Chapter 649

The golden thoughts, all that remains of Giant Sun’s will, rage at Hei Lou Lan for betraying her own ancestor. She mocks it, listing the three Immortal Gu still on it, slavery Gu, divert disaster Gu and Fixed Immortal Travel, and says none of them can bring her back to life if she self-detonates on its order. She obeyed only until a strength path Immortal Gu was hers. She refuses to keep obeying a dead man’s remnant. The golden thoughts threatens that even a single remaining thought can destroy an Immortal Gu, but when it tries, it cannot break the four Immortal Gu that Hei Lou Lan is suppressing. It demands to know when she, a Huang Jin bloodline descendant and tribe leader, began colluding with an outsider against her own ancestor. ^{ch. 649}

Fang Yuan and Hei Lou Lan had in fact allied earlier. Her accusation in the fight, that he had used some unknown Gu on her, was a prearranged code between them, since the two had cooperated throughout the Imperial Court contest and each understood how ambitious the other was. Using that opening, Hei Lou Lan struck Giant Sun’s will in the chaos and seized away all its Immortal Gu. The golden thoughts rage that its main body left arrangements to trigger when Eighty-Eight True Yang Building collapses, and that the building will be rebuilt. It blames its own defeat on the luck it ruined by moving against Ma Hong Yun. Enraged and hopeless, the golden thoughts self-detonate rather than let their remaining secrets be searched out, and the ruler of Imperial Court blessed land disperses without a trace. ^{ch. 649}

Hei Lou Lan proposes they now have grounds to cooperate, and Fang Yuan answers first that the Immortal Gu Fixed Immortal Travel she seized is his. Giant Sun’s will had suppressed Fang Yuan’s own will trapped inside that Gu without time to refine it, so Fang Yuan had lost his sense of it and assumed it gone. Hei Lou Lan admits she is suppressing it the same way, without time to refine it either, and asks to borrow it since she needs it to escape. Fang Yuan asks why he should agree. She argues he cannot escape without it, and he answers that he has another way out. ^{ch. 649}

Hei Lou Lan offers Immortal Gu Dark Limit in return, a Gu held by Jiang Yu that conceals aura, hides heavenly secrets and protects against deduction, the same Gu that had once sealed her own physique. With northern plains Gu Immortals and Giant Sun Immortal Venerable’s own arrangements sure to hunt Fang Yuan, she argues, that concealment is worth having. She says her own grudge keeps her from self-detonating to take him with her, but warns he would not want to push her that far. She warns she still holds another trump card. She further promises to return Fixed Immortal Travel once she is done with it, to share her strength path killer move, and reveals she has kept his unconscious senior brother Tai Bai Yun Sheng alive and sheltered under a barrier rather than killing him. ^{ch. 649}

Fang Yuan’s opinion of her rises: she has clearly been scheming against Giant Sun’s will on her own for some time. Asked for her price, Hei Lou Lan demands protection through her Gu Immortal ascension, and help killing her own father. Fang Yuan does not ask why, and agrees. With the Dark Limit seal torn away, she is no longer the obese, fierce-looking bear she had shown before, but a beautiful woman with a stimulating, tyrannical presence. The two settle their basic terms and agree to cooperate. ^{ch. 649}

With the wind veil of assimilation nearly closed and its formless hands gone, Hei Lou Lan activates Fixed Immortal Travel, something she can do without being a Gu Immortal herself, and asks the name of his killer move before she leaves. Fang Yuan answers Myriad Self. The moment she vanishes, he destroys the surrounding space so she cannot use the same Gu to return. Left alone in the shrinking space, he opens a stargate but lingers, watching the last Gu worms still flying free. A rank nine wisdom Gu flies to him of its own accord, and Fang Yuan laughs in the narrow space. ^{ch. 649}