Fang Yuan against Bai Ning Bing, third battle

The engagement is fought from the backs of two rank five Gu that neither man commands outright: Bai Ning Bing on the white form immortal snake that came out of his aperture, which he has not refined and which is drawn to the Northern Dark Ice Soul physique, and Fang Yuan on the Thousand Li Earthwolf Spider that carried him up through the floor of the competition, which goes berserk, reads Bai Ning Bing’s aura as the greater threat and pounces at him with Fang Yuan still on its back. Fang Yuan did not want the fight, having no wish to waste time here with Tie Xue Leng and First gen Gu Yue both certain to hunt him whichever of them won, and no way out that he could see without beating Bai Ning Bing first. Bai Ning Bing wanted nothing else, calling it the most exciting battle of his life and asking for a battle to the death. What the exchange settles into holds both ways: icicles that strike Fang Yuan directly are stopped by the Sky Canopy Gu’s white armour, and a blood moonblade that opens a large injury on Bai Ning Bing is sealed under a layer of frost that turns back into flesh and blood until he has recovered completely. The strength of two boars overwhelms his, and the ice blade he meets the Chainsaw Golden Centipede with cracks across its whole surface and breaks apart in his hand. ^{ch. 190}

The clan leaders read the fight rather than the fighters. The Xiong clan leader took the frost that sealed and healed Bai Ning Bing’s wound as proof of the Northern Dark Ice Soul physique, a legendary aptitude he had not expected to see with his own eyes. The Bai clan leader called Fang Yuan assured to lose, and Tie Ruo Nan beside him said that might not be so. Gu Yue Bo’s conclusion was that a C grade’s primeval essence would have been long gone in such a battle, and he named Fang Yuan the Desolate Yin Ancient Moon physique. Surviving young Gu Masters could not believe two rank three Gu Masters were fighting one on one and evenly matched, and Fang Zheng took his brother for a ten extreme physique who had been concealing himself the entire time, and felt himself getting smaller. ^{ch. 190}

Both mounts took great damage, and the white form immortal snake ended the engagement itself, spitting a lump of white fog over the whole battlefield, throwing Bai Ning Bing off its back and leaving. That fog obscures vision, follows whoever it covers like a shadow until it fades on its own, and completely suppresses the rank three Lightning Eye Gu, being a rank five immortal snake’s work. Fang Yuan navigated it by the Earth Communication Ear grass, abandoned the Thousand Li Earthwolf Spider to its corruption and left the battlefield toward the southeast, his reason for not finishing Bai Ning Bing being that a man in that state is a ticking time bomb, that killing him is akin to setting off a bomb, and that he cannot be touched. Bai Ning Bing raised an ice blade storm bigger than before, which repelled even the Thousand Li Earthwolf Spider. What the fight produced is the reading the field took from it: Gu Yue Bo admitted the Gu Yue clan’s loss in the competition rather than let Fang Yuan go, said he would murder without hesitation whoever stopped him, the Bai clan leader dispatched Gu Masters after Fang Yuan, and Tie Ruo Nan went up on a pair of black steel wings to chase him herself. ^{ch. 190}

The field it was fought on is wilderness on Qing Mao Mountain with no buildings in sight and nothing resembling a fort. Fang Yuan could not account for the Gu Yue clan leader’s change of tone toward him, since in that short a time he could not conjecture that Tie Ruo Nan had assumed he was a ten extreme physique. Gu Yue Bo, by then full of injuries and covered in blood, took blows he could clearly have avoided rather than let them reach Fang Yuan. ^{ch. 191}