Spring Autumn Cicada

As it recovers, its two wings become tender and new like fresh leaves, and its body has a royal wooden lustre, while overall it still gives off a withered feeling of death. ^{ch. 162} When both wings have recovered, it glows with a yellow and green lustre. ^{ch. 177} In the river of time it is a tiny Gu worm that spreads its wings, with a yellow green light protecting its body. ^{ch. 196} At a later use it bursts out in two lights, green and orange. ^{ch. 399}

During a later refinement it melts into a green jade liquid. That green liquid then takes shape and turns back into Spring Autumn Cicada. ^{ch. 1480} During a later refinement the cicada is a huge half-completed product floating about five feet from the ground. Its surface is not smooth: hairy and rough, with a metallic texture. As impurities come out it becomes smaller, and its metallic surface grows smoother, sharper, and brighter. It then shines in a metallic light and gives off a cold feeling. It shrinks to the size of a palm. The frozen cicada seems a work of art, very exquisite, and Fang Yuan pinches it with his fingers. The surface cracks, and a rank seven Spring Autumn Cicada awakens and flies out. ^{ch. 1645}

Spring Autumn Cicada was the first rank six Gu of Fang Yuan’s previous life and also his last; he spent thirty years of fermenting, with all means and resources, to make it. Not long after it was fresh from the oven, righteous warriors gathered to kill him. ^{ch. 19} Chapter 1’s surrounding enemies accuse him of killing thousands of people because he wanted to cultivate it. ^{ch. 1}

Later memory fills in the method and scale. He used a large number of mortal Gu to refine the Immortal Gu Spring Autumn Cicada, a mortal-to-immortal jump he later calls a hundredfold harder than converting one Immortal Gu into another. ^{ch. 408} To refine it he killed across more than ten thousand miles of land, and he states that he slaughtered over ten million people for that refinement. ^{ch. 379} He later restates that he suffered untold difficulties and slaughtered many lives to refine a rank six Spring Autumn Cicada. ^{ch. 568} In the five hundred years of that life he could not obtain a blood path Immortal Gu; he had become immortal on blood path and designed blood path mortal Gu and killer moves, but without a blood path Immortal Gu he refined Spring Autumn Cicada instead. ^{ch. 1058} The land spirit Ba Gui identifies Spring Autumn Cicada as a time path Gu whose historical master was Demon Venerable Hong Lian, the Red Lotus Demon Venerable, and names its aura as that of a rank six Immortal Gu. ^{ch. 383} The Gu later receives a chapter under its own name, where Fang Yuan uses it a third time and lands still inside the blessed land at a different moment than the second use. ^{ch. 399}

While Fang Yuan is learning how to search wills, so that he can work the Red Lotus Demon Venerable inheritance clues out of Mo Yao’s will, the text states that the vital Gu of his first aperture, Spring Autumn Cicada, had been Red Lotus Demon Venerable’s vital Gu in the past. ^{ch. 820} When Feng Jin Huang becomes Duke Long’s second disciple and asks who the first was, her father Feng Jiu Ge answers that her senior brother is Red Lotus Demon Venerable, and her mother tells her the subject is a taboo never to be raised in Heavenly Court. ^{ch. 1442} Later text states that Red Lotus Demon Venerable created the Immortal Gu personally, and that it was his vital Gu. ^{ch. 1477} Still later, Duke Long’s side states that Spring Autumn Cicada was refined by his disciple, Red Lotus Demon Venerable. ^{ch. 1918}

The same stretch that names the creation also states a standing cost: the owner’s luck is weakened at all times while they hold it. ^{ch. 1477}

It consumes the water of the River of Time as food. Year Gu shares that same food. ^{ch. 1129}

It is later sealed rather than spent, which turns it from a last resort into an asset that has to be managed. ^{ch. 671} Inheriting Red Lotus’ true inheritance later gives Fang Yuan the entire recipe set for the Gu from rank six to rank nine: eighty-six rank seven recipes, forty-three rank eight, and three rank nine. ^{ch. 1435} Fang Yuan then works a parallel refinement on it, ^{ch. 1479} and eventually raises it to rank seven. ^{ch. 1645}

Sixth Hair claims heaven’s will is hidden inside Spring Autumn Cicada, saying Ying Wu Xie has verified it and calling this the best evidence that every one of Fang Yuan’s rebirths was affected by heaven’s will. ^{ch. 1076}

Inside Earth Mother Altar, when Xue Er asks about the future, Fang Yuan answers with a reply he had prepared beforehand, saying that although he had Spring Autumn Cicada he has already lost it. ^{ch. 1145}

Even at rank six, Fang Yuan needed only to squeeze it lightly to squish it. ^{ch. 582} He could destroy it by squeezing it between his fingers lightly. ^{ch. 788}

Left no defence against a rank nine Immortal Gu House’s full power attack, Fang Yuan self-detonates to drive his one remaining trump card. The activation fails: Spring Autumn Cicada has only just carried his will into the river of time when it crumbles and explodes into countless tiny fragments, and Fang Yuan is dead. ^{ch. 969}

Being only rank six, the Gu carries a lasting flaw: every activation risks failure. Counting the activation that ended his previous five-hundred-year life, it had already succeeded three times, at Qing Mao Mountain and then at San Cha Mountain in this life, and the fourth use, forced by the rank nine Immortal Gu House Heaven Overseeing Tower’s attack, is the one that finally fails. A ghost face rises from the river and spits out a red lotus whose light restores his dissipating will and the shattered Gu together, sending him backward only a little over a year, far short of the several hundred years Fang Yuan reckons his foundation and his Immortal Gu should have bought him. ^{ch. 970}

During the Yi Tian Mountain battle, Ying Wu Xie taunts Fang Yuan that Old Man Yan Shi has already deduced Spring Autumn Cicada cannot be used in its current state. ^{ch. 1011}

Spectral Soul Demon Venerable’s will tells Ying Wu Xie that heaven’s will arranged Fang Yuan’s obtaining of Spring Autumn Cicada from the start, had already infused the Gu with itself, and that the Gu lowers his luck. ^{ch. 1022} Ying Wu Xie, still an immortal zombie and still holding the Gu, reckons that its load of heaven’s will makes him a torch in the darkness from heaven’s will’s perspective. ^{ch. 1044} Later, with heaven’s will no longer helping Fang Yuan in secret but wanting to eradicate him, the heaven’s will inside Spring Autumn Cicada would directly kill him if he activated it. ^{ch. 1362}

Spring Autumn Cicada comes back sealed by Heavenly Court’s Gu Immortals with strange methods, already cut off from the River of Time and in a starving state, and Fang Yuan knows it still holds heaven’s will. ^{ch. 1079} Unable to absorb the water of the River of Time, it can only bear its hunger passively and falls gradually toward the abyss of destruction. ^{ch. 1085} Because it remains the vital Gu of his first aperture, it returns to Fang Yuan together with his body once he regains both from Shadow Sect. ^{ch. 1079}

Still firmly sealed inside Fang Yuan’s rank five peak stage aperture, his own original aperture, its purple crystal walls are already cracked under the pressure of housing a rank six Immortal Gu. ^{ch. 1446}