Chapter 661

Fang Yuan finds the purple stone pillar and confirms it by the smooth, bench like stone at its base. He sends Tai Bai Yun Sheng back into his immortal aperture, then cuts his own arm and lets blood drip onto the pillar. His blood runs jade green and ice cold, not red. The pillar, altered long ago by Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s own Gu worm, absorbs it at once. ^{ch. 661}

This opportunity once belonged to Ma Hong Yun; Fang Yuan counts himself a thief for taking it. Northern plains’ Gu Immortals seized Ma Hong Yun and Zhao Lian Yun after the luck path true inheritance expelled them from the wind veil of assimilation, and no word of the pair has surfaced since. Ma Hong Yun remains a target both as treasure and as a witness who could expose Fang Yuan, making him a death threat to Hei Lou Lan too. Killing Ma Hong Yun is one of the Snowy Mountain Alliance’s agreements. ^{ch. 661}

Entering Lang Ya blessed land again, Fang Yuan skips the cloud building room he used last time. The blessed land sits on vast white cloud soil, holding twelve cloud buildings. He finds it wrecked, the cloud soil pocked with holes, some icing over and some smoking black. Tai Bai Yun Sheng judges that a battle happened here recently and that Lang Ya land spirit must have been in real trouble. Only eight of the twelve buildings still stand intact, and three are left with collapsed walls and crumbling structures. Feathermen still live in some of the buildings, and immortal cranes circle others. ^{ch. 661}

Flying closer, they find a desolate beast corpse, a whale sized fish shaped like a carp, and Fang Yuan names it a spinefin star dragonfish. He recalls that Lang Ya land spirit’s beast enslavement Immortal Gu has enslaved twelve desolate beasts, one to a building. In his secret room, Lang Ya land spirit senses the intrusion. It alarms the inkman Gu Immortal seated with him. Land spirit recognizes Fang Yuan from before and calms his companion, who is lifting one layer of his seals and must not be disturbed. Calling Fang Yuan crafty, he sends a desolate beast to hold him off. Tai Bai Yun Sheng, unaware, proposes they search the wreck and retreat when he is cut off. ^{ch. 661}

A golden, cubic desolate beast drills up out of the cloud soil and blocks their path, eyeless, with great pincers and nine pairs of legs. Tai Bai Yun Sheng names it the swamp crab. Fang Yuan knows the beast well: one bearing the gruel mud Immortal Gu once devastated Dang Hun Mountain, the crisis that first sent him into northern plains after Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s landscape as before Immortal Gu. Tai Bai Yun Sheng, a healer who avoids the front line, retreats and asks what to do. Fang Yuan answers with one word: fight. ^{ch. 661}

He crashes toward the swamp crab like a falling meteor. Agile despite its size, the crab dodges, but Fang Yuan turns and slams into its back, driving it into the ground. He pulls back four right fists torn to white bone, feels no pain from them, and within a few breaths they heal completely. The crab’s huge pincers then snap at his back, narrowly missing him. ^{ch. 661}

A desolate beast fights at the strength of a rank six Gu Immortal, and even his zombie body’s extraordinary defense is not to be tested against such a blow. Judging its armor nearly flawless and lacking any cutting or drilling means, he resolves to force through on strength alone. The crab’s body soon crawls with tiger sized crabs, spawned by its power to reproduce an army at will. Fang Yuan spends a bead of green grape immortal essence to unleash myriad self. His eight fists pound the crab in a storm of fist qi that deforms its shell, and the dispersing qi gathers into strength path phantoms of himself. Within ten breaths an army of these phantoms, a move Tai Bai Yun Sheng has never seen before, collapses the crab’s own swarm at once. However many phantoms the crab kills, Fang Yuan produces more every moment, and in his secret room Lang Ya land spirit loses his composure, shouting that this must be an immortal killer move. ^{ch. 661}