Chapter 594

Ten years of blizzard have buried Demon Blood Hill. Its once dark red grass now lies lost under snow. Enormous snow monsters, some as tall as thirty feet, appear and vanish inside the storm. The taller a snow monster grows, the stronger it fights: a thirty foot monster matches a rank three Gu Master, a forty foot one a rank four, and a fifty foot one a rank five. The monsters spread across the Northern Plains, converging on the region’s few surviving pockets of life. Snowmen prey on the snow monsters in turn, multiplying rapidly and extending their own lives by feeding on the monsters’ flesh and blood. ^{ch. 594}

Hei Bai and Hei Cheng have stood atop the hill for a long while, hundreds of snow monster corpses scattered around them. Only a monster of sixty feet or more would trouble a Gu Immortal; the rest die as trash beneath them. Hei Bai suddenly catches a response. He turns his sharp gaze to one side. ^{ch. 594}

Giant hands of wind and snow, flying snow hands, condense in the air and seize the two of them. Hei Bai laughs and flicks out a great number of rank five Gu worms. Hei Cheng does the same. The snow hands crumble as they close, and the worms inside vanish, drawn away by a force that carries them into Imperial Court blessed land. The capture takes a full hour before every rank five Gu worm is gone, and the two Gu Immortals then fly off. ^{ch. 594}

Hei Lou Lan learns that support has arrived. He looks up at the shaking aurora above the sacred palace. The sixty-eighth floor already holds a completed hundredth round, but the floor itself is still only in its embryonic stage, its aurora holding the Gu worms just captured, some wild and some sent by Hei Cheng and Hei Bai. Eighty-Eight True Yang Building draws the strongest among them to form the ninety-ninth round and then the ninety-eighth. ^{ch. 594}

Hei Lou Lan is displeased that Xue Song Zi still has not moved, though the two Hei tribe Gu Immortals already have. He had bribed Xue Song Zi into an agreement to help at a set time, but Xue Song Zi shows no sign of acting. Hei Lou Lan angrily sends a letter, and Xue Song Zi soon replies. ^{ch. 594}

Xue Song Zi complains that the two Hei tribe Gu Immortals have been pressuring him and that his snowman trade is running at a loss. He adds that he already sent rank five Gu earlier to help win wooden chicken Gu, and cannot spare more support now. Hei Lou Lan is furious and nearly crushes the letter Gu. He curses the demonic path as treacherous. His anger soon fades, since he had expected this: he is only a mortal dealing with a Gu Immortal, and a Gu Immortal who reneges cannot be forced to keep a promise. The longer the sixty-eighth floor takes to condense, the weaker a Gu Immortal’s help becomes, which worries Hei Lou Lan. ^{ch. 594}

Hei Lou Lan decides he must first win wooden chicken Gu, on the building’s thirty-ninth floor, to give himself leverage over Xue Song Zi, and he calls everyone to convene. For months he has worked that floor with Xue Song Zi’s help, and progress has been smooth enough to reach its final round. Wooden chicken Gu is the reward waiting at that round. ^{ch. 594}

The round rewards patience over a long stretch of effort rather than raw strength. Hei Lou Lan has personally attempted it forty to fifty times, gaining a little ground each time until he stands only a hair’s breadth from success. Reasoning that clearing the thirty-ninth floor first would raise morale for the sixty-eighth, he musters every Gu Master in the sacred palace the next day for a pep rally. That evening they break through the hundredth round and win rank six wooden chicken Gu. The breakthrough lifts spirits and sweeps away the gloom left by Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s earlier defeat. With wooden chicken Gu in hand, Hei Lou Lan grows confident enough to use it to lure Xue Song Zi into helping. ^{ch. 594}

Seven days later the sixty-eighth floor fully takes form, and Hei Lou Lan leads everyone in. Rather than rushing its rounds, he orders the Gu Masters to spread out. Over a hundred refinement path Gu Masters, all carefully chosen and trusted though not yet at master level, join the formation. They form a round formation with Hei Lou Lan at its center, and he sits down and takes out the two-edge owner token. ^{ch. 594}

The token rises into the air as grey light streams from Hei Lou Lan and the other refinement path Gu Masters, sharp as needles and thickening until it floods the whole formation. The separate rays link into one another and stretch out as a single beam that pierces straight into the floating token. A young Gu Master watching outside the formation asks what is happening. An older one beside him calls it a super tribe’s own ability, worth watching closely. The token trembles, and the tremor spreads and grows until it reaches the formation as a heavy shudder. The grey light pooled inside erupts in a burst that forces every onlooker to narrow their eyes. The first round’s world turns transparent and dissolves like melting snow, and Hei Lou Lan’s group arrives at the second round without ever making a move. ^{ch. 594}

The younger Gu Masters erupt in astonished chatter. The older Gu Master names it grey meltdown, a refinement path killer move every super tribe holds, one that can carry a group rapidly past a round, though it works only on some rounds and not others. ^{ch. 594}

Inside Fang Yuan’s mind, Mo Yao appears and reads the method at a glance: it reaches into Giant Sun Immortal Venerable’s hibernating will while Gu Masters outside release Gu that the building absorbs and only half refines. Because Giant Sun’s will is asleep, its refining runs slow, and the newly taken Gu worms stay only half-refined. Grey meltdown uses the owner token to reach those half-refined worms directly, forcibly finishing their refining so the round’s core gives out and the group passes to the next one. Time is the whole trick: given enough of it, even a hibernating will would finish refining the worms on its own, and the chance to force them early would be lost. Fang Yuan praises Mo Yao’s reading of it. ^{ch. 594}

In his own mind, Fang Yuan reasons that the whole method is a race against Eighty-Eight True Yang Building to refine its Gu worms first. Were Giant Sun’s will awake, the worms would refine instantly and leave no opening at all, but its hibernation slows things enough to open the loophole. Fang Yuan already knows this: in his previous life, Central Continent’s Gu Immortals used the same method after breaking into Imperial Court blessed land, sharing it afterward in image clips. Even then it served only as support, since Central Continent’s Gu Immortals truly relied on the glass owner token, a treasure that cost their side enormous energy and resources to make. That same token, raised to six edges, is now in Fang Yuan’s own hands. ^{ch. 594}

While everyone else stays fixed on the second round, Fang Yuan secretly takes out his six-edge owner token and strokes it, reflecting that his long planning is finally coming together. He reasons that flying bear strength Gu would pair naturally with his own flying bear phantom Gu. With a single thought, he seizes control of the whole floor. ^{ch. 594}