Chapter 719

Fang Yuan’s certainty persuades Hei Lou Lan, and hiding their bodies, the two walk straight through starshine fake eye Gu’s range unnoticed. Along the way they pass more investigative Gu, hidden in ground, leaf and stream, and Fang Yuan slips past each in turn. Heading toward the ground below the eighth star hall, they catch a bloody smell. Hei Lou Lan notes that both the amount and kinds of investigative Gu on this path keep rising. Fang Yuan says only that they should look. ^{ch. 719}

They trace the smell to a black leopard’s corpse, as large as an elephant. Fang Yuan names it a vanishing shadow leopard. Hei Lou Lan wonders why its killer left the body behind. Crouching near a gully, Fang Yuan activates backtrack Gu, an extremely rare rank five time path Gu that recalls past events within a set range. It shows a blurry, mute scene of two giant figures in battle while a smaller figure watches from the side, breaking off since it is only rank five against rank six targets. They guess one shape is the leopard, its opponent a tiger desolate beast, and the distant watcher human in shape but unclear. After a dozen breaths the Gu overheats and dies; Fang Yuan pockets its scorched body to erase the trace. ^{ch. 719}

He has gathered backtrack Gu from treasure yellow heaven and holds only fifty or sixty; once the regions fall into war the Gu will grow too scarce to buy. Curious, Hei Lou Lan asks its name; Fang Yuan does not answer. Instead he takes out a Gu he refined from his own memories, one that should not appear for another three hundred years: thread trace Gu. It looks like a child’s horsewhip from Northern Plains, tiny in his huge zombie claws. He whips the empty air, and marks trace through it. ^{ch. 719}

Hei Lou Lan realizes the marks trace the ground where the fight happened, and asks if they are dao marks. Fang Yuan confirms it: every Gu Immortal and beast leaves such marks briefly wherever they linger, too faint to sense without a Gu like this one. Reading them, he says, lets him infer what happened. He calls it his own research, though the creation was another’s in his previous life. Hei Lou Lan only repeats the name, thread trace Gu, her gaze toward him shifting. ^{ch. 719}

Fang Yuan reads the marks where the star path Gu Immortal stood: azure blue, closely gathered, meaning that Gu Immortal only watched from the side, at roughly rank six. Marks where the leopard died split into dark path, from the leopard, and denser red fire path from its killer, whether man or beast still uncertain, showing a fierce fight and a killer at least rank six as well. Hei Lou Lan’s mouth falls open slightly. Her gaze toward the Gu in his hand turns hungry. ^{ch. 719}

A mere rank five Gu, yet it has drawn out this much: its worth lies in the thinking behind it, a design that blazed past ordinary logic. Shi Lei and Wan Xiang had covered this ground with mainstream investigative and counter-investigative methods, and thread trace Gu reads straight through the gap they leave, Fang Yuan’s knowledge running over half an era ahead. He whips the air again. Fresh marks appear as fast as old ones fade, since thread trace Gu shortens their already brief life. The marks tangle past reading; he stops, explaining that a busier fight would have blurred past inference, though this one stayed legible. ^{ch. 719}

The whip’s body shows fresh cracks from the effort, and Hei Lou Lan judges it good for at least two more uses. Before she can ask if he will sell it, Fang Yuan takes out more Gu, activating one after another. Hei Lou Lan recognizes only a handful. For the first time, she feels Fang Yuan runs deeper than she knew. ^{ch. 719}

She thinks back on their history. Leaning on him to survive her own tribulation, she once believed she had gained a notch of leverage over him. Instead he used her and Fairy Li Shan to frighten off Immortal Crane Sect’s Gu Immortals without a fight, owing no double compensation. To coax that effort from him, she had given him the precious true meaning infusion of Reckless Savage Demon Venerable, which he swallowed whole and returned nothing for. Later he shared the guts Gu business’s profits with her and Fairy Li Shan, though she never felt she was the one steering it. Watching him now, she feels a shiver, understanding how much these small methods mean. ^{ch. 719}