Chi Shang

He wears a white robe, and his handsome face, deep eyes and aquiline nose give him a dark and devious aura. ^{ch. 1327}

Wu An reports rumors that Chi Shang is coming to inspect the super Gu formation, and Fang Yuan’s side ranks him as the most important among Qiao Si Liu’s many pursuers. He arrives sooner than anyone expects, at a hundred and sixty years of age, representing Chi clan on an inspection he took on himself amid rumors linking Wu Yi Hai to Qiao Si Liu. He refuses Fang Yuan’s banquet invitation while delaying the inspection so Wu Yi Hai must seek him out. ^{ch. 1327}

Fang Yuan challenges him with formation path problems instead of transformation path. Chi Shang stays up solving them, skips a Luo clan banquet, and Chi Gui notes that his mind often wanders on formation problems and that he can forget to eat. Clansman Chi Liu, rank six, recalls that first supreme elder Chi Qu You has said Chi Shang would inherit his legacy. Chi Shang is by then a formation path grandmaster while Fang Yuan is a quasi-grandmaster, not a huge difference between the two. ^{ch. 1328}

Facing Fang Yuan’s formation path challenge, he sets up a Gu formation Chi clan’s first supreme elder taught him personally, the wisdom sweat formation, which uses a water path Immortal Gu named Sweat as its supplementary worm rather than its core. On Chi Gui’s advice he had already told Fairy Si Liu of the matter so she could be a witness; the pressure of her knowing, joined to his resolve not to lose at his own specialty, becomes a huge motivation, and he spends three days and nights without sleep to solve it. ^{ch. 1329}

He is a rank seven Gu Immortal who has kept to his formation path research rather than to his own clansmen, and his influence in Chi clan is small, perhaps the smallest of any of its rank sevens. On his first visit to the super Gu formation he cannot get Chi Liu to act for him, and Chi Liu takes no pleasure in refusing a man the clan calls its future hope. ^{ch. 1329}

On Fang Yuan’s third and hardest problem, Chi Qu You sends him the immortal inheritance of secluded cultivator Tu Yuan’s earth water wind fire four elements formation, a rare inheritance Chi Shang says he had asked for many times before without success. Even with it he cannot solve the problem, and he declares the Gu formation itself unsolvable before telling Qiao Si Liu so, ahead of Fang Yuan conceding the challenge. ^{ch. 1330}

Wu clan intelligence, as Fang Yuan recalls it, says Chi Qu You noticed his formation path talent when he was young, that he is known as the formation devotee, and that with clan help he became an immortal and within decades a rank seven Gu Immortal, while still pursuing Qiao Si Liu. As a mortal he spent thirty years secluded in a cave on Myriad Snake Mountain to study formation path, and only left it by accident after losing his way, emerging at rank three while already outperforming Gu Masters of rank four and five at building formations. Nearing death as his mortal lifespan ran out, he answered Chi Qu You’s question about regrets by describing his unfinished formation path research, and Chi Qu You granted him a lifespan Gu in response. Chi Qu You then spent three days and three nights talking formation path with him, concluded that Chi Shang could one day reach the great grandmaster level, and acted on that by nurturing him with clan resources. ^{ch. 1331}

After the contests they become good friends. Chi Shang is not interested in ordinary Gu Immortals, but he engages Fang Yuan as a formation path grandmaster talking with a quasi-grandmaster, and he offers to help if Fang Yuan wants to cultivate formation path. ^{ch. 1333}

Chi Shang’s more than a hundred years of formation path study to reach grandmaster attainment becomes a benchmark for Fang Yuan, who spends only a month or two in a dream realm to reach the same attainment level. ^{ch. 1338}

When the righteous path’s defense is failing, Chi Gui recalls Chi Shang’s praise for Wu Yi Hai’s formation path attainment, and it is that recollection which gets Fang Yuan let in to attempt the Gu formation’s second layer. ^{ch. 1356}