Chapter 567

Fang Yuan smiles as he reads the ink text on the bowl. It describes calamity beckoning Gu, a rank seven Immortal Gu one rank above his Spring Autumn Cicada. Its ability is bound up in earthly calamities and heavenly tribulations. When a Gu Immortal undergoes calamity and invokes tribulation, calamity beckoning Gu can detach the disaster from its original target and draw it onto its own bearer instead. Fang Yuan’s expression turns strange, since he cannot see who would dare use a Gu built to draw such destructive power onto themselves. He wonders why Mo Yao, the thirty-sixth generation fairy of Spirit Affinity House, would refine something so bent on courting death. ^{ch. 567}

Long before, Mo Yao and Bo Qing were deeply in love, a couple of the righteous path whose romance was known across the five regions. Sword Immortal Bo Qing had no equal in talent and was known as “the pseudo-Immortal Venerable who split the five regions with his sword.” Only one goal filled his life: breaking through to rank nine. The rank nine barrier was extremely dangerous, and even Bo Qing himself judged his odds of success at no better than fifteen percent. Mo Yao tried to talk him out of the attempt and failed, then tearfully helped him prepare for it anyway. His first attempt failed, leaving him bedridden and unable to move for seventy years, cared for the whole time by Mo Yao. Once he recovered, Bo Qing wanted to try again. ^{ch. 567}

Mo Yao knew the final trial of a rank nine breakthrough called down limitless earthly calamities and heavenly tribulations, past what Bo Qing’s battle strength alone could endure. To help him survive it, she secretly betrayed her sect and turned her plans toward Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, built by Giant Sun Immortal Venerable and Long Hair Ancestor as the foremost Immortal Gu house in the world. She had studied it for years already, deepening her refinement path attainment. Mo Yao was a variant human without Giant Sun’s bloodline, but Spirit Affinity House had long supplied him concubines, and several of its women had won his favor. Through them, the house had gathered secrets of Giant Sun Immortal Venerable, including detail on Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, and it was from these that Mo Yao learned the building’s secret. ^{ch. 567}

Imperial Court blessed land sat at the exact center of the Northern Plains, a space as vast as a world with its own day and night. Its good fortune ran so deep that at set intervals it drew earthly calamities and heavenly tribulations of vast, destructive force. Giant Sun Immortal Venerable placed a divert disaster Gu, a rank seven Immortal Gu built from his own luck path essence, as a cornerstone of the building to divert those calamities and tribulations to the outside world. That diversion was what formed the ten year blizzard disaster spreading over the whole Northern Plains, and Giant Sun then used that same blizzard to found the tradition of the Imperial Court contest. Imperial Court blessed land was set to admit only mortals, never Gu Immortals. But whenever it had to divert disaster, a hidden crack opened and the calamities rushed out like a flood, and in that moment its barrier against Gu Immortals went dead. Mo Yao found this a loophole worth risking her life on. ^{ch. 567}

She used the small crack, entering Imperial Court blessed land against the flow of the calamities at risk to her own life. She spent close to ten years investigating inside after that, and through her refinement path attainment she finally found the crucial node: a small tower at Di Qiu. Risking Giant Sun’s will waking against her, she destroyed the tower and used the backward flow of its heavenly power to sense the divert disaster Gu and grow a cave that could foster calamity beckoning Gu. She refined the Immortal Gu to its early stage. She founded the Gu house Water Pavilion in a nameless valley to finish it. Inside the pavilion she nurtured the early stage Gu to its completed form, smuggling it out during later windows when the blessed land diverted disaster. She kept her arrangements standing rather than destroy them, in case Bo Qing failed again and the Gu was lost with him, meaning she would have had to enter and refine it a second time. ^{ch. 567}

She never returned. Bo Qing’s second attempt at rank nine failed completely, and the heavenly tribulations burned him to ash; Mo Yao perished alongside him. ^{ch. 567}

Fang Yuan now understands why: Mo Yao set up the inheritance in secret but withheld its true content, since explaining it would have exposed her betrayal of her own sect. In his previous life, Central Continent’s Gu Immortals used the very clues she left behind to scheme against Imperial Court blessed land and destroy Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. Fang Yuan sighs, calling her a strange woman. Though he would never make her sacrifice for love, his own understanding of such devotion runs deeper than most people’s. Mo Yao’s goal was her lover; Fang Yuan’s own goal is eternal life; different desires forge different lives into people with their own character, he reflects. ^{ch. 567}

Fang Yuan’s gaze returns to the bowl. The cocoon has burst open, and calamity beckoning Gu now sits fully formed: grey, the size of a little finger, shaped like a silkworm cocoon, moving up and down in the water. It is a genuine self sacrifice Gu, made to be given up for someone else’s sake. Even with no use of it in mind, Fang Yuan sees three reasons it still carries real value. First, it is an Immortal Gu he could exchange for a fortune in immortal essence stones in treasure yellow heaven even unused. Second, as a luck path Gu that draws earthly calamities and heavenly tribulations, someone strong and tough enough could turn it to harm others. Third, it formed by borrowing the power of divert disaster Gu, one of the cornerstones of Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, a connection Fang Yuan judges will help his own plans there. ^{ch. 567}

Even so, Fang Yuan cannot yet fully subdue the Gu. Mo Yao’s ink text sets one condition: mortal or immortal, whoever would master calamity beckoning Gu must hold a heart of self sacrifice. Without it, forcing the Gu risks a backlash at best, and at worst the Gu self destructs and harms its master’s life. Standing before the bowl with no expression, Fang Yuan asks himself whether he has that heart. ^{ch. 567}

Elsewhere, Tang Miao Ming coughs blood into her handkerchief while her younger brother Tang Fang calls out to her in alarm. Their father and the rest of their family are already dead, leaving them only each other, and Tang Fang worries she forced her way through a contest round at too high a cost. Tang Miao Ming insists it was necessary: the Tang tribe suffered heavily in the Imperial Court contest and was nearly swallowed by other tribes, and this chance to use Eighty-Eight True Yang Building could revive it. When Tang Fang complains that the gains do not match what she suffered, she turns solemn and reprimands him, telling him that reviving the tribe is his duty as its leader. Tang Fang, ashamed, admits he was wrong. Softening, Tang Miao Ming tells him that though his nature wants a free life of travel, he is the last man of their family and must accept that the meaning of his life is now to revitalize the tribe. As punishment, exactly as she has always done since he was young, she tells him to copy out by hand the first section of chapter three of a book, ten times. ^{ch. 567}

The passage he copies tells an old story. Ren Zu’s second daughter, Desolate Ancient Moon, once climbed Cheng Bai Mountain searching for success Gu to save her father from the Door of Life and Death, but failed at the final step and lost herself, turning into an ugly, powerful monster. Without her to rescue him, and with his elder son Verdant Great Sun still lost to addiction and despair, Ren Zu remained trapped in Luo Po Valley, unable to return to life. Luo Po Valley was a maze of twisting paths, where boundless fog could slacken a soul and the Luo Po wind, sharp as a blade, could cut one down. Ren Zu’s spirit could not find a way out of the fog, and as the wind cut at his soul he grew weaker by the day. The soul fragments the wind cut from him gradually gathered into a youth: Ren Zu’s third son, Northern Dark Ice Soul, born from the wind itself. ^{ch. 567}

Ren Zu thanked him for the company, and admitted he had little time left. Northern Dark Ice Soul, cold in look but warm-hearted, resolved to save his father instead of merely watching him fade. Ren Zu warned him life and death could not be forced, but let him try anyway. Wandering the valley he alone could move through unharmed, Northern Dark Ice Soul met a Gu shaped like a chubby, agile ladybug that named itself unexpected Gu. It told him that meeting it inside this death realm was itself an unexpected chance at life, and offered to carry him out to the human world and a body of his own, but only him, since he alone had found it. Northern Dark Ice Soul refused to leave his father behind, but unexpected Gu took him anyway, and he woke in the human world in a body of flesh, alone and bewildered. Remembering that Ren Zu had once spoken of an elder sister named Desolate Ancient Moon, he set out to find her once cognition Gu appeared and told him of Cheng Bai Mountain and her story. ^{ch. 567}

When he found Desolate Ancient Moon, she had already become the monster, repeating the same questions without recognizing him or her own name. He explained who she was and begged her to wake and help resurrect their father, but she asked instead why anyone should live or die at all, a question he could not answer. As he turned the question over, bewilderment Gu clouded his sense of his surroundings, and love Gu and disguise Gu closed in behind it, a trio the story calls notorious for tormenting people together. Cognition Gu tried to call love Gu off, but love Gu drove it away. ^{ch. 567}

Delighted at a new target, it wore disguise Gu’s power to pose as cognition Gu itself, and told Northern Dark Ice Soul that saving his sister required finding meaning Gu, a Gu that did not exist, and sent him off in a false direction. The three Gu mocked him and took turns tormenting him as he searched in vain, but his persistence eventually moved cognition Gu to help him in secret whenever love Gu was away. Cognition Gu feared only love Gu, not the other two. With its help he saw through the bewilderment and the disguise, and the other two Gu withdrew in defeat. ^{ch. 567}

Thanking cognition Gu, Northern Dark Ice Soul realized that if no meaning Gu existed in the world, he could make one himself. He returned to Desolate Ancient Moon and pressed a self-made meaning Gu into her head, and her eyes brightened at once. Her new purpose was fixed: to search for success Gu and resurrect their father. ^{ch. 567}

Copying the passage moves Tang Fang. He reads it as his sister’s own lesson: that people feel lost in this world, but finding meaning gives them direction, tells them what to pursue and what to refuse, and leaves them unafraid of sacrifice. Looking out over Imperial Court blessed land at night, he settles on his own meaning: to lead the Tang tribe back to prosperity. ^{ch. 567}

At the same time, in Water Pavilion, Fang Yuan smiles. Without hesitation he picks up calamity beckoning Gu, and as it absorbs his aura the transfer goes smoothly, with no tremor and no backlash. As a transmigrator carrying five hundred years of memory from his past life, Fang Yuan has already made peace with life and death, and family, friendship and love hold no real pull on him. Only eternal life, remote and unattainable, gives his life its meaning. Pursuing it does not mean fearing death or failure, both of which he accepts calmly, and whether eternal life is even real remains unproven, but he finds the pursuit itself worth living for, tired as he is of lesser desires. He decides he does have the resolve to sacrifice, and turns the rank seven Immortal Gu over in his hand. ^{ch. 567}