Chapter 573

Silver light falls over the garden. In the pavilion, Fang Yuan turns an earth chief zombie Gu between his fingers. Shaped like an earthworm, bright yellow and about the size of an infant’s forearm, it twines around his hand like a small snake. Mo Yao’s improved recipe and the flesh of an earth chief myriad beast king’s corpse brought the refinement to success, though Fang Yuan has not yet used the Gu, wary that a modified recipe could still hide a flaw. He has reached a compromise with the will Mo Yao left behind, but keeps his guard up, since in life she was a righteous path fairy of the Spirit Affinity House and a refinement path grandmaster. ^{ch. 573}

Recalling how she guided the refinement in only three sentences, each a crucial cue, Fang Yuan reflects that a grandmaster’s name is earned: his own refinement attainment has reached the master realm, yet beside hers he still feels young. Mo Yao is inwardly moved as well, though Fang Yuan does not know it. She registers that Fang Yuan holds master attainment in both the enslavement path and the refinement path while still young, aptitude she calls rare even in her own memory. She judges that his grand ambition, to rise to venerable equal to Thieving Heaven, Paradise Earth and Giant Sun, follows naturally from such early success. She still scoffs at the goal inwardly, but reasons that becoming a master takes more than aptitude: it needs resources and guidance from great teachers, so his background must run deep. Mo Yao already knew of Fang Yuan’s Hu Immortal blessed land, and his double mastery now deepens her sense of how much he is hiding. ^{ch. 573}

A servant reports that the leaders of Ge tribe and Chang tribe have come for an audience. Fang Yuan has summoned both men himself, and tells the servant to let them in. The two kneel and kowtow three times, visibly respectful and afraid. Since the Imperial Court contest, and under Wolf King’s patronage, Ge Guang and Chang Ji You have both risen to rank four Gu Masters. Without letting them rise, Fang Yuan asks whether they have finished what he ordered days before. After his expedition succeeded and he returned to the sacred palace, he had told the two tribe leaders to gather their Gu Masters and clean up the battlefield. ^{ch. 573}

Ge Guang starts to report the battle spoils, but Fang Yuan cuts him off, uninterested, and asks instead how many Gu Masters they arrested. Ge Guang defers the answer to Chang Ji You, Chang Shan Yin’s own son and, since Fang Yuan took Chang tribe, its appointed leader. Kneeling but upright, Chang Ji You reports that despite his father’s public order against it, many Gu Masters still slipped onto the battlefield to steal beast corpses and wild Gu. He and Ge Guang together arrested over one hundred and eighty of them, now held in prison, and interrogation has already given him intelligence on the rest, who escaped notice. He offers to hunt down every escapee if Fang Yuan commands it. Fang Yuan has no interest in the stragglers, tells him that catching so many is already an achievement, and sends the two to fetch the detained captives instead. Close to two hundred captives are soon marched before him, and at his command a large hall rises to hold them. ^{ch. 573}

Fang Yuan orders everyone else out, has the entrance guarded against anyone approaching within a hundred steps, and asks to be told at once if any expert arrives. With the door shut and no lanterns lit, the hall sinks into darkness, deepening the captives’ unease. One young Gu Master shouts out that he is of Hei tribe and Hei Lou Lan’s cousin, demanding to know why Fang Yuan has taken them. Fang Yuan sneers, snaps his fingers, and activates a Gu; the young man’s head bursts like a watermelon, spraying brain matter. The captives panic, then kneel one after another, begging forgiveness. Fang Yuan kills the loudest of the pleaders next, a warning that he will kill anyone who makes more noise, and the hall drops into deathly silence. Most of the captives hold only rank one or rank two cultivation and cannot even enter Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, so resisting a rank five peak stage expert like Fang Yuan would only mean death, and they can only beg. ^{ch. 573}

Satisfied, Fang Yuan asks Mo Yao how to begin. She tells him it is simple: just arrange Gu worms as she instructs, addressing him as little brother. Fang Yuan snorts inwardly at the familiarity but follows her lead anyway. At each of her cues he sends out another Gu worm, among them earth chief zombie Gu, asura zombie Gu and heavenly demon zombie Gu, the components of six arm heavenly zombie king, some thrown to the roof and some set into the corners. The captives, too frightened to speak or move, watch trails of colored light arc through the air around the two headless corpses and the blood already spreading across the floor. ^{ch. 573}

Pouring in primeval essence under Mo Yao’s direction proves oddly specific, jumping from a southeast Gu worm to a northwest one, then to the sides, and between main Gu and supporting Gu with no pattern Fang Yuan can predict, leaving even him wary. Once every worm is charged, their light joins into a single pale yellow structure that covers the whole hall and every captive inside it. Startled, Fang Yuan’s pupils widen: this, he realizes, is a Gu house. Mo Yao confirms it, explaining that a Gu house’s true nature is a killer move, so the two forms can be exchanged for each other. ^{ch. 573}

Fang Yuan senses a deeper implication. He asks whether any killer move could become a Gu house, and Mo Yao agrees without hesitation. She explains that man is the spirit of living beings while Gu carries the world’s own Dao: a single Gu worm holds one ability, but a killer move stacks several worms together, raising one ability to new heights or producing several at once. She leaves the rest for him to work out, and inspiration floods his mind as though a paper window had torn open. He reasons that a Gu house is simply a killer move already solidified. He compares Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, which covers the Imperial Court, sways the Northern Plains and holds inheritances, to Water Pavilion, which can hide itself and defend and store, since both are built from many assembled Gu worms rather than one. From there he wonders why six arm heavenly zombie king, which normally works on him alone, could not be shaped into a Gu house reaching many people at once. ^{ch. 573}

Looking ahead, Fang Yuan sees the captives’ bodies already beginning to change, golden scales spreading rapidly over their skin. They scream in fright and pain as arms in different colors and thicknesses, dark green, dark purple, yellow, sprout from their backs in deformed shapes. Some tear at their own skin, some collapse and beg to be killed, and some double over bleeding from the mouth and nose. Fang Yuan pays no attention to how they look, only to the dangerous aura now rising off them, which leaves him both pleased and on guard. He reflects that Mo Yao’s grasp of killer moves runs deep. He wonders whether most Gu Masters, even most Immortals, simply lack the skill to turn a killer move into a Gu house so easily. Refinement path grandmaster, he concludes, is a realm to be feared. ^{ch. 573}