Chapter 731

At Lang Ya blessed land in Northern Plains, Fang Yuan delivers a live desolate beast: the yellow jade lion. Large as a giant elephant and thickly furred in brown and yellow, it lies asleep, injured to the brink of death but alive. Fang Yuan can heal it fully with his own means. Lang Ya land spirit circles it, checking its teeth and its body, and pronounces it full of vigor and able to breed. He keeps twelve desolate beasts of his own and knows them well. He regrets that his refinement path blessed land gives beasts no help, unlike enslavement path Hu Immortal blessed land, which favors fox groups and raises their chance of producing a desolate fox. Blessed lands and grotto-heavens each take their character from the path of the Gu worm their owner tossed in at ascension, which is why no two are alike. ^{ch. 731}

He pays Fang Yuan eighty-eight immortal essence stones and hands over the killer move unfamiliar face. It traces back to Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable and needs about three hundred Gu worms across six paths, some rare enough that recreating it will take time. Land spirit names it the first of a three-move series with vaguely familiar face and familiar face. The mortal version fails once the onlookers know the person he has copied, while the two immortal versions hold even then. Fang Yuan is moved. He has already refined open door Gu and close door Gu, the keys to Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s Luo Po valley inheritance, but has not yet gone, judging it extremely dangerous while myriad self remains unusable. He doubts the clue is unique, and guesses Spectral Soul Demon Venerable, who cultivated soul path at Dang Hun mountain and Luo Po valley, may already have taken it. ^{ch. 731}

Fang Yuan hands over three completed Immortal Gu recipes to settle their current deal, and land spirit praises his talent at deducing them. Fang Yuan then proposes a change. Since the remaining recipes are only sixty to seventy percent complete or worse, he will no longer deduce them alone. Instead he will let land spirit work them himself, stepping in only to clear a stuck point, for two immortal essence stones each time. Land spirit is a quasi-great grandmaster in refinement path, and judges he can likely clear most obstacles himself, so he agrees since it costs him far less than before. ^{ch. 731}

Land spirit sets a condition. A mysterious force recently attacked Lang Ya blessed land and failed, and in the process he captured several Gu Immortals. He wants their blessed lands sold at Qin Bai Sheng’s coming auction, with Fang Yuan fronting the sale, since a land spirit cannot leave his own land. Buyers who swallow a captured blessed land raise their own cultivation and can skip heavenly tribulations and earthly calamities, which is why Fang Yuan judges the business a thousand times more popular than his own guts Gu trade. Land spirit explains that swallowing a rank six blessed land takes master attainment, a rank seven takes grandmaster attainment, and a rank eight grotto-heaven takes great grandmaster attainment, realms he mostly lacks outside refinement path. He also does not want his blessed land raised into a grotto-heaven, since it has already reached a blessed land’s limit and he once weakened Lang Ya grotto-heaven into a blessed land to avoid the harsher tribulations. ^{ch. 731}

Fang Yuan resists, fearing the attackers will mark him as a target once he is seen selling the lands, and suggests Inkman King Mo Tan Sang instead. Land spirit rules Mo Tan Sang out for his standing as a variant human and his ties to inkman city. He points out Fang Yuan already has unfamiliar face to hide his true form, and reminds him of his own history, destroying Imperial Court blessed land and toppling Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. Fang Yuan demands at least a four to six split of the proceeds, and when land spirit hears forty percent for him, he corrects it to sixty for himself. Land spirit is stunned by the greed. He presses Fang Yuan on the price, but Fang Yuan holds firm, calling it a friendly price given the risk to his own life. Fang Yuan leaves his price standing with time yet before the auction, opens a stargate and goes, and land spirit shouts after him to get lost. ^{ch. 731}