Gu Yue Chi Zhong

He is named in the same clan hall decree that seats Fang Yuan as an elder after Gu Yue Yao Ji faints. ^{ch. 154} That hall sits inside the Gu Yue clan on Qing Mao Mountain. ^{ch. 4}

Appearance

He is a middle-aged Gu Master with a proper appearance and a squarish face, and he shows an aura of stability. ^{ch. 157} Under wolf-tide pressure, several white hairs grow on him within days. ^{ch. 159}

Appointment as political balance

Gu Yue Chi Lian later tells Fang Yuan that Chi Zhong is a Chi faction member whose wife belongs to the Yao faction, and that the clan head chose him as temporary medicine hall elder to balance Chi and Yao strife. ^{ch. 155} When Fang Yuan meets him in person, Chi Zhong introduces himself as the current acting medicine hall clan elder. He appears with a squarish face and a stable aura, already rank three middle stage, and his wife is an important medicine faction member, so Gu Yue Bo’s appointment is a political balance between the two camps. ^{ch. 157}

He brings Fang Yuan that week’s three hundred primeval stone elder payout without being asked, a gesture Fang Yuan reads as a timed show of network and goodwill rather than an order. ^{ch. 157}

Prize Token deal

As a new officer who must display authority, Chi Zhong asks Fang Yuan to hand over the Nine Leaf Vitality Grass. Because Fang Yuan is already an elder, the ask is a transaction rather than the order Yao Ji once used. Chi Zhong offers a Prize Token that opens the clan’s underground Gu cave for one choice among rare worms, including rank three and rank four stock, and even floats a later secret re-exchange if Fang Yuan regrets the trade. He treats the temporary medicine hall seat as a chance to secure the official post, which would mean compromising with the clan leader, the Chi faction, and the medicine faction at once, and he spends a Prize Token he had obtained with difficulty to finish Yao Ji’s unfinished pressure on Fang Yuan and show the medicine side goodwill. ^{ch. 158}

Fang Yuan accepts the token and transfers the grass Gu so Chi Zhong can refine it at once. Chi Zhong then sits through Fang Yuan’s visit to Gu Yue Dong Tu and Aunt, and tells them to accept Fang Yuan’s gifted payout as filial piety. ^{ch. 158} Gu Yue Bo later reads the grass hand-in and the uncle-aunt gift as a deal Chi Zhong struck and then publicized. ^{ch. 159}

Under wolf-tide casualty pressure, the medicine hall seat weighs on him hard enough that white hair appears on the middle-aged elder within days. ^{ch. 159} Fang Yuan’s private judgment groups him with Gu Yue Qing Shu as talent still chained inside clan politics. ^{ch. 161}

Surviving elder table

Translation notes

The fan translation writes the full name as Gu Yue Chi Zhong and the short forms Chi Zhong, elder Chi Zhong, and Lord Chi Zhong. ^{ch. 154 ch. 157 ch. 158} Chi Lian’s dialogue calls his wife’s camp the Yao faction, while narration in the same stretch calls it the medicine faction; both labels point at Yao Ji’s side. ^{ch. 155 ch. 157} The fan translation does not print Chinese characters for his personal name.