Chapter 632

Hei Lou Lan cultivates strength and dark path, disciplines that leave him weak in movement, and only flying masters can survive the formless hands sweeping the battlefield. The hands strip Gu worms from his body faster than he can destroy or chase them down. One of the worms they take is his vital Gu. Destroying a vital Gu immediately injures its Gu Master, and this is already the sixth time Hei Lou Lan’s has been seized and won back. This time an accident lands it in Fang Yuan’s hand instead. ^{ch. 632}

Fang Yuan does not know the Gu is Hei Lou Lan’s vital Gu, but Hei Lou Lan’s behavior tells him it matters greatly. He taunts Hei Lou Lan, spreads the six wings on his back, and flies off with it. Hei Lou Lan has hunted him before, and the hatred between them runs deep. But Fang Yuan judges this is not the moment to kill him, since the crowding formless hands already make dodging hard, and Hei Lou Lan’s Great Strength True Martial Physique means a cornered self-detonation would leave Fang Yuan to suffer disastrous consequences. He shakes off Hei Lou Lan and sends part of his awareness into his immortal aperture. ^{ch. 632}

The aperture has grown past two thousand six hundred square kilometers since Fang Yuan left Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s immortal aperture, its sky orange and yellow over rugged white stone mountains. Its terrain reflects a Gu Master’s paths, accumulation, temperament and comprehension, This is the first time Fang Yuan has become a strength path Gu Immortal, and he understands the terrain only roughly so far, knowing the general situation and no more. Time inside now flows at twelve days to one outside. The growth rate is gradually slowing, and Fang Yuan has by now absorbed almost all the heaven and earth qi in the true inheritance secluded domain. He waits for the aperture to finish stabilizing, since a Gu Immortal’s full battle strength will change everything. ^{ch. 632}

Hei Lou Lan gives up the chase rather than raise Fang Yuan’s suspicion that the Gu is his vital Gu. He resolves instead to use his connection to the vital Gu, closing in slowly while dodging formless hands, and then ambush Fang Yuan. A formless hand can seize a Gu worm but not refine it. Once a formless hand breaks apart, the worm inside is released, and its owner can sense it and recall it by will. Fang Yuan has suppressed Hei Lou Lan’s vital Gu but has no time to refine it, so Hei Lou Lan still holds the connection and the hope of retrieving it. ^{ch. 632}

The formless hands have by now taken control of the true inheritance secluded domain, giant light blue shapes hovering everywhere like swarms of bees. Gu Masters and true inheritance light lumps alike can only flee. The pressure of Spring Autumn Cicada climbs as the aperture grows, since it keeps drawing the river of time’s water into Fang Yuan’s first aperture, and cracks already run through that aperture’s walls. To ease the strain, Fang Yuan has already emptied all the primeval essence out of it. ^{ch. 632}

He flies on dozens of movement Gu, hungry for primeval essence. He had planned ahead and bought close to a thousand beggar moths, Gu worms that store primeval essence, purchased through Hu Immortal blessed land’s access to treasure yellow heaven. More holes in a beggar moth’s wings let it store a higher rank of primeval essence, and while rank four and five moths were few, ranks two and three came in huge numbers. He also keeps spare eagle rise Gu, cycling through more than a dozen of them, so that the six wings on his back look like three eagle rise Gu when far more are being used in turns. Using a Gu too long under this heaven and earth qi backlash can kill it, and Fang Yuan’s growing aperture, as the center of the gathering qi, draws an especially heavy backlash. Rotating his Gu lets him stretch their use to the limit. ^{ch. 632}

This backlash is itself one of the barriers between a Gu Master and Gu Immortal rank. When Tai Bai Yun Sheng faced his own tribulation, his Gu worms perished in large numbers, and without Fang Yuan’s support he would have had none left after the chaotic lightning balls outside Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. A newly advanced Gu Immortal commonly loses nearly all the mortal Gu accumulated before, since advancing is risky and costly. Turning into Six Arm Heavenly Zombie King, Fang Yuan smashes into a formless fist and shatters it without pain, winning a Gu. It is the third wild Immortal Gu he has obtained since leaving Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s immortal aperture, and he stores it away unexamined. He names it a coexistence of pain and joy: Spring Autumn Cicada’s danger inside him, the formless hands’ danger outside, and still a rich harvest. His attainment as a flying master helps him greatly in this. ^{ch. 632}

Fang Yuan looks for Ma Hong Yun. The luck path supreme true inheritance has held his interest for a long time. Giant Sun Immortal Venerable once relied on it, to a great extent, to dominate the land. Fang Yuan had never before had a way to act on this true inheritance, but the formless hands now give him a rare chance to seize its luck path Gu worms. Search as he might, he cannot find even a trace of it, since it too is moving through the chaos. The supreme true inheritance still shields Ma Hong Yun and Zhao Lian Yun as an acknowledgement of Fortune Rivaling Heaven, though a wild will still controls it, and instinct alone drives it to dodge heavenly tribulation and earthly calamity. ^{ch. 632}

Formless hands, true inheritance meteors, fleeing Gu Masters and attacks on captured formless fists crowd the domain and block Fang Yuan’s view. Missing each other in this chaos is normal, since both he and the true inheritance are moving targets. A cracking sound, like breaking eggshell, spreads through the domain as the fractures widen from one side to cover every side. More and more giant hands squeeze in through the cracks. Fang Yuan’s own losses grow worse: the backlash wears down his rotated movement Gu until many perish, and once the formless hands pass a certain number they sometimes block every escape route at once, grabbing him two or three times. Each time he is caught, he deliberately lets the hand with fewer fingers take his Gu, choosing his own safety first. ^{ch. 632}