Chapter 63

Under a locust tree in a hidden courtyard, clan leader Gu Yue Bo asks Fang Zheng what he chose for his second Gu, and on hearing it is a Bronze Skin Gu he praises the pairing of offense and defense with the Moonlight Gu as the clan’s ideal, the king’s path. He reads character from each student’s choice, saying Gu Yue Mo Bei’s Yellow Camel Longhorn Beetle Gu shows a stubborn, enduring nature, Gu Yue Chi Cheng’s Dragonpill cricket Gu shows wit and a taste for tactics alongside a reluctance to face things head-on, and Fang Yuan’s Little Light Gu shows an extreme, active, invasive personality. ^{ch. 63}

When Fang Zheng asks after his brother rather than reacting to the lesson meant for him, Gu Yue Bo privately notes Fang Zheng’s fixation on Fang Yuan and resolves to keep shaping him without ever openly moving against Chi Cheng or Mo Bei, since an open political hand would read as the clan leader bullying his own kin. He then offers Fang Zheng a Jade Skin Gu on the condition that Fang Zheng be the first of the three to break through from rank one to rank two, and once Fang Zheng agrees, privately reasoning that early success is the surest cure for the boy’s sense of inferiority, he places the Gu in his hand. ^{ch. 63}

At the same time, Fang Yuan returns to the tunnel behind the rock crack without tools, having realized only that day in the dormitory, while using the Spring Autumn Cicada to refine the Little Light Gu, that the huge rock blocking his path was too smooth and round to be natural and so must be the Flower Wine Monk’s own work. Examining the ground near the rock, he finds a patch darker and damp compared to the dry red soil around it, and on digging down about an inch he catches a rich fragrance and a faint dark gold glow rising from beneath the loosened earth. ^{ch. 63}

Digging further, he uncovers a dark gold flower bud buried two inches deep and about the size of a stone mill, an Earth Treasury Flower Gu, a one-time-use Gu that lives on earth energy once planted and holds another Gu worm suspended in golden liquid to keep it fed and dormant. He peels back some fifty to sixty thick outer petals until the bud has shrunk by half, then opens the thinner, near-transparent petals of the core until only a last fist-sized layer remains, holding a Gu worm asleep in golden liquid. Freeing it, he finds a milky white, ladybug-shaped Gu the size of a thumbnail: the White Boar Gu. ^{ch. 63}