River Swallowing Toad

The River Swallowing Toad is a rank five Gu whose stomach can hold a river. It feeds on water, can spit that water back as a flood, and prefers sleep over fighting.

On Qing Mao Mountain, clan elders name a rank five River Swallowing Toad that has drifted along the Huang Long River (Yellow Dragon River) to the mountain foot, blocked a river channel, and gone to sleep there.^{ch. 117} ^{ch. 200} Fang Yuan later wakes it with tide force and bodily strength and drives it downstream; he does not take the Gu as his own.^{ch. 120}

Appearance

It is huge and resembles a small hill. It lies belly side up in the riverbed. Its belly is exquisite snow-white and covered with a layer of luster. Its back is clear sky blue with a glossy shine, and it has no warts like those on common frogs and toads. Its skin is slippery.^{ch. 119} From afar it looks hill-like; a person standing at the river edge looks like a tiny monkey beside a large elephant next to it.^{ch. 120}

Form and rank

It is a rank five Gu with enormous might that can spit out a river.^{ch. 117} It lives in rivers and seas; wave force alone does not wake it while it sleeps.^{ch. 120}

Effect

When hungry it opens its mouth and sucks river water in.^{ch. 117} It is said that every River Swallowing Toad’s stomach carries a river. The belly need not expand, and the intake can drop a river toward a shallow bed.^{ch. 118} ^{ch. 120} Seafood drawn in with the water is not its food, so the toad vomits fish, prawns, turtles, and the like after drinking.^{ch. 118} ^{ch. 120} The Qing Mao and Jiang Fan beats show only that river-water meal and incidental seafood. No cited chapter shows an owner using the stomach to store non-water goods.^{ch. 118} ^{ch. 120}

If angered or cornered it can release torrential river water and flood land into marsh. Its natural temper is mild: it loves sleep, has little interest in fighting, and prefers to flee; only when it cannot escape does it counterattack hard.^{ch. 117} ^{ch. 118} Other Gu auras put it on alert, and serious injury can drive it to spit a river.^{ch. 117}

To send a sleeping toad away without a rampage, Gu Yue elders follow a rumor: one person must wake it by personal strength so it recognizes a local “beast king” and leaves. Using another Gu’s aura, or many people together, fails that recognition and can provoke it.^{ch. 118}

Feeding

Tavern talk and Fang Yuan’s own knowledge both treat water as its food.^{ch. 117} The Jiang Fan legend adds that it vomits the seafood it does not consume.^{ch. 118}

Qing Mao Mountain crisis

Gu Yue Bo first raises the toad in the elder hall as a three-day-old threat at the mountain foot, warning that a flood could wreck the spirit spring and force an early wolf tide.^{ch. 117} Chi Shan’s group fails to wake it;^{ch. 118} Fang Yuan is ordered to try, finds the hill-sized sleeper blocking the channel,^{ch. 119} and uses incoming tides plus his raised strength to push it about three hundred meters until it wakes. It drinks the river, vomits seafood, exposes Hundred year bitter shells in the drained bed, then swims downstream after looking at Fang Yuan once. The clan promotes him to team leader and awards five hundred primeval stones for chasing it away.^{ch. 120} ^{ch. 121}

Mortal host legend

Fang Yuan never used a River Swallowing Toad in his previous life, but remembers Jiang Fan, a mortal fishery servant whose story spreads about two hundred years later in that timeline. A sleeping toad blocks Jiang Fan’s water; after days of complaint and kinship, it wakes, drinks the river, and vomits a mountain of seafood that saves his quota. When Gu Masters try to expel the rank five Gu, it carries Jiang Fan and floods the village; thereafter people treat him as owning a rank five Gu worm even though he has no awakened aperture. He founds a hamlet, is assassinated, and the toad leaves after his death.^{ch. 118} ^{ch. 178} Later teaching also cites the Jiang Fan case as a human example of borrowing a Gu worm’s ability without being a Gu Master.^{ch. 157}

Path

No cited chapter names a cultivation path for this Gu. Fang Zheng’s later refinement is framed only as a way to counter the enemy’s water path methods, not as naming this Gu’s own path.^{ch. 1065}

On Black Hair Continent, Fang Yuan’s fake will forces step-by-step guidance until Fang Zheng refines the rank five River Swallowing Toad overnight, naming it as a way to counter the enemy’s water path methods in the next day’s competition.^{ch. 1065} Commanding it in battle costs enormous mental energy; when Fang Zheng’s soul is injured, that will tells him he can no longer use the toad as his trump card.^{ch. 1084} Later, during the hair-continent war inside Lang Ya blessed land, Fang Zheng enters the battlefield standing on the River Swallowing Toad’s back with a rush of tides, and enemies name him the toad Gu Master.^{ch. 1167}

Appearance

Form and rank

Effect

Feeding

Qing Mao Mountain crisis

Mortal host legend

Path

Fang Zheng’s refinement and use

Chronicle

Connections

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River Swallowing Toad

Appearance

Form and rank

Effect

Feeding

Qing Mao Mountain crisis

Mortal host legend

Path

Fang Zheng’s refinement and use

Chronicle

Connections(23)

Connections