Resolution of the Demonic way!
In the treehouse, Fang Yuan reasons out Wang Da’s likely strength from indirect signs alone. The confidence to plan revenge despite Fang Yuan’s growing strength implies a cultivation above rank one, while three years spent hiding on the fringes of the three clans’ territory rather than roaming openly implies Wang Da lacks the rank three needed to travel safely. Fang Yuan places him at rank two, guesses a B or C grade talent with an aperture holding roughly forty to seventy percent primeval essence, and reasons that surviving three years under Jiang He’s watch means Wang Da must hold a stealth type Gu worm. ch. 75
Fang Yuan accepts the risk with the logic he lives by: having killed others, he expects that others may come to kill him, and he faces death without regret since it is the price of the demonic path he has chosen. He judges that Wang Da will strike during the mid-year exam, the one chance to catch him outside the heavily guarded village, and that his current battle strength cannot match a rank two Gu Master hardened by three years of danger. He resolves to run rather than fight. ch. 75
Weighing his Gu worms, the hibernating Spring Autumn Cicada, the Liquor worm, the White Boar Gu, the Little Light Gu, and the Moonlight Gu, none of them a trump card against a higher realm, Fang Yuan reaffirms his habit of avoiding a fight whose odds are not stacked in his favor. He would rather bully the weak and grow strong before striking, a course he compares approvingly to Han Xin, Cao Cao, and Yue Wang enduring humiliation to survive rather than dying for empty honor. He begins plotting a route through the mountain that avoids where Wang Da is most likely searching for him. ch. 75
Elsewhere in the forest, Wang Da watches Fang Yuan from hiding and spots several rank two Gu Masters and rank three clan elders stationed nearby to guard the students. He concludes he must kill three of these Gu Masters in quick succession before revealing himself, or risk being caught between his target and his pursuers. Calling on his Shadow Follower Gu to move unseen through the tree shadows, he kills a bored Gu Master sprawled in a bush by covering his mouth and driving poisoned nails into his heart, spending ten percent of his primeval essence and leaving forty percent remaining. ch. 75
Moments later he kills a second Gu Master hiding behind a rock the same way, leaving purple poison streaming from the man’s nose and thirty percent of his own primeval essence remaining. A third Gu Master, hidden on a tree branch, senses him in time to seize his poisoned hands, and Wang Da’s nails pierce the man’s forearm regardless. As the poison spreads, the dying Gu Master fires a Moonlight Gu moonblade that tears through Wang Da’s right shoulder before he succumbs, and Wang Da names the poison to himself as Love Life Separation, refined years earlier from the heart of the wife he killed for it. ch. 75
