A surge in battle strength
Facing down a charging black wild boar without dodging, Fang Yuan takes its tusks on a Jade Skin Gu shielded shoulder and staggers it with the blow. He grabs one tusk with his left hand and smashes the boar’s skull with jade lit punches of his right fist, finishing with an overhead elbow strike that caves in its head and ends the fight. ch. 80
Feeding the corpse to White Boar Gu, Fang Yuan checks his aperture and finds his primeval sea has dropped from a full forty four percent down to thirty six percent, an expenditure of only eight percent. That expenditure is nonetheless steep because it draws on rank one peak stage black green essence: Moonlight Gu’s activation costs ten percent of initial stage jade green essence but only five percent of middle stage pale green essence, and the cost halves again at each stage above that, so that ten percent black green essence equals eighty percent jade green, forty percent pale green, and twenty percent dark green essence. By that ratio, the eight percent black green essence he just spent on the Jade Skin Gu would have cost a jade green initial stage cultivator a crippling sixty four percent. ch. 80
Two months have passed since Wang Da’s assassination attempt. Fang Zheng, poisoned and comatose for seven days and seven nights, wakes a changed and far more diligent man and becomes the first of his year to reach both upper and peak stage. Fang Yuan judges himself at most half a month from peak stage, slowed by needing to hunt jade eye stone monkeys to feed the Jade Skin Gu and to search the stone forest for Flower Wine Monk’s next clue, a search that has already forced him to flee tens of stone monkeys at once and, on one occasion, as many as a hundred after he blundered into a second pillar’s territory while retreating. ch. 80
As dusk falls, a crippled, one eyed old wolf drawn by the smell of boar blood watches Fang Yuan from fifty steps away, only to read the danger in him and retreat into the brush once White Boar Gu finishes stripping the boar carcass to bone. Moments later the wolf’s cry cuts off abruptly, and heavy footsteps crash through the undergrowth toward Fang Yuan, closing fast enough to make his eyes narrow. ch. 80
