Chapter 592

Fang Yuan looks down at Tai Bai Yun Sheng, who lies bathed in blood with his eyes shut, and the chapter names Fang Yuan as the one who caused him to fall unconscious. His snow white hair has stuck together with dried blood. He no longer looks like the era’s top healing Gu Master of Northern Plains. ^{ch. 592}

Just outside the hall’s doors, a sea of blood beasts growls, and Fang Yuan raises his head and tells them flatly to be quiet. The hall falls silent almost at once. The beasts lie prostrate like obedient animals, because Fang Yuan’s six-edge owner token makes him master of this floor and everything on it. ^{ch. 592}

Sensing through the floor’s control, Fang Yuan finds many Gu Masters still scattered nearby, some split off from Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s own group during the fighting. Others are scouts sent by Hei tribe, Ma tribe, Ye Lui tribe and other forces to watch whether he succeeds or fails. Only Fang Yuan and Tai Bai Yun Sheng remain inside the hall. ^{ch. 592}

Fang Yuan closes the hall’s door, kneels over Tai Bai Yun Sheng, grips his skull, and activates Gu worms he had already prepared, raising a weak white light above the old man’s head. As the light grows, Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s face twists in pain, and Fang Yuan’s own eyes turn pure white as a soul search begins. Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s whole life flashes through Fang Yuan’s mind, from his old age back to his youth: Gao Yang and Zhu Zai kneeling in gratitude, a purple-haired old beggar offering three complete inheritances, an inkman choosing him for his looks. Further back still, on his wedding night his bride turned cold and admitted her tribe had been destroyed and her parents killed by Tai Bai tribe, and outside their enemies attacked in revenge. As a child, his father raised him strictly to lead Tai Bai tribe. ^{ch. 592}

The flood of memories batters Fang Yuan badly since it spans a whole human life, and because he does not want to endanger Tai Bai Yun Sheng he bears most of the pressure himself. Soon the memories end and Fang Yuan stops using his Gu worms. He sits down to rest, breathing hard and soaked in sweat, and only after a long moment do his pupils return to their normal color. Tai Bai Yun Sheng, in contrast, sleeps on peacefully, his frown easing and his breathing steadying, while Fang Yuan’s own brow tightens. Fang Yuan sighs that he did not find it. Sensing his strange behavior, Mo Yao’s will, sharing his mind, cannot hold back her curiosity and asks what he was looking for, but Fang Yuan will not tell her. ^{ch. 592}

Landscape as before Gu is an Immortal Gu Tai Bai Yun Sheng will only obtain after he becomes an immortal, and rumor holds that it condenses on its own from the resonance of heaven and earth at that moment. But there was another possibility: that Tai Bai Yun Sheng already carried the Immortal Gu’s recipe in his mind from the start, which is what Fang Yuan’s soul search was hunting for. Had he found the recipe, Fang Yuan could have stolen it, added it to river as before Gu and mountain as before Gu, and had Lang Ya land spirit refine it at Lang Ya blessed land instead of risking a direct seizure. But the search found no recipe, confirming the rumor: landscape as before Gu truly is a product of that resonance, born only once Tai Bai Yun Sheng becomes a Gu Immortal himself. That means Fang Yuan will have to seize the Gu by force from an immortal Tai Bai Yun Sheng, a feat he judges harder than ascending to heaven, since he has never heard of a mortal beating an immortal in battle. Of his three original options, this was still the easiest. He has already invested too much to stop, so despite his doubts he pushes ahead with the plan. ^{ch. 592}

Outside Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s unconscious body appears, and a crowd rushes over, badly shaken by his grave injuries. Someone confirms he is still breathing and calls for healers. Healing Gu Masters rush to stabilize him, since his kind reputation has made him far more loved among the crowd than Hei Lou Lan or Chang Shan Yin. No one sees Gao Yang or Zhu Zai come out, and with the challenge window already closed and no new entries allowed, the crowd understands what that silence means. Five rank five experts have now been lost since the tower’s founding. ^{ch. 592}

Tai Bai Yun Sheng wakes on a bed, too weak even to sit up, and a servant shouts out in joy that he has finally opened his eyes. A group of healing Gu Masters checks him over and tells him his injuries are no longer dangerous, but that his old age means he must rest for months to recover. He learns he is at Hei Lou Lan’s residence. Hei Lou Lan, worried after Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s failed and barely-alive return, personally brought him here for treatment. ^{ch. 592}

His memory of the ending surfaces: spending his last primeval essence, activating his defense Gu, charging into the great hall, then fainting and losing all sense. That confirms to him that he failed the round. When he asks whether he truly failed, the healing Gu Masters around his bed cannot answer and only lower their heads. Tai Bai Yun Sheng laughs bitterly at the news, his tone turning sharp, mourning that all of that sacrifice bought him nothing. He weeps openly for Gao Yang and Zhu Zai, and when the healers finally do offer him comfort, their words land on him like sarcasm, like needles in his heart. ^{ch. 592}

At the final crucial moment, Tai Bai Yun Sheng had chosen to save his last primeval essence for himself rather than spend it on Gao Yang and Zhu Zai, using it instead to force his own way into the hall. It was a choice made for his own selfish gain. Made in an instant with no time to think, the decision now leaves him ashamed and unfamiliar with himself, questioning whether he is still the man he believed he was. ^{ch. 592}

Hei Lou Lan arrives and the room kneels; he tells Tai Bai Yun Sheng he is glad to see him awake and calls the failed attempt admirable, urging him to try again and wash away the humiliation with a future success. Tai Bai Yun Sheng says nothing, his eyes still shut. ^{ch. 592}

He has already worked out why he failed: he reached the hall safely and even laughed in wild relief once inside, but that emotional swing, on top of his grave injuries, made him lose consciousness. The round carries a time limit, and once it ran out, his unconscious body was ejected along with the other Gu Masters left at the edge of the battlefield. He fell one step short of success, only because he passed out. ^{ch. 592}

Yet this irony is not the true source of his pain; the deeper wound is that he abandoned his comrades for his own gain. As a child he was already reputed kind-hearted, and when Tai Bai tribe conquered other tribes, he married a childhood friend among the captives to spare her from slavery, sparing the whole group with her. But on their wedding night his bride turned on him, her contacts assaulted the tribe in revenge for her own family, and his parents died in that attack. His years after that were hard and full of guilt. One day he gave water to an old beggar out of kindness, and in thanks was offered a choice of three inheritances: mastery of fire, mastery of wind and flight, or power to surpass life and death and aid the world’s people. He chose the third. From then on he felt reborn, dedicating his life to healing and aiding others, which the chapter says earned him wide gratitude and made him a living legend across Northern Plains. ^{ch. 592}

His failure was never about missing the lifespan Gu; it was that he betrayed his comrades and the code of life he had spent decades building for himself. The betrayal came from his own subconscious, in an instant. He now sees a selfish side of himself that does not match the image others hold of him as the region’s savior, and that old image feels like it is slipping away from him. In the light of the setting sun, his shadow stretches long and extremely dark. ^{ch. 592}