Chapter 712

Ten days pass in Hu Immortal blessed land. Fang Yuan tests his old hair armor against a lump of icy drill stardust, the move he has merged Du Min Jun’s inheritance into. By twenty breaths it has shattered completely, leaving a small hole in his chest exactly as he expected. Sold in treasure yellow heaven, that stardust would fetch four immortal essence stones against the armor’s two and a half. ^{ch. 712}

He activates hair armor again, an improved version from days of experimentation. The useless spikes are gone, and the black iron luster has turned bronze. The change comes from merging golden lion fur Gu, a rank five mortal Gu that grows golden lion fur for extra defense and stronger resistance to metal path attacks, into the armor’s foundation. The result is twice the old thickness, with a roaring lion’s open mouth for a helmet, defense raised a hundred and fifty percent and, against metal path attacks specifically, two hundred percent. Pressed again with stardust, it takes a dozen or so breaths this time before only a crack appears. ^{ch. 712}

Fang Yuan names the finished move lion fur armor. Charging into a mass of gathered starlight and repairing every crack as it forms, he ends with no crack left at all when the starlight dissipates. Its recovery runs about twice what it was before, worth an estimated four and a half immortal essence stones. ^{ch. 712}

Back at Dang Hun palace, the Hu Immortal land spirit reports the seller of a bat desolate beast corpse still wants four immortal essence stones for its wings alone. That is above the normal price of two and a half, and more than the three stones a six headed snake’s skeleton once cost him. Fang Yuan, posing as Eight Arm Immortal, offers three stones directly. The seller refuses, holding firm at four, and the deal falls through. The land spirit reopens contact at three stones, the seller counters by asking five for the whole corpse, and the land spirit refuses the rest and names three and a half as its final line. Immortal Monkey King Shi Lei then cuts in with five stones for the entire corpse before the seller can accept. A bidding war follows, climbing from five and a half against seven to eight against nine, until the land spirit’s nine and a half stops Shi Lei, who withdraws rather than contend with a junior. ^{ch. 712}

The deal closes. Nine and a half immortal essence stones go to the seller, the corpse to Fang Yuan. Checking his wealth afterward, he counts one hundred and seventy-two immortal essence stones and seventy-seven beads of green grape immortal essence. He has sold six batches of guts Gu so far, one a month at forty-eight stones profit each, plus one Immortal Gu recipe sold to the Lang Ya land spirit for over twenty stones more. Against that he fed eight desolate beasts and spent essence on a failed attempt to reverse refine star path recipes. The rest went toward his transformation path breakthrough: hair armor grown into lion fur armor, and light illusion bat wings upgraded by a great degree. Finishing that upgrade needs a real pair of bat wings transplanted onto his body, which is why he paid so heavily for the corpse. ^{ch. 712}

Privately, Fang Yuan resents that Shi Lei cost him three times the price. Shi Lei is a higher-up of Combat Immortal Sect, one of the ten great ancient sects, an earth path expert who also cultivates transformation path and has secretly obtained inheritances of Reckless Savage Demon Venerable. In Fang Yuan’s previous life, after Feng Jiu Ge’s death in the five regions chaotic war, Shi Lei rose to become the strongest rank seven Gu Immortal in Central Continent. Fang Yuan weighs raising the price of guts Gu to Combat Immortal Sect in return, then drops the idea. For the next half month he handles the corpse himself, cutting the wings apart and tempering them with fire path and strength path Gu worms until the once wide wings condense down small. After enduring intense pain, he succeeds in transplanting them onto his own back. ^{ch. 712}