borrow strength Gu greets Fang Yuan: a rank five strength path Gu, almost completely extinct and rarer even than all-out effort Gu, unable to work alone and needing to be paired with another strength Gu. Paired with sky, earth, fire or water strength Gu, it lets a Gu Master borrow strength from the sky, the earth, fire or flowing water in turn. Fang Yuan judges that his own killer move, four arm wind king, combines wind overlord Gu and tyrant strength Gu only as a substitute that reaches less than half of borrow strength Gu’s effect, so this find can lift the move to a new level. Fang Yuan is genuinely happy. Sky strength Gu is already extinct, but earth, fire, water and wind strength Gu still circulate widely, though all now serve purposes far from their original use. Earth strength Gu now mostly raises soil fertility or supports wood path Gu, fire strength Gu lightly boosts fire path Gu, and water, wind and lightning strength serve similar supporting roles. ch. 560
Fang Yuan trades close to ten spring egg Gu at the crystal wall for the borrow strength Gu, since past the guest halt stele he can only exchange for the treasures he wants. Walking on, he passes treasures a level or two higher, rank five Gu that would be rare outside crowding the walls while rank four Gu grows scarce, though any rank four Gu found here matches a common rank five Gu in value and strength. His protective blood flame light keeps wearing down as he looks. If it disappears completely before he finds the owner token, Eighty-Eight True Yang Building will detect him and destroy him instantly, so Fang Yuan grows anxious. His disguise Gu are costly to refine, needing a thousand jin of Huang Jin family blood purified through ninety-eight steps, and with the Imperial Court contest already over, that much blood is harder than ever to gather. A fork then appears in the crystal corridor, and Fang Yuan stops to weigh the two paths, relying on his memory of central continent Gu Immortals breaching Imperial Court blessed land in his previous life before choosing the left one. ch. 560
Down the left path, the treasures rise another level, all rank five now with no rank four left, some of them rare even among rank five Gu. Fang Yuan spots an owner token sealed in the crystal wall. This owner token was central continent Gu Immortals’ own work: Imperial Court blessed land’s long standing prominence had already drawn every region’s notice, and central continent had spent hundreds of years scheming against it. Normally held by the alliance leader, an owner token self-destructs if it ever leaves Imperial Court blessed land. ch. 560
Close to a millennium ago, central continent Gu Immortals bribed that era’s alliance leader, and rumor holds they also used an Immortal Gu to tamper with this token, hiding it inside Eighty-Eight True Yang Building as a key for later. In Fang Yuan’s previous life, central continent Gu Immortals started the five regions battle and, soon after, breached Imperial Court blessed land, an arrangement of Giant Sun Immortal Venerable’s that had made it harder to breach than any other blessed land. Giant Sun Immortal Venerable had already died, but central continent Gu Immortals had spent nearly a millennium brewing their scheme and finally saw some success. In this life, the token lands in Fang Yuan’s hand instead. ch. 560
Fang Yuan finds the exchange for the owner token easy, but making it answer to him is the harder, final step, so he sits cross-legged, gathers his focus, and sends Gu worm after Gu worm to strike it without pause. Each strike rings out and lays one more halo over the token, until thirty-eight halos have gathered, its dull surface clears, and the words owner token show through before the halos burst and it drops into his waiting hand. He bites his finger and lets blood drip onto it. The metal turns to translucent glass at the touch of his blood, and Fang Yuan, who has seen Hei Lou Lan’s own owner token before, recognizes at once how different this one has become. Fang Yuan judges that the method he used, learned from his previous life’s video, has woken the token’s true form, and guesses this is likely Immortal Gu work, since only an Immortal Gu can tamper with an owner token without Eighty-Eight True Yang Building noticing. After a dozen breaths, the blood flame light fully fades. ch. 560
Fang Yuan stands in a world gone quiet enough to hear his own heartbeat, then lets out a breath, his voice hoarse, his whole body soaked in sweat and faintly dizzy. Fang Yuan finds activating the owner token and making it recognize him harder than refining a rank five Gu, and a single mistake could have been impossible to take back. Fang Yuan endures the pressure and succeeds. Holding the glass owner token now lets him enter the treasure room freely, with no need for any high grade evaluation. Normally, anyone inside Eighty-Eight True Yang Building must leave once the token’s possessor does, but the glass owner token lets Fang Yuan stay or go at will instead, a fact he keeps from showing for now. ch. 560
Fang Yuan tests the token, and almost at once he sees Hei Lou Lan’s group in his mind, already past the fifty-fourth round and fighting into the sixty-first against a golden-white tiger phantom. A true golden-white tiger ranks as a desolate beast. The phantom carries a desolate beast’s aura and presses down on Hei Lou Lan’s group, and despite their numbers, defeat looks close. Fang Yuan judges they can hold for less than forty-five minutes before retreating, so he knows he has little time. The glass owner token still is not enough by itself: Fang Yuan still needs to find that loophole and blow it open, tearing a great hole in Eighty-Eight True Yang Building so he can take the crystal wall’s treasures freely. ch. 560
The glass owner token shakes, and Fang Yuan vanishes on the spot, opening his eyes in a round secret room he recognizes as the central control room. Its walls flicker with starlight around a white jade round table holding an exquisite model of the whole Imperial Court blessed land, its mountains, rivers, the sacred palace and even the small towers all clearly visible. Fang Yuan sends out a Gu worm that turns to black smoke and falls onto the sand table, and the smoke spreads and darkens it, condensing into a sticky black liquid. The liquid flows into a funnel-shaped hole on the table. Fang Yuan realizes that enlarging this hole would let him refine the glass owner token into a one-edge owner token, one able to control a whole floor of Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. ch. 560
Fang Yuan freezes: the hole on the sand table sits exactly where the Di Qiu inheritance site lies. He wonders whether the Di Qiu inheritance is itself a concealed device central continent Gu Immortals set up like the glass owner token, but rejects the idea: a cipher and clues from a grey-white stone slab point to a real inheritance, not a decoy. He considers instead that central continent Gu Immortals may have found this hole without ever deciphering the inheritance’s secret, since finding an Immortal Gu inside it would surely have moved them to greater care, and he has no proof to settle the question either way. If Fang Yuan bursts the hole, the Di Qiu inheritance would be destroyed. If he preserves it instead, his plans for Eighty-Eight True Yang Building stop cold, and Fang Yuan, judging the building worth far more, chooses to abandon the inheritance. Fang Yuan reflects that whoever arranged this managed to tamper with Giant Sun Immortal Venerable’s own work. Then his mind catches on an extremely crucial problem. ch. 560
