Chapter 943

Fang Yuan judges his position: he holds the advantage over Hei Lou Lan, though her Great Strength True Martial Physique still carries a last resort attack worth fearing. Against Fairy Li Shan he is at best evenly matched, and falls to a disadvantage the moment her battlefield killer move comes into play. Dealing with Blazing Heaven Demoness is virtually impossible for him. His many Immortal Gu cannot close the gap between his bottom tier rank six cultivation and a rank eight Gu Immortal. Not even a rank seven can match a rank eight, Feng Jiu Ge being the only exception in Central Continent’s last thousand years. ^{ch. 943}

His one protection is the alliance agreement barring allies from killing each other, and he now needs it to survive. That agreement might not hold against an information path Gu Immortal like Fairy Li Shan. But Blazing Heaven Demoness could crush him with battle strength alone and has not struck. She helped him refine star thought Immortal Gu even while knowing his true identity, which tells him the three want something from him rather than his death. He concludes he is not in mortal danger, and keeps watching rather than fleeing. ^{ch. 943}

The trapped green giant sprouts two more pairs of wings and bursts into the sky on all three pairs at once. Orchard Garden in Mountain’s pull drags at it at once. The force multiplies tenfold with every few meters it climbs, until it crashes back down after reaching only thirty meters up. ^{ch. 943}

This is Orchard Garden in Mountain’s true power: Fairy Li Shan’s secondary wood path shapes the vines and snowing blossoms, her secondary earth path the crushing pull, both raised far beyond her own strength by the dao marks of Miniscule Mountain inside her. Vines coil the fallen giant tight again. ^{ch. 943}

Three Angry Bird strikes fuse in the air into a fire phoenix that crashes into the giant’s arm, leaving only a deep hole that green fog mends almost at once. Blazing Heaven Demoness follows with Phoenix Feather Triple Wing Blade, three curved fire blades striking the same spot one after another. Combined with the earlier strike, the combo severs the arm. Cut off from the four elders’ immortal essence, the arm dissolves into nothing as its Gu worms stream back toward the giant’s body. ^{ch. 943}

Hei Cheng, freed from the severed hand, falls loose. The giant tries to seize him again, but Blazing Heaven Demoness stops it, and vines from Orchard Garden in Mountain deliver him instead into Fairy Li Shan’s hands. ^{ch. 943}

Furious, the elders answer with Nine Dragon Body Protection, the first supreme elder’s own signature move that both attacks and defends, and begin tearing free of the trap. Fairy Li Shan warns she cannot hold much longer. Blazing Heaven Demoness throws a chain of fire around Fairy Li Shan, Hei Lou Lan, Fang Yuan, and Hei Cheng and outruns the pursuit within a blink. Ten breaths later Orchard Garden in Mountain is completely destroyed as the giant finally breaks free. ^{ch. 943}

With their movement killer moves combined the four elders are several times her speed, and they must give chase, since Hei Cheng knows too many of the tribe’s secrets to abandon. A captured Gu Immortal already threatens Hei tribe’s standing, on top of the Immortal Gu House Dark Prison it has already lost. Before they catch her, word reaches them instead. Their own base has been infiltrated and stripped of resources by an unmistakably rank eight invader, and the elders break off the chase to defend it. ^{ch. 943}

Safe at last, Blazing Heaven Demoness raises a barrier around them. Fang Yuan tells Fairy Li Shan she kept him truly in the dark. She only smiles, already having known he obtained Star Form blessed land and posed as Xing Xiang Zi. ^{ch. 943}

Still bound, Hei Cheng begs to be spared, offering to serve as a subordinate and to surrender every secret of Hei tribe. That includes their rank eight ancestor Hei Fan’s time path inheritance, which he says is what drew Su Xian Er close to him. Fairy Li Shan calls him a dog thief who took her little sister’s life after being loved so completely, and who even meant to turn on his own daughter. She stays completely unmoved. He turns to Blazing Heaven Demoness and pleads that he never meant to offend her, and would not have acted had he known she stood behind Su Xian Er. ^{ch. 943}

In Hei Fan’s generation Hei tribe had a rank eight Gu Immortal and ranked among Northern Plains’s stronger super forces. The tribe declined after his death, an ordinary turn as other forces rose. A rank eight Gu Immortal’s inheritance draws any Gu Immortal, and Hei tribe itself was never able to claim it. ^{ch. 943}

Blazing Heaven Demoness leaves the choice to Hei Lou Lan alone, and restrains Hei Cheng until he is as fragile as a mortal. Hei Cheng crawls to his daughter, insisting her Hei tribe blood gives her a huge advantage in claiming Hei Fan’s inheritance, and that her mother would surely have been happy to see her inherit it. He adds that she carries one of the ten extreme physiques. He claims she has lived this long because he asked Jiang Yu to protect her. ^{ch. 943}

Disgusted, Hei Lou Lan kicks him away and asks her one question: her mother loved him so completely, and had known long before he acted that he meant her harm, yet still trusted love would stop him. How could he still end her life. Hei Cheng, stunned and unable to answer, breaks down weeping, confessing only that he knew Su Xian Er loved him but had been too afraid of dying to spare her. ^{ch. 943}

The scene falls completely quiet but for the wind and his weeping. Watching him, everyone present feels how truly terrifying death is, and that even an invincible rank nine venerable is fragile beyond belief before it. Fang Yuan knows nobody has ever reached eternal life. ^{ch. 943}

A lump of emotion rises from within Hei Lou Lan and takes the shape of a translucent woman. It is the familial emotion of her mother, Su Xian Er. Before she died, Su Xian Er had left it with Hei Lou Lan along with a store of immortal essence, the gift that let Hei Lou Lan wield Immortal Gu while still a mortal. Su Xian Er’s emotion asks Hei Lou Lan to let Hei Cheng go, calling revenge a path to destruction rather than salvation and wanting a better life for her daughter. ^{ch. 943}

Hei Lou Lan says she understands, and walks toward Hei Cheng anyway. She stomps down, and because he is now as fragile as a mortal, his skull bursts under her foot, ending the life of a rank seven Gu Immortal once celebrated as a generation’s hero. To her mother’s stunned spirit she says she has her own resolution and is not so fragile as to be broken by this. Fairy Li Shan steps forward and takes her hand in worry, while Blazing Heaven Demoness only murmurs her name and holds back. Fang Yuan, having watched every expression throughout, feels he finally understands the family before him. ^{ch. 943}