Stalking a wild boar at night, Fang Yuan closes in until it catches his scent and charges, and though a moonblade to its face draws blood, the boar’s momentum carries it past him into a tree while he dodges clear; as it charges again and again he answers each rush with another moonblade, each one, powered now by upper stage primeval essence strong enough to break bone or shear steel on a person, still only opening surface wounds on the tougher-skinned boar. Once the repeated wounds slow and weaken it, Fang Yuan channels essence into the Moonlight Gu and the Little Light Gu together to double the blade’s size and reach, and the enlarged moonblade shears through its neck and kills it outright. ch. 70
Fang Yuan feeds the carcass to the White Boar Gu, which devours meat nearly a thousand times its own bulk without changing in size or shape, and he resolves to return in five days for another kill before cutting out the boar’s tusks and hiding them in his secret cave on the way back to the hostel. ch. 70
Back at the hostel he sits to cultivate, his primeval essence dark green rather than the pale green of his middle stage peers because the Liquor worm’s refinement has already pushed him to upper stage strength, though only 23 percent of it remains in his aperture after the night’s hunt, since even with a moonblade able to break bone, killing an ordinary wild boar generally costs him about 20 percent of his upper stage essence. ch. 70
He then channels his remaining essence into the White Boar Gu itself to strengthen his body, the white light easing into numbness before turning to a sharp, worsening pain, and he stops well within the roughly fifteen minutes a day the Gu allows, since pushing past that limit brings pain severe enough to kill. ch. 70
