Human, not God
In meditation, Fang Yuan surveys his red steel primeval sea, now filling 44% of his aperture at rank two initial stage, and watches the Spring Autumn Cicada above it, which after a year of recovery since its rebirth has regained some shine to its once dull, withered body and now shows unbroken, green tipped wings, leading him to reason that the Gu heals with each turn of spring and autumn, though it remains too weak for anything beyond suppressing other Gu worms and aiding single refinement. Around it the Liquor worm floats curled into a ball while the White Boar Gu and Jade Skin Gu circle each other, and on his bed sheet sit three money bags, two still bulging and one nearly spent, beside the single snow white wild boar king’s tusk the clan awarded him for taking part in its kill. ch. 99
Fang Yuan judges that his primeval stones, worn down by keeping seven Gu worms and by repeatedly drawing on the Liquor worm to speed his cultivation, will stretch only another twelve or so days, and he resolves that fusing now, win or lose, is his only way off the edge he is standing on. He calls out White Boar Gu and Jade Skin Gu, wills them to fuse, and feeds the resulting ball of light primeval stones as it swells from the size of a washbowl to a grindstone, then throws in the wild boar king’s snow white tusk, a step the fusion recipe’s thousand years of circulation has never recorded, though a Gu Master a hundred and fifty years from now will discover the same trick independently. The light steadies, softens, and finally shrinks away to reveal a new, jade lustrous Gu in its place, the rank two White Jade Gu, and Fang Yuan lets out a breath of relief. ch. 99
The narration credits the fusion’s success to three things: Fang Yuan’s five hundred years of experience, which let him hold the demanding dual consciousness few Gu Masters can manage; his deep understanding of his Gu worms, a link to fusion success that will only become widely recognized knowledge some three hundred years from now; and the tusk itself, which the narration credits with raising the fusion’s success rate by twenty percent. Even all three together give no guarantee, since fusing Gu condenses a slow natural evolution into an instant, a feat that would make a man a god if it never failed; a man, the narration concludes, is not a god. ch. 99
