Chapter 602

Fang Yuan climbs twenty-three stairs inside a white jade hall to a tall green copper divine bird statue, its neck, legs and feathers pierced by black chains as thick as ancient trees. Mo Yao names it at once. It is Frost Jade Peacock, Imperial Court blessed land’s land spirit. ^{ch. 602}

Fang Yuan explains why the statue must exist: a land spirit forms from an obsession fused with a blessed land’s own heavenly power, so killing it destroys the blessed land and destroying the blessed land kills it in turn. Imperial Court blessed land still stands, so its land spirit is still alive. ^{ch. 602}

Mo Yao spent her life researching Eighty-Eight True Yang Building for her lover Bo Qing, hoping to win the fortune rivalling heaven Gu and push him to rank nine. She reached the true inheritance secluded domain but lacked the power to take that Gu, and settled for refining the calamity beckoning Gu instead from her own inheritance knowledge and her standing as a refinement grandmaster. All that effort taught her exactly how valuable the land spirit is. ^{ch. 602}

Before he reached rank nine, Giant Sun Immortal Venerable won the contest for Imperial Court blessed land’s inheritance and became its owner. Once he reached rank nine and gained the superior grotto-heaven Longevity Heaven, Imperial Court blessed land became only one of his many residences. Inside it he built Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, so anyone after the building would first have to break into the blessed land around it. While Giant Sun lived, the land spirit obeyed him without question. His death left the blessed land ownerless. Whoever could satisfy the land spirit’s own condition could then claim it. ^{ch. 602}

Giant Sun sealed the land spirit deep. Mo Yao’s own search, spent across her lifetime, never turned up so much as a single feather of it. It lay hidden inside the true inheritance secluded domain, reachable only when the true inheritances fly at a certain speed and open a gap. Fang Yuan knows this from a video made by central continent’s Gu Immortals in his previous life, built on research Mo Yao left behind after her death. Spirit Affinity House held that research for ten thousand years as the building’s loopholes widened with age, working in secret with other central continent sects until Fairy Black Moon led the attack. ^{ch. 602}

At the statue’s foot, Mo Yao reads the seal: green paste from the rank seven Immortal Gu Earth Prison, and black chains from the rank seven Immortal Gu Earth Net. Both are one-time expenditure Gu that vanish after a single use, worn down by hundreds of thousands of years of corrosion. She remembers what Fang Yuan summoned earlier. It was Gruel Mud, a rank six Gu and their direct counter. ^{ch. 602}

Fang Yuan squeezes the rank six gruel mud Immortal Gu, an expenditure Gu that needs no immortal essence, and it bursts into a brown green light that fuses into the statue. The statue shakes, chains clash and the green paste cracks, but the tremor soon fades, and Mo Yao takes it for failure against an Immortal Venerable’s own construction. Fang Yuan then points to the divine bird’s head. Its paste is quietly melting. The land spirit had exerted its own strength against the tremor, forcing Earth Prison and Earth Net to divert most of their remaining power to suppress it, and that let Gruel Mud’s true effect slip past unnoticed at the head. Melting slows sharply once it reaches the neck, where Earth Prison and Earth Net’s remaining power resists it directly. ^{ch. 602}

Fang Yuan tells Frost Jade Peacock that he freed it, and offers it freedom in exchange for recognising him as master. The land spirit answers that it is one with the blessed land and knows everything that has happened inside it across the hundreds of thousands of years of its sealing. It sets one condition for a new owner, the same condition Giant Sun himself once met. Fang Yuan asks what the condition is. ^{ch. 602}