Chapter 687

Fairy Li Shan names the rumor’s source: rank seven Domination Immortal Chu Du, said to have passed his own tribulation here three hundred years ago as a strength path Gu Immortal. Few Gu Immortals have advanced recently, fewer still of strength or transformation path, so the claim has stayed very hard to prove. Tai Bai Yun Sheng no longer rushes toward Fang Yuan. The benefit is too large, and his anger over being kept in the dark mostly fades. ^{ch. 687}

He looks back at Hei Lou Lan, still working through the qi cocoon, and privately judges her ambition too great to settle for a ten extreme physique immortal alone. She is greedy enough to chase Reckless Savage Demon Venerable’s teaching without fearing death for it, a risk matching Fang Yuan’s own. He calls them both lunatics. ^{ch. 687}

Fang Yuan laughs and rises, spirits high. He understands now that the pegasi are true meaning wearing an outer form. Stalled at quasi-grandmaster in strength path, where even a small step forward usually needs long accumulation, he sees a shortcut here straight to grandmaster. ^{ch. 687}

Realm marks a Gu Master’s understanding of their path’s Dao, on a ladder from ordinary up to supreme grandmaster. Masters are extremely rare. At the Imperial Court contest, only Fang Yuan and Tai Bai Yun Sheng held master level flying attainment among those who got inside the blessed land. Enslavement path counted just five masters: Jiang Bao Ya, Yang Po Ying, Ma Zun, Nu Er Tu, and Fang Yuan himself under the name Chang Shan Yin. Refinement path has produced only three supreme grandmasters in human history: Long Hair Ancestor, Old Eccentric Tian Nan, and Old Immortal Kong Jue. ^{ch. 687}

Fang Yuan’s deepest understanding is blood path. He was a grandmaster there in his previous life, and in some aspects the new blood path Gu he created surpassed Blood Sea Ancestor’s own. His current immortal killer move Myriad Self, fusing enslavement and strength path, still falls short of that peak; he could suppress it with his previous life’s blood path killer moves alone. He had even produced a few wholly new remnant Immortal Gu recipes from nothing at grandmaster realm, though their completion rates ran low. ^{ch. 687}

Fang Yuan frames the infusion as a rare shortcut: reading what Reckless Savage Demon Venerable already worked out saves him great time and effort. He privately calls Hei Lou Lan a lunatic for chasing both natural inspiration and true meaning at once, risking failure in her own ascension. Even so, he likes her greed. He means to take all of it for himself. ^{ch. 687}

Fang Yuan activates Myriad Self again and again. For the first time he ignores the cost entirely. Countless phantoms swell into an army several times larger, while large numbers of the mortal Gu behind the move perish under the backlash and his extreme rate of activation. He feels no heartache, so long as the core cleanse soul Immortal Gu stays sound, and he had brought plenty of mortal Gu for replenishment. Tai Bai Yun Sheng puts the phantom sea at three hundred thousand or more, stupefying Fairy Li Shan as well, and it surrounds the pegasus group in the air. ^{ch. 687}

Fang Yuan walks the ice below the battle while his army pins pegasi down for him to kill by hand, one after another. Each kill sends true meaning surging into his mind, staggering him for a few breaths before he recovers. He calls it refreshing. His strength path realm, which would normally need years to climb, advances rapidly with every infusion. His madness leaves Tai Bai Yun Sheng chilled and even Fairy Li Shan silent. ^{ch. 687}

Less than half the pegasus group is destroyed when the calamity reshapes into thirty three armored giant snakes that take the ground for cover. Grounded, they need only defend from the sky, and his slaughter slows. Fang Yuan destroys one with his eight arms behind forty five stacked group strength Gu, drawing a burst of true meaning far larger than any before. ^{ch. 687}

The headless corpse dissipates into a sea of small snakes. They swarm over him while he is still absorbing the kill, unable to move. This comprehension differs from the pegasus one before: he now lives a snake’s whole life, from hatching to the twist of its body and the strike of its head taking prey. The experience advances not only his strength path realm but his transformation path and flying attainment as well, information he finds too vast for words to hold. ^{ch. 687}