Star Hall
Half a day into their search, Fang Yuan and Hei Lou Lan have crossed most of the territory. No star demon bat turns up. A flying sword rat’s claws caught Hei Lou Lan in a moment of carelessness, leaving a long wound from the back of her hand to her elbow. Metal path dao marks in the cut resist her strength path marks, so even her extreme immortal body struggles to close it. She heals it and rejoins Fang Yuan, who is sketching the explored terrain onto a flat rock. Dozens of green peaks show on it, most claimed by a single desolate beast, the rest thick with beast groups and wild Gu. ch. 716
Three things about the grotto-heaven strike Fang Yuan as strange. Ancient desolate beasts, comparable to a rank seven Gu Immortal, should exist here, yet he finds none, and the heavenly spirit has still not shown itself despite their intrusion. Worst for his plan, he cannot find the poisonous swamp his previous-life memories place nearby. He wonders whether it only forms later, and whether his hunt for the star demon bat is doomed as a result. ch. 716
A bright light interrupts him: the green sky fills with star specks that thicken fast into a snowlike drift. Fang Yuan names it an astronomical change unique to grotto-heavens and activates lion fur armor; Hei Lou Lan raises her own defense. The specks converge on one mountain, and a resplendent hall rises there after a burst of blue radiance. Its structure matches ruins from his previous life, unbroken now. The two debate whether timing produced it or the heavenly spirit means to lure them in. They go inside after only a moment’s hesitation. ch. 716
Elsewhere in the grotto-heaven, a hill-sized rockman finishes a fight, cracking the skull of the desolate beast flying bear and driving spikes through its body with the immortal killer move Earth’s Root. It dies with one last mournful cry. Light strips the rockman shape away to reveal a white-haired, golden-eyed Gu Immortal, praised by a middle-aged man of gathered starlight for killing the bear in three minutes. The white-haired man is Immortal Monkey King Shi Lei, a rank seven Gu Immortal of Combat Immortal Sect; the starlight figure is Star Lord Wan Xiang, who has traded with Fang Yuan before. Shi Lei presses him on why the eighth star hall has not opened though seven have already appeared. Wan Xiang answers that it needs more desolate beast blood in the ground; six kills are not enough, and twenty years of exploration suggest one more should do it. ch. 716
Warned not to lie, Wan Xiang swears he would never dare deceive the Immortal Monkey King. He can force entry only once a year, by Central Continent’s reckoning, for two days. Years earlier he glimpsed the eighth hall itself, its guards all ancient desolate beasts, convincing him it is the grotto-heaven’s control point, likely the heavenly spirit’s seat. Shi Lei believes him. Wan Xiang admits he would not have shared the secret if a costly battle with Song Zi Xing and his blessed land’s coming tribulation had not left him needing immortal essence stones. Shi Lei softens, promising Wan Xiang eighty percent of the spoils to his own twenty, with secrecy and yearly returns; only Wan Xiang currently holds the method to enter Starry Sky grotto-heaven. Reassured, the two set off toward the nearby star demon bat, Wan Xiang staying clear as usual. ch. 716
Fang Yuan and Hei Lou Lan cautiously enter their own star hall. No one guards it. It holds only six large wells at its center, glowing red, brown, yellow, blue, purple and white. Their investigative Gu find both the hall and the water ordinary, which cannot be true. The wells must instead be tied to the grotto-heaven’s own astronomical changes, beyond what mortal-level Gu can read. Fang Yuan recalls six moon-sized star shadows, in these same colors, seen in the sky on arrival. Fang Yuan sends a mortal storage Gu into one well to draw out water to study, and the moment it enters, the water churns into a whirlpool that swallows it whole. ch. 716
