Photo-audio Gu

Fang Yuan first names the Photo-audio Gu in the Flower Wine Monk’s secret cave on Qing Mao Mountain, when a moving picture with sound loops on the stone wall. ^{ch. 16}

Form and rank

Early chapters do not describe the Gu’s living body shape, size, or color while it is intact. In the Monk’s cave it can hide in a stone wall until alarmed. ^{ch. 16} It is rank three, one step of advancement past rank two Digital Shade Gu, which the text calls a recording type of Gu worm. ^{ch. 156}

When Gu Yue Bo pinches a Photo-audio Gu to play a stored record, it breaks into pieces and becomes a ball of seven-colored smoke that holds noise. Blown onto a wall, that smoke leaves a colorful imprint that grows into an image. ^{ch. 180}

Effect

The Gu can record imagery and project it out later. ^{ch. 16} After refinement it can store a recording and also record voices. ^{ch. 156} Fang Yuan judges that it can only record once, as a one-time use Gu. ^{ch. 16} It dies after one use, and the visuals can stay on rock walls for a period of time. ^{ch. 186}

The Flower Wine Monk used a Photo-audio Gu to record the ugly acts of the fourth generation Gu Yue clan leader, then slapped the Gu onto a wall and made an image wall whose images continued to loop. ^{ch. 45} When that wall later showed an inheritance message and then went blank, the text says the image wall’s Photo-audio Gu’s strength was depleted. ^{ch. 60} A later viewing of the Monk’s image still shows him covered in blood and near death. ^{ch. 183}

Clans use Photo-audio Gu to record every important sacrificial ritual. Tie Ruo Nan names that traditional practice when she asks to see the Gu Yue Awakening Ceremony image, and Gu Yue Bo later plays that recording by smashing the delivered Photo-audio Gu. ^{ch. 179 ch. 180}

Feeding

It feeds on light and sound. In the Monk’s secret cave, red light inside and outside sound through the stone crevice let the Gu live on while hidden in the wall. ^{ch. 16}

Path

No cited chapter names a cultivation path for Photo-audio Gu. ^{ch. 16 ch. 156}