Fang Yuan against Bai Ning Bing, second battle

The figure is Bai Ning Bing, his hair snowy white and his eyes blue, and one arm gone. He fights this one at his own cultivation, having stopped suppressing it and let it rise naturally since his battle with Gu Yue Qing Shu. What Fang Yuan brought against him is the Chainsaw Golden Centipede held as a hiltless sword whose razors rotate and whose body lengthens and shortens at his will, the Thunderwings Gu, the Sky Canopy Gu’s white armour, the strength of two boars, and a blood coloured moonblade thrown off his left arm without deviation. Neither clan reinforced either man: a Bai clan Gu Master who volunteered was told to scram because this was Bai Ning Bing’s battle and was cut in half at the waist by the centipede, a rank three elder of some fame killed in one pass, and Gu Yue Bo, doubtful of Fang Yuan since his disappearance before the wolf tide, ordered the materials secured instead. Narration states the engagement as one where a Bai Ning Bing holding his complete cultivation and one limb fewer is still suppressed by a rank three initial stage Fang Yuan, and gives him indignation, humiliation and rage for it. Close in, the centipede’s changing reach is what he struggles to adapt to, leaving him barely able to defend himself, and his ice blades break against it; at distance he answers with the blue bird ice coffin Gu and the Icicle Gu mixed into one barrage, which Fang Yuan meets by bursting the birds with moonblades, dodging some icicles and taking the rest on the Sky Canopy Gu. The Chainsaw Golden Centipede then detaches and burrows its way into the ground. ^{ch. 166}

Bai Ning Bing’s answer is the ice blade storm, formed of the Iceblade Gu, the Swirl Gu and the Fierce Wind Gu together: narration calls it a unique move of his and evidence of the Northern Dark Ice Soul physique’s battle talent, it attacks and defends at once, it freezes all life in its path, and it cannot be resisted without two or more defence Gu working together. The hard ice it lays over the floor is what keeps the Chainsaw Golden Centipede from coming up out of it. Its weakness is stated in the same breath as its power, that it can neither be easily displayed nor easily stopped. Fang Yuan did not try to hold against it, since the Thunderwings Gu now outruns a storm that would once have outrun him, and what he did with it was draw it through the valley where both clans were fighting, with Bai clan and Gu Yue clan Gu Masters alike shouting at him to keep away. ^{ch. 167}

A storm that cannot easily be stopped once it is out took the dying thunder crown wolf: its armour cut into pieces, its flesh and blood thrown everywhere, its white skeleton minced into bone matter, and with that no valuable loot left on its body for either clan. Fang Yuan vanished under the Stealth Scales Gu, and Bai Ning Bing’s rank three Lightning Eye Gu, which uses the power of lightning to break stealth, has no see-through vision and found nothing in a forest Fang Yuan could conceal himself in. Sitting out of sight with only a thin layer of primeval essence left in his aperture, Fang Yuan filled it back to the limit off the tusita flower’s primeval stones. The engagement went no further, a wolf howl like a military horn bringing down on the valley a myriad beast king the clan elders took for a fourth thunder crown wolf, along with its packs. ^{ch. 167}