Gu Yue Mo Chen

By clan system, Gu Masters who advance to rank three become new elders. Mo Chen is already seated among those elders when Fang Yuan’s rank three advance reshuffles the hall, and he privately regrets not recruiting Fang Yuan earlier. ^{ch. 153}

During the wolf tide he is heavily injured and spends two weeks recuperating in a private room. That absence keeps him off the thunder crown wolf assault in which Chi Lian dies, and he forces himself to the later banquet for Tie Xue Leng while still pale and hurt. ^{ch. 171} The same stretch records that Mo Bei has already died in the wolf tide, leaving the Mo faction without an inheritor under clan rules that favour male succession. ^{ch. 172}

That injury ends his rank three cultivation. He was formerly rank three and has fallen to rank two with no chance of regaining rank three. He hides the drop with a Gu worm while knowing exposure will cost him clan elder status. At the banquet he publicly takes blame for Fang Yuan missing the battlefield, claiming he knocked Fang Yuan out for Mo Yan’s sake, and offers to accept stripping of elder status. The cover is stretched and hard for the other elders to believe, but it shields Fang Yuan and spends Mo Chen’s own reputation to do it. ^{ch. 172}

Afterward he presses Fang Yuan as the son-in-law who could inherit Mo faction assets through marriage to Mo Yan. ^{ch. 172} Fang Yuan answers with extreme bride-price demands and is thrown out. ^{ch. 174} In the same elder stretch Yao Ji tries to push Mo Chen toward a Xiong clan mission, and he refuses by naming her greater fame and seniority. ^{ch. 175} He returns when Yao faction pressure and the coming rank two reveal leave Mo Chen no better option. They settle on a cut price with forty thousand primeval stones in advance, a Pig Iron Gu, and an Afterlife Grass Gu Mo Chen claims not to have on hand in the Mo faction warehouse. Mo Yan accepts the marriage as a family sacrifice while still hating Fang Yuan. ^{ch. 176} Fang Yuan later records that he has received the Pig Iron Gu and the full forty thousand stones, with only the healing grass still unpaid when he abandons waiting for it. ^{ch. 180} He still counts those forty thousand among the stones thrown into Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus work. ^{ch. 182}

The fan translation writes the name as Gu Yue Mo Chen, with Elder Mo Chen and Lord Mo Chen as respectful short forms in clan speech. ^{ch. 175} The camp under him is called Mo family, Mo family branch, and Mo faction in different chapters, with no change of membership implied. ^{ch. 21} A few early academy scenes also print “Gu Yue Mo Chen” where the surrounding action is clearly the student heir Mo Bei rather than the elder, which is a translation slip rather than a second person. ^{ch. 43 ch. 62} No Chinese characters for his personal name appear in the English chapter text used here.