Rebirth, Ghost Face, Red Lotus!
Legend holds a river connects the world’s beginning and end. It flows to every part of it: the river of time, a domain where time path flourishes and countless time path Gu worms live and propagate. ch. 970
When Heaven Overseeing Tower’s attack comes, Fang Yuan cannot avoid it. His only option is Spring Autumn Cicada. The rank six Gu carries a huge flaw and risks failure every activation, and after three successes, at Qing Mao Mountain, at San Cha Mountain and once in his previous life, it finally fails. His will, entered into the river of time, is left drowning as Spring Autumn Cicada self detonates into countless fragments, and the river would engulf it completely. ch. 970
He thinks he still failed in the end. His remaining will is strangely tranquil, with no worry, discontent or regret, since he had already expected this outcome when he chose this path. His story as a Gu Immortal ends here, and his will dissipates, tranquil, even happy. ch. 970
If he still had a face, its corners would curl into a smile. His laughter abruptly stops: a ghost face emerges from the river and makes mocking faces at his remaining will. Its cheeks swell as if in extreme suffering, and its mouth stretches, vomiting out a giant flower bud before resuming its mocking faces, comical yet terrifying. ch. 970
The flower bud slowly blossoms as time seems to stop. In a blink it opens into an enchanting red lotus. From its center shoots a slightly red light that lands where Spring Autumn Cicada had shattered, turning back time there, while the ghost face sinks into the river. Fang Yuan’s will, almost completely dissipated, rapidly restores under the light, and Gu worm fragments appear and rejoin into an intact Spring Autumn Cicada carrying his will onward. ch. 970
The red light dissipates, the red lotus scatters, and the ghost face is completely washed down into the river. It seems as if it had all been an illusion. Spring Autumn Cicada, though, has been forcibly restored, carrying Fang Yuan’s will and his remaining hopes as it flows backward, returning to the past. ch. 970
In Star Form blessed land, poisonous fog spreads and poisonous blood boils. Three Gu formations already lie destroyed by corrosion. Fang Yuan’s face turns stern as he takes out the most troublesome material: earthly limit astral qi, heaven and earth qi that should not coexist but here converts between the two. Lacking slumbering lightning python, muffled thunder stone drum, reflect snow and wind grind, the four moves that could process it instantly, he uses his previous life technique. He cuts himself to draw poisonous blood into his wounds and swallows the qi to fuse with it. Over three days and two nights his body fills with wounds, with only a night left to finish the hardest step of refining change form Immortal Gu. ch. 970
Suddenly his pained expression stiffens, confusion clouding his eyes until they nearly lose their luster, a lapse in the concentration Immortal Gu refinement demands. He spits out a mouthful of poisonous blood and falls heavily into the pool, the splash corroding a patch of grassland into dark red smoke. Star Form land spirit shouts worriedly and jumps in after him. ch. 970
Fang Yuan’s head emerges from the blood, and he stands, asking energetically what place and time this is. Star Form land spirit, fearing he has lost his mind, says many days have passed since he began refining. Fang Yuan laughs heartily, only deepening the land spirit’s alarm. ch. 970
Fang Yuan tells no one why: he has returned once again. A strange change has brought him from death to life, from defeat to victory. He is puzzled that he is refining change form Immortal Gu, the time over a year ago, when his cultivation should have carried him at least several hundred years back. He wonders whether Spring Autumn Cicada’s failed activation is why he returned only this short distance, and what that ghost face and red lotus were. ch. 970
