Bai Lian

One night she visits to borrow a clearing heat Gu for her poisoned friend Bai Sheng Jing. After further banquet days, at dawn she joins a staged quarrel with Bai Zhan Lie so Fang Yuan will accept a hunting challenge in her name. She competes as rank three on Fang Yuan’s side of the hunt, with two other female Gu Masters of similar age at rank two, including Bai Sheng Jing. During the return she talks about spirit springs, beast packs, and the costs of settling Bai Gu Mountain, then Fang Yuan calls her clan half the owner of the peak and presses her for dangers on the mountain. ^{ch. 218} Fang Yuan filters her exaggerations and still extracts a real estimate: reaching the inheritance ground with Bai Ning Bing would take at least half a year. ^{ch. 219}

She later proposes entering Bai Gu Mountain itself when Bai Zhan Lie’s swimming dragon butterfly score pulls ahead, planning to coax mortal young masters Bai Sheng and Bai Hua along so hidden protectors must help. Under her guidance the party reaches the back mountain while she pretends uncertainty about where to go next. ^{ch. 219}

When Fang Yuan kidnaps the two young masters, Bai Lian and the others are left tongue-tied. ^{ch. 221} She later kneels with Bai Sheng Jing to ask punishment for failing to protect them. The Bai clan leader lifts that blame as following orders, while Bai Lian realises she was the one played. ^{ch. 223}

She travels with elder Bai Feng, Bai Zhan Lie, Tie Dao Ku, and others into Shang Clan City, worrying whether Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing chose that road. After learning Fang Yuan holds a purple thorn token, she grits her teeth that Shang clan protection leaves them unable to seize him in the city. ^{ch. 293} She is still counted among rank three Gu Masters beside Bai Feng, Tie Dao Ku, and Bai Zhan Lie, and Fang Yuan recalls that she had used a honey trap on him without moving his heart. ^{ch. 294} When Fang Yuan lays bare that Bai clan’s spirit spring is drying, she is dazed, then cries out against him spreading the secret. ^{ch. 295} She later worries over raising huge primeval stone sums and offers her lotus cloth Gu toward the debt while Bai Feng shields the juniors’ political prospects. ^{ch. 296}

Speakers address her as Lady Bai Lian or Lord Bai Lian in camp talk during the hunting stretch. ^{ch. 219}

A much later dream-realm scene uses “Lord Bai Lian” for an identity worn by Fang Yuan, not this Bai clan woman. ^{ch. 1595}