Starshine Fake Eye Gu
The starlight gathers again into an eighth star hall, floating rather than resting on a peak, more exquisite than the seven before it. Wan Xiang confirms his guess, excited. Shi Lei cancels his eagle transformation, still bleeding, and agrees the hall’s look makes it likely the control point. He sits to heal, first clearing the dao marks. Wan Xiang, anxious that the seven lesser halls last only fifteen minutes and that the eighth vanishes with them, urges him on; Shi Lei asks why he is in such a hurry and offers to let him go in alone. After a while the wounds heal without a trace, and bound by an earlier oath, Shi Lei stands and apologizes for the wait. ch. 718
Wan Xiang laughs off the jab; his own strength cannot break the ancient desolate beasts guarding the eighth hall without Shi Lei’s help. Only his falling strength and his coming tribulation forced him to reveal this treasury. He understands Shi Lei’s scheme: holding back on purpose, hoping to break the eighth hall himself while keeping Wan Xiang dependent on him. Wan Xiang’s repeated visits here have already built his peak battle strength to rival most Gu Immortals of the ten great ancient sects. The two climb into the sky together. ch. 718
Meanwhile, Fang Yuan and Hei Lou Lan jump out of a well into another star hall, having confirmed the six wells serve as passages. This hall’s own wells glow in slightly different colors, purple gone and green added. Fang Yuan lays out his read: the grotto-heaven holds seven spaces, each reachable only through the wells. Hei Lou Lan points to the mortal Gu he tossed into the purple well earlier as proof, and predicts a green star shadow will replace purple in the sky outside. Fang Yuan agrees. Ordinary grotto-heavens hold one integrated space, but this one splits into seven, each with its own sky, earth and ecology, a layer his prior-life exploration never revealed. ch. 718
Walking out, they find six round star shadows exactly as guessed, and Hei Lou Lan claps with a bright smile. Fang Yuan’s pupils shrink: someone is already here. The distant shapes are Shi Lei and Wan Xiang, flying toward the eighth star hall. Hei Lou Lan guesses this hovering hall is very likely the grotto-heaven’s central control point. Fang Yuan is shocked that anyone stands ahead of them. By his own estimate, only the heavenly spirit should be here, the reason it fell before, yet none shows itself, only two Gu Immortals too far off to identify. Neither, the two agree, can be the owner, since an owner would already have moved against them. ch. 718
Hei Lou Lan takes it in stride: Fang Yuan got his own intelligence on the grotto-heaven from somewhere, so why not another Gu Immortal too? Fang Yuan laughs bitterly, having hidden that his own source was simply his previous life, a life proving different from what he expected. Sounds of fighting reach them from the eighth hall. Hei Lou Lan reads the two strangers as outsiders like themselves, only a step ahead, and both feel they hold the advantage. They hide their bodies and auras, scout the area, then quietly shut the hall’s door, erase their traces, and withdraw. ch. 718
Walking ahead, Fang Yuan stops and warns Hei Lou Lan to slow down: a rank five investigative Gu sits ahead, an eye-like worm hovering in place and scanning its surroundings. Neither is surprised, since it is clearly one left behind by the two Gu Immortals, as they have done themselves elsewhere. Still new to being a Gu Immortal, Hei Lou Lan suggests a detour. Fang Yuan says there is no need. This is starshine fake eye Gu, a long-range sensor with a five li reach that cannot detect stealth, though running it constantly costs essence and burdens the soul, so invisibility lets them slip past. Privately he notes it is usually paired with true sight Gu, which can pierce invisibility, though that pairing belongs to a war still to come and true sight Gu today remains rare. Still uneasy, Hei Lou Lan asks if a newly researched Gu could see through invisibility; Fang Yuan snickers that he checked with more than his eyes, and that refinement path masters are rare even among Gu Immortals. ch. 718
