Refining Dream Path Mortal Gu
Amid a light drizzle on Qing Mao mountain, Fang Yuan sits facing his younger brother Fang Zheng. Fang Zheng accuses him of reporting their uncle and aunt to the clan elders over the family inheritance, warning it will ruin his reputation. Fang Yuan stays calm, noting how realistic this dream realm feels. His body’s cultivation, a rank three aperture with liquor worm, all-out effort Gu and others, matches how he was before the Three Kings blessed land period. ch. 770
A strong disgust rises in Fang Yuan, which he recognizes as the dream’s entanglement. He suppresses it and tries to leave, but Fang Zheng seizes his arm and will not let go. Fang Yuan kicks him to the ground, frees himself, and walks out. ch. 770
The scene changes: Fang Yuan kneels in the discussion hall. He understands kicking Fang Zheng deepened the dream’s hold. This hall is larger and holds around ten people, their faces blurred except Fang Zheng’s. The longer he looks at a face, the more real the dream grows, so he glances at the clan leader only briefly. With no dream path Immortal Gu of his own, losing himself in the snare would be hard to escape. ch. 770
Searching the hall for the dream’s Gu refinement material, he finds nothing. A clan elder announces Fang Yuan is suing his uncle and aunt for the inheritance; every elder sides against him. His uncle and aunt arrive angry and call it baseless; the elders believe them. He recognizes that speaking would trigger the dream’s trap, so he stays silent when the clan leader offers him a last chance. The clan leader declares him guilty and orders the nine leaf vitality grass Gu returned to his uncle and aunt. ch. 770
Fang Yuan controls a faint anger and sadness. Staring at the grass, he understands it is the dream’s refinement material. He acts at once, sending phantoms against his uncle and aunt, seizing the grass, and charging out as the clan leader and elders give chase. ch. 770
The scene changes again: a cave of bones recalls Southern Border’s Bai Gu mountain, where Grey Bone Scholar’s inheritance let him and Bai Ning Bing work together and escape the Bai clan. The memory sharpens the cave until it matches Bai Gu mountain exactly, so he alerts himself and stops recalling. The Gu Yue clan leader and close to ten elders arrive and give chase. Fang Yuan retreats quickly. ch. 770
Death in a dream realm risks the soul greatly, and over the five hundred years of his previous life, countless Gu Masters lost their lives inside dream realms, though his own soul cannot die outright, only take heavy injury. What he fears is that leaving the dream from injury would erase the material he has worked hard to find. He escapes into a small cave, sets Gu worms as danger detection, and refines Gu from memory. Pursuers find him mid-refinement and block the exit, so he forces his way out with beast phantoms, restraining himself enough not to kill them. A moment later he finds a second cave and starts refining again. ch. 770
At thirty percent, Fang Zheng discovers him, and an elder attacks from behind. In danger, Fang Yuan summons beast phantoms that kill the elder, whose face sharpens into the academy elder’s as he curses Fang Yuan before dying. Fang Yuan realizes the danger weakened his control, sinking him deeper into the dream. The dream can go on without end, since new pursuers would simply appear in place of any he killed. ch. 770
After losing his pursuers, Fang Yuan reaches a hall like where he once refined bone flesh unity Gu, and completes his first dream path Gu worm there. As pursuers close in, he laughs and wakes himself, the scene dissolving to darkness. He opens his eyes in Dang Hun palace, the Gu no longer in his hands but floating inside his mind. Unlike other paths, dream path mortal Gu have no physical form and exist only in the mind, while only dream path Immortal Gu take solid form. ch. 770
