Chapter 568

Fang Yuan studies calamity beckoning Gu closely. Fully formed now after nurturing in the giant vermillion bowl, it is the size of a little finger, grey all over, and delicate like a silkworm cocoon. As he plays with it and it keeps absorbing his aura, he can feel the connection between them deepening. Ripples move through his heart. It would be a lie to say he is not moved. ^{ch. 568}

In his previous life he suffered and killed on a large scale to refine a rank six Spring Autumn Cicada. He is not yet a hundred years old in this life. Even so, he already holds calamity beckoning Gu, a rank above it. Its use is strange, offering oneself up to attract calamity and tribulation, but Fang Yuan holds firmly that a Gu’s use depends on its master’s wits. Chainsaw Golden Centipede will later be turned to a wholly different use by a rank four mortal Gu Master called Chainsaw Mad Demon. If that is possible, Fang Yuan sees no reason he cannot invent new uses of his own for calamity beckoning Gu. ^{ch. 568}

Fang Yuan reasons that calamity beckoning Gu alone proves the luck path is real. Giant Sun Immortal Venerable was lucky all his life, and rumor held that he had created unique luck path Gu worms of his own, though no proof of that rumor had ever surfaced before. Now Fang Yuan holds calamity beckoning Gu itself, a luck path Gu that Mo Yao refined through interaction with Eighty-Eight True Yang Building’s divert disaster Gu, and the two Gu are proof enough. The ink text states plainly that Giant Sun’s luck path Gu worms could steal other people’s good luck for himself and pass his own bad luck onto others. As a full path, luck also carries offense, defense, movement and healing, its target the incorporeal, formless luck every person carries. After he innovated it, Giant Sun kept the path hidden and profited from it quietly, without any commotion. ^{ch. 568}

Mo Yao’s own hand turns openly critical in the text: she calls Giant Sun Immortal Venerable “the luck thief” and writes that with his death the thief has finally perished, daring, in Fang Yuan’s eyes, to fault an Immortal Venerable outright. She also speculates that Giant Sun’s luck path inheritance sits inside the treasure room of Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. If Fang Yuan could obtain it, his heart thumps at the thought that he might duplicate Giant Sun’s own success. He sets calamity beckoning Gu back in the bowl. Fully formed as it is, he still cannot refine it, since he remains a mortal without the immortal essence the task needs. ^{ch. 568}

This differs from when he refined fixed immortal travel Gu at three kings blessed land, where a land spirit’s help let him serve as the leading refiner, so the Gu became his. Even so, he could not use it himself without that same spirit’s aid to reach Hu Immortal blessed land. Refining calamity beckoning Gu instead ran through the backward flow of Eighty-Eight True Yang Building’s own heavenly power, with Fang Yuan only an assistant at best. This time he had no land spirit’s help at all. ^{ch. 568}

Fang Yuan decides he can only truly refine it once he becomes a Gu Immortal, and resolves to leave it here until then. Without advancing to Gu Immortal he has no immortal aperture to store it, and carrying it out openly would spread its Immortal Gu aura and draw covetous attention. He is not worried about Hei Lou Lan, Tai Bai Yun Sheng or the others, since he commands many wolf groups now and his strength path cultivation is sufficient. What worries him instead is Giant Sun Immortal Venerable’s will, which resides inside Eighty-Eight True Yang Building itself. The Gu’s aura was weak in its early form. Fully formed now, carrying it out risks waking that will, a risk Fang Yuan refuses before his main plan is done. He decides instead to refine part of Water Pavilion first, before he leaves the nameless valley. ^{ch. 568}

A Gu house, broadly, is a killer move formed by combining and solidifying ten or more different kinds of Gu worms. Three star cave is one common mortal example. It turns into a seed that grows into a three floor hollow tree. Lizard house Gu takes the shape of a lizard in different colors, its eyes serving as windows and its mouth as a door, moving by its own will. Mushroom forest, formed by planting many mush room Gu together, grows into a whole courtyard of mushroom houses. ^{ch. 568}

Gu houses trace back to seven siblings called Lui Gui, demonic Gu Masters of the olden antiquity era who were born as septuplets and stayed together from birth to death. Each was a rank five peak stage Gu Master and an expert in defense, and together they built a combined killer move called turtle house. With it they once defended against three attacks from a Gu Immortal, a feat that became known in history as the three moves pact. Turtle house was the first Gu house in Gu Master history. ^{ch. 568}

Eighty-Eight True Yang Building stands as the apex example, able to defend, gather and store, built from countless small towers with divert disaster Gu as one of its main cornerstones, its main body formed by sacrificing gathered wild Gu. Proud Bone Demon Lord Shen Jie Ao once lacked a rank six Gu after reaching rank six Gu Immortal himself. So he combined white bone wheel with other rank five Gu into White Bone Chariot, whose power matched a rank six Gu. White Bone Chariot was itself a Gu house. ^{ch. 568}

Three star cave, lizard house and large lizard house are all simplified branches, formed from just one Gu rather than a true combination, which is why their power runs far lower and their use far more common. Water Pavilion itself is a rank seven Immortal Gu house. That rank means at least one rank seven Immortal Gu sits among the worms that built it. ^{ch. 568}

Fang Yuan cannot refine an Immortal Gu at his current level, but the mortal Gu inside Water Pavilion are within his reach, and little in the process gives him real difficulty. Water Pavilion was a symbol of Spirit Affinity House. Fairy Mo Yao once wielded it, and after she betrayed her sect for love and sacrificed herself refining calamity beckoning Gu, the Gu house was left ownerless, free now for Fang Yuan to make his own. ^{ch. 568}

The refining deepens his understanding of Water Pavilion itself. He finds no fewer than three thousand Gu worms in its assembly, each closely interrelated with a faint resonance running between them. Its core is rank seven water harmony Gu, which lets its Gu Master merge and hide inside water and stay alive so long as the water itself is not destroyed. Two assisting Immortal Gu support it: rank six movement Immortal Gu Worldly Wave Trace, and wisdom path Immortal Gu Delight in Water and Mountain. ^{ch. 568}

Refining a true Immortal Gu is still beyond him. He works only the rank one and rank two mortal Gu instead. Six hours of refining leave him dizzy, but by the end he has completely refined five hundred rank one and rank two mortal Gu. That gives him ten percent control over Water Pavilion, enough, he judges, to block an intruder long enough for him to be alerted and rush back. Two more hours raise his control to thirteen percent, though the difficulty keeps climbing at these later stages. Spring Autumn Cicada is like a ticking bomb inside him, so he dares not use time path Gu such as instant success Gu to speed the work, or his progress would run further still. He reaches his limit at last, his head spinning and the primeval essence in his two rank five peak stage apertures nearly spent. ^{ch. 568}

Just as he thinks to pull away, a figure rises in his mind instead. It sighs that after so long, it has finally met the fated one today, and a graceful, slender woman appears with him, dark eyed and veiled. Fang Yuan is inwardly shocked: this is Fairy Mo Yao’s own will, and he has no idea when it entered his mind. That so much time has passed and she, never having become a Venerable, could still leave her will behind at all speaks to how strong her cultivation once was. Fang Yuan had taken precautions, but Mo Yao clearly commanded some special method that let her will slip in without him noticing, no small feat. ^{ch. 568}

If her will meant him harm, Fang Yuan would have no way to escape the consequences, and only a wisdom path Gu Master holds the power to subdue a will like this, which he is not. Thought itself works by clash: ideas rise, collide and transform into new ones, and with her will lodged in his mind, Mo Yao can now hear every one of his thoughts clearly. What would happen, he wonders, once she learns of Spring Autumn Cicada? ^{ch. 568}

The will tells him not to be afraid, that it means him no harm and only wants to ask one question. Fang Yuan needs no guessing to know what it is, and tells her at once of Bo Qing’s defeat. Hearing it, Mo Yao’s will shakes as though it might collapse. Fang Yuan is secretly pleased, though disappointed that her will holds its form regardless, her dark eyes filling with tears in an expression of both sadness and relief. ^{ch. 568}

Since Fang Yuan has already refined calamity beckoning Gu, found this place and begun refining Water Pavilion, her will judges he already understands enough. Since Bo Qing is dead, she says she can finally let everything go, calling it perhaps the fortune of the living. She has already let Spirit Affinity House down. Her only wish left, she says, is to return Water Pavilion to him. As compensation she offers her life’s own refinement path insight, and with it the secret information of Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. ^{ch. 568}