Chapter 64

With the caravan gone and the inn’s trade thinned in the summer heat, Fang Yuan visits the inn and orders wine along with six hundred grams of beef and side dishes at his usual window seat. Told that the green bamboo wine sold out during the caravan’s visit, he takes rice wine instead, pre-orders a hundred jars of green bamboo wine for the innkeeper to brew that year, and no longer troubles to hide his taste for it now that the Liquor worm is already known. ^{ch. 64}

Watching the street, he sees two young Gu Masters in green belts shove a farmer aside without consequence, while inside his aperture the Liquor worm rolls through his primeval sea, the Spring Autumn Cicada lies in deep slumber, and the newly acquired White Boar Gu circles the sky on its wings. He notes that the White Boar Gu and Black Boar Gu share similar value and appearance but diverge in advancement, the Black Boar Gu combining with the Green Silk Gu into the rank two Black Mane Gu and then the rank three Steel Mane Gu, while his own White Boar Gu is most compatible with the Jade Skin Gu, advancing into the rank two White Jade Gu and later the rank three Heavenly Mugwort Gu. ^{ch. 64}

What pleases him most is the Flower Wine Monk’s strength inheritance itself: he reasons the giant rock is only the first of further hurdles the monk built in genuine sincerity, and that the hidden inheritance lets him reach rank three faster while cultivating in secret, avoiding the suppression that open strength would invite from a clan system where his C grade talent gives him no standing worth investing in. ^{ch. 64}

Counting up, he now keeps four Gu worms, the Moonlight Gu, the Liquor worm, the Little Light Gu, and the White Boar Gu; where feeding just the Moonlight Gu and Liquor worm once cost him about one primeval stone a day, feeding all four now costs him more than two stones a day, and factoring in his cultivation needs and living expenses brings his total spending to around five primeval stones a day, enough to feed a mortal family of three for five months. With only several hundred primeval stones on hand and the White Boar Gu alone eating roughly a whole grown pig’s worth of meat every five days, he judges that buying pork from the village would cost too much and draw notice besides, so he decides to spend the academy’s break scouting the mountains himself to hunt wild boar. ^{ch. 64}