Green vines blocking the round, Fang Yuan's backstab
Hei Lou Lan watches his troops creep forward through a dense jungle, in a battle that has already lasted over six hours. This is the second round, its weather hot and damp, its terrain an ancient rainforest that Gu Masters must cross entirely to reach a stone palace on the far side. The jungle holds no beasts, but it is filled with green vines that coil around its trees and pile on its damp ground. Each vine is at least seventy to eighty feet long, as thick as a king-sized bowl. Green snake vines are the most common kind, their bodies covered in snake scales. ch. 595
When a Gu Master comes near, a green snake vine suddenly moves to coil around and constrict them. In every hundred paces of the rainforest there are about a thousand green snake vines. Progress is extremely difficult. Vines attack from every side at once, some dropping from the trees, some creeping along the ground and some ambushing up from underground, so the group cannot defend itself properly. The vines are fast and strong, and the wood path Gu worms living on their bodies are the real reason the group has already suffered heavy losses. ch. 595
A scout reports a green snake vine king ahead, already locked in battle with Ye Lui Sang. Every green snake vine group has its own king, with the battle strength of a rank four Gu Master. Ye Lui Sang, a rank five peak stage expert and tribe leader of the Ye Lui tribe, cultivates fire path, which subdues wood path Gu worms completely, and carries a fire path support Immortal Gu besides. Killing the king is a small matter for him. ch. 595
He kills it and retreats. Chang Shan Yin takes over, leading the wolf group to open the path ahead. Wolves fight well on offense but poorly on defense, a weak match for the vines, except that Chang Shan Yin’s turtleback wolves defend well and his vermillion fire wolves carry fire path Gu worms. Hei Lou Lan privately judges Chang Shan Yin, named Wolf King, as possibly the single strongest fighter present, made more so by his flying bear phantom Immortal Gu. He plans to let Chang Shan Yin exhaust himself now and take that Gu from him later, once Hei Lou Lan himself becomes a Gu Immortal. ch. 595
Hei Lou Lan judges the second round tests investigative ability more than endurance, since the jungle also hides green dragon vine groups, far more dangerous mutated beings that their chosen path mostly avoids. He expects one or two clashes with them regardless, the round’s greatest difficulty. Feeling close to the end, he estimates the group will clear the round within an hour. ch. 595
Then everything changes at once: the green snake vines attack with sonic boom speed, their offense multiplying by dozens of times. Vines that had stayed still outside the immediate fighting now surge in from within a thousand li, crashing over the Gu Masters like a tsunami. Caught unprepared, the Gu Masters suffer heavy losses, and countless of them are killed within moments. Panic spreads as they are seized and pulled apart by the surrounding vines. Hei Lou Lan orders every troop to attack and hold their ground no matter the cost, and rises into the air to take control of the battle. A hundred or so green dragon vines rise to charge him there, and he kills twenty to thirty of them with his dark path abilities before dropping toward the ground. The ground offers no safety either, as more green snake vines and green dragon vines break through the soil and trap the whole army. ch. 595
Hei Lou Lan cannot make sense of it, since the scouting had been done properly and should not have missed a green dragon vine group this size. Green vines are normally strongly territorial but passive, attacking only when their territory is encroached on. These vine groups pounce on the Gu Masters as if avenging a father’s death. Vines have strong vitality: even cut into five or six pieces, each piece can still attack before it dies, and Hei Lou Lan sees green dragon vines tear free of their own roots to fly out and attack, killing themselves in the act. He cannot understand what hatred could drive such suicidal attacks, when every living thing carries a survival instinct. The army breaks apart, each side fighting alone and slowly retreating, and many young Gu Masters lose their lives. Hei Lou Lan begins to suspect the round itself is a trap, since its difficulty is far too high for only the second round. ch. 595
It is indeed a trap, laid not by Eighty-Eight True Yang Building but by Fang Yuan, who controls this floor. He had patiently ordered green vines across the round to gather here in secret, taking turns on the front line himself and deliberately slowing the group’s advance to buy time. Once enough vines had gathered, he gave the order for a sudden, all-out attack. Fang Yuan is an enslavement path master, and the vines, whose intelligence is lower than a beast’s, fight together under his control at a hundred times their normal strength, disregarding their own lives. He singles out Hei Lou Lan, Ye Lui Sang and Tai Bai Yun Sheng for extra attention, aiming green dragon vines comparable to mutated beasts at them specifically. ch. 595
Several tribes send representatives urging Hei Lou Lan to order a retreat. He grits his teeth and gives the order. ch. 595
He knows the situation is already out of control: the vines, fearless of death, have thrown the formation into chaos, and his experts cannot fight freely for fear of hurting their own men. He calculates that such heavy losses here would leave him without the strength to seize the Immortal Gu waiting in the final round. Whether retreat is even possible depends on Fang Yuan, who controls this floor and can seal its entrance and exit with ease. Soon everyone discovers they cannot leave at all. This is a blow that nearly breaks the army’s morale entirely. ch. 595
At the critical moment Hei Lou Lan declares he will force this round with the killer move grey meltdown, and calls on everyone to hold on and survive. The army’s morale steadies. It reopens a path and reforms into a tight, connected formation. Under heavy protection from the whole army, Hei Lou Lan leads a group of refinement path Gu Masters into a round formation and begins the killer move. ch. 595
An old refinement path Gu Master familiar with the inside details warns Hei Lou Lan that forcing the move now will likely cost thirty percent of their men. Grey meltdown has its own limitations. It relies on coordination between the inside and the outside, requiring the round’s reward to be Gu worms deliberately provided by either Hei tribe’s Gu Immortals or by Xue Song Zi. Eighty-Eight True Yang Building does not coordinate that way, since it only selects suitable Gu worms from what it has absorbed and refines them itself to form each round. ch. 595
The first round’s reward came from Hei Bai, so Hei Lou Lan used grey meltdown to exploit the fact that Giant Sun’s will had not yet fully refined those Gu worms, forcibly refining them himself to claim the reward and pass that round. The second round’s reward is wild Gu, which Hei Lou Lan cannot connect with at all, so grey meltdown cannot be used to pass this round. This round can only be completed by meeting its actual requirement. ch. 595
Facing the crisis, Hei Lou Lan has no better option left than to force grey meltdown to skip past the second round and connect instead to the third round’s Gu worm reward. The third round’s reward came from Xue Song Zi and is only half-refined, so it still carries most of her will. Because Hei Lou Lan has been working together with Xue Song Zi, her will approves him, letting him use grey meltdown to connect to and refine the third round’s reward. Passing the third round this way would leave the second round without a foundation and cause it to collapse, because Eighty-Eight True Yang Building condensed each floor’s rounds in descending order, first the hundredth round, then the ninety-ninth, then the ninety-eighth, and so on. Forcing the connection this way would multiply grey meltdown’s power several times over, far beyond what the refinement path Gu Masters channeling it could bear. Whether the attempt succeeds or fails, some of them would die from it. ch. 595
Hei Lou Lan judges tens of refinement path Gu Masters dying is better than losing the whole army, and he holds to that choice. The old Gu Master says nothing further and returns to the formation. ch. 595
