Chapter 897

Three days later, a rumor spreads across Eastern Sea that Fairy Yi Shi was defiled while bathing, drawing wide attention because it touches Song clan’s reputation. Xing Xiang Zi’s Northern Plains identity is soon uncovered, and before Song clan can respond, Song Yi Shi’s suitors are already hunting Fang Yuan. At an ownerless sea area, a wooden blessed land door creaks open. Fang Yuan, wearing Xing Xiang Zi’s appearance, steps out, having killed Yao Ge Pi and carried off his corpse. A slain Gu Immortal’s body can form a blessed land or be absorbed for its dao marks, but Fang Yuan’s dead aperture would yield none and burst his body instead, so he forms a blessed land without hesitation. ^{ch. 897}

Using wisdom path methods to seal the aperture, he escapes his pursuers, returns by stargate to Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s aperture, then uses fixed immortal travel to reach Eastern Sea’s north eastern extremity. There he dives down and places Yao Ge Pi’s aperture on the seabed unnoticed; its disturbance draws two whale desolate beasts, but Fang Yuan chases them off. Changing his appearance again, he enters Ge Pi blessed land to meet its peculiar land spirit, an immobile tree planted at the center of the land, and Yao Ge Pi cultivated wood path. The tree states its ownership condition: a hundred thousand immortal essence stones, plus immortal materials in large amounts, many of them rank seven and eight, and even Genesis Lotus Immortal Venerable’s fresh blood. The demand is impossibly steep, and Fang Yuan leaves regretfully. ^{ch. 897}

He reasons that he killed Yao Ge Pi, a lone cultivator with the weakest background and no backers, to deter the others, and Song Yi Shi’s group did back off, letting him escape easily. The land spirit’s condition has nothing to do with who killed its owner, he notes, reflecting instead Yao Ge Pi’s own insatiable obsession with wealth. Gathering the rare materials alone would take at least two to three hundred years, and even if Heavenly Lotus Sect preserved Genesis Lotus Immortal Venerable’s blood it would be a true rank nine material, heavily guarded. Fang Yuan decides ordinary means will not secure the land, so he will destroy the land spirit and take the blessed land by force. He seeds mortal Gu around the site to erase his traces. Then he returns to regroup with Shark Demon. ^{ch. 897}

Above Yu Lu blessed land, Shark Demon arrives with a band of Gu Immortals from Zombie Alliance. He jokes about Fang Yuan’s sudden fame. Fang Yuan retells his cover story, and Bo Dan, having paid Su Bai Man a costly gift to rejoin after Fang Yuan once humiliated him, jeers instead. They reopen Yu Lu blessed land and re-enter freezing rain frozen earth, and Shark Demon announces they will rely mainly on Xing Xiang Zi’s deductions this time, with Bo Dan in support. ^{ch. 897}

The battlefield has fully repaired itself. With his prior experience, Fang Yuan is careful this time not to destroy the crucial mortal Gu, so the battlefield does not grow stronger than before. Shark Demon deploys melt ice Immortal Gu, borrowed at great cost from a Zombie Alliance member, resisting the freezing storm and obstructing the desolate beast level snow monsters, so the group spends far less immortal essence than before. Drawing on Dong Fang Chang Fan’s wisdom path inheritance, Fang Yuan gets past the hardest first flaw and then speeds up, ordering Bo Dan to help and studying his techniques in secret while feigning deduction. Working together, the two finally unravel freezing rain frozen earth after it has launched thirty three attacks, though the immortal essence spent on melt ice Immortal Gu tempers Shark Demon’s joy at clearing the round. ^{ch. 897}