Scheming Against The Feathermen, Yu Fei's Helplessness
Zheng Ling protests that they are being treated like fish on a chopping block and warns that battle would waste resources it took great effort to build. Fang Yuan asks if that is a threat. Zhou Zhong insists it is only the truth. Fang Yuan laughs inwardly, since Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s Immortal Gu Landscape as Before answers such a threat completely, though neither featherman Gu Immortal knows it exists. ch. 866
Fang Yuan wants both Gu Immortals dead, but this is Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s tribulation to decide, and the old man is gentle and kind, so Fang Yuan stays silent and looks to him. The feathermen below know their fate hangs on his choice. Yu Fei, the newly crowned featherman king, sees his first Gu Immortal and feels a deep helplessness. ch. 866
Tai Bai Yun Sheng has weighed this unexpected calamity since the feathermen appeared: releasing them ends it, but fighting risks his resources for a chance to recruit them, and he cannot decide. Just as Fang Yuan expects, he turns to him for an answer. ch. 866
Fang Yuan transmits at once that they should battle. Landscape as Before means no fear for Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s aperture, only minor resources he had already accepted losing. The tens of thousands of feathermen, skilled fliers born with cloud path dao marks, can become slaves, but the two Gu Immortals must die, since killing them adds cloud path dao marks to his blessed land. ch. 866
This is an extremely rare chance: the two Gu Immortals are injured, with no way to escape while the doors stay shut. A Gu Immortal’s aperture becomes an isolated blessed land when its owner dies. But Tai Bai blessed land answers only to Tai Bai Yun Sheng, so a fallen aperture would instead be destroyed, its dao marks fusing into his land, a huge profit given how costly dao marks are to obtain. ch. 866
Needled over his kindness, Tai Bai Yun Sheng decides to battle and kill the two Gu Immortals, since feathermen are variant humans, though he will treat the captured mortals kindly. As he moves to strike, Fang Yuan secretly stops him, saying the chance is too good to waste on a straight fight and that they should probe first. Trusting his craftiness, Tai Bai Yun Sheng agrees. ch. 866
Fang Yuan opens the negotiation aloud: they may free the two Gu Immortals if the mortal feathermen stay behind as slaves. The offer sets off an intense uproar among the tens of thousands below. Some vow to die first, but the two Gu Immortals flatly refuse. Fang Yuan is not surprised: oppressed and enslaved everywhere, variant humans stay more united than humans, their only way to withstand outside pressure. ch. 866
Fang Yuan has Tai Bai Yun Sheng accuse the feathermen of invading unprovoked, demanding a price to leave unless they can fight free. In truth the two have no strength left: without Sacred Feather City’s protection, heavenly wish now needs more essence and time than they have. Zhou Zhong instead threatens to damage the blessed land until it summons the winds of assimilation, though neither knows Landscape as Before can repair it. Following Fang Yuan’s lead, Tai Bai Yun Sheng stages a rage. Fang Yuan plays wary but keeps negotiating, giving the two Gu Immortals hope of leaving in peace. ch. 866
After long negotiation Zheng Ling first offers a huge sum of immortal essence stones instead. Fang Yuan signals Tai Bai Yun Sheng. The old man scoffs inwardly that no sum of stones matches tens of thousands of feathermen and fighting on is the better bet. ch. 866
On the ground the feathermen fall into helpless chaos. Yu Fei shouts that even death beats becoming a slave. Dan Yu scolds him to think of the clan rather than provoke Gu Immortals, and Yu Fei falls silent. Everything has changed too fast for him: the kingship he had dreamed of now feels small against a Gu Immortal’s power, and no matter how hot-blooded he is, the gap between them cannot be closed. ch. 866
