Diamond Soil
Three star desolate hounds chase Fang Yuan and Hei Lou Lan. The two retreat rather than fight. Winning is not the issue; the cost would outweigh the gain, and inside this unfamiliar grotto-heaven, its heavenly spirit not yet shown, neither wants to spend full strength on beasts met by chance. The heavenly spirit controls every aspect of the grotto-heaven, and it will have detected them the moment they entered. ch. 715
Fang Yuan leads the way at speed, staying low rather than risking height. Hei Lou Lan judges his raw speed within her own reach, though his precise weaving between branches is not. After nearly ten li the three hounds give up. Resting in a tall tree, Fang Yuan notices the surrounding peaks each carry only one kind of growth, arranged too deliberately for nature’s hand. He reasons that Seven Star Child, the grotto-heaven’s owner, sorted the peaks into zones to raise specialized crops. ch. 715
Hei Lou Lan remarks that the owner spent real effort managing this place. Fang Yuan only frowns. The landscape looks nothing like what he remembers, so his previous life’s memories give him no guide here. ch. 715
Hei Lou Lan eyes the bat wings on his back and asks where he bought the move. It is his own, improved for his zombie body, Fang Yuan answers. She warns that a desolate beast’s wings carry wind path dao marks that could conflict with his strength path body. Fang Yuan answers that a true transformation, unlike merely changing shape, lets him absorb a beast’s own dao marks without conflict, as Reckless Savage Demon Venerable does across every fierce beast form. While Hei Lou Lan underwent her tribulation, he obtained the Demon Venerable’s true meaning infusions and became a transformation path master himself, able to balance three dao marks at once, which is why true solid bat wings caps at three pairs. Hei Lou Lan, truly shocked, offers to buy the move at a high price, but Fang Yuan refuses, calling it his own unique method. ch. 715
She asks whether a star demon bat is still nearby. It is, he says, though the terrain differs from the rotten swamp of his memory, so they will search around first. ch. 715
Two hours later the two are fighting a diamond bear, its body clear as diamond, bear-shaped but as large as a mammoth. Fang Yuan flings starlight from the air, and the bear smashes the lumps aside. Hei Lou Lan, transformed into her strength path phantom giant, kicks its belly. Its diamond body flashes, and the blow shatters her phantom’s right leg. Shocked, she pulls back: the bear carries wild Gu that counters her strength path giant. ch. 715
The bear pounces after her; Fang Yuan rushes in with more starlight. He hurls a huge lump of icy drill stardust down on it, enraging it. It bursts free and flies into the sky. The bear can fly, and the surprise costs him: struck by its paws, he is flung into dozens of trees, two arms severed and three fractured. ch. 715
Only now do Fang Yuan and Hei Lou Lan learn how strong the bear’s Gu are: one counters a strength path phantom, another lifts its own weight into flight. Fang Yuan calls the retreat, and the two flee. The bear does not give chase. It chews his two severed arms, finds the taste unbearable, spits them out, and slams the last one against a rock before stalking back to its cave. ch. 715
A moment later the two sneak back. Fang Yuan presses the severed arm to the wound, and healing Gu with the zombie’s own recovery reconnect it quickly. The other arm, chewed beyond use, he must regrow himself, a six to eight hour process, since it means replenishing strength path dao marks and not just flesh. ch. 715
Hei Lou Lan judges at least fifteen kilograms of diamond soil remain in the cave, a rich, high-priced material formed from the bear’s own feces. The two had already looted that cave once before, Fang Yuan drawing the bear out while Hei Lou Lan carried off hundreds of kilograms worth at least thirty immortal essence stones. Fang Yuan decides fifteen kilograms is not worth a second try against a bear this hostile and hard to kill. His goal is the star demon bat, elsewhere entirely. The two head in another direction. ch. 715
