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Strength Gu

Gu worm in Reverend Insanity

IX

Strength Gu is one of the three Gu in Ren Zu's oldest legend. It grants strength in exchange for youth, then leaves when that price is spent.

In one of the oldest legends told during the Gu Yue clan Awakening Ceremony, three Gu approach Ren Zu and offer help if he provides for them with his life. He gives his youth to the biggest of the three, and that Gu grants him strength. The same telling later names that Gu the strength Gu, and compares Hope Gu against it as frail and only a tiny ball of light. ch. 5

Appearance

In the oldest legend it is the biggest of the three Gu that bargain with Ren Zu. ch. 5

First deal and abandonment

With that strength, Ren Zu gains steady food and can fight Predicaments, then learns that strength alone is not enough and must be healed and cultivated rather than spent freely. After he also trades his middle years for wisdom Gu, age catches him. The strength and wisdom Gu say he has nothing left to give, and they leave. Without them he is surrounded again, until Hope Gu takes his heart and drives the Predicaments away. ch. 5

Second deal after Rules and Regulation

A later Ren Zu telling has Rules and Regulation Gu gather many Gu, then leave five when Ren Zu cannot yet subdue the rest. Strength Gu and Wisdom Gu are among those five. Ren Zu offers Strength Gu freedom if it submits. Strength Gu refuses permanent submission, saying it only succumbs to those stronger than him, but offers a new deal: give it his youth again and it will obey for a time. Ren Zu accepts, becomes middle-aged at once, and Strength Gu flies from the net onto his shoulder. He then refuses the matching middle-age deal with Wisdom Gu, and Wisdom Gu tricks him into naming Rules and Regulation so it can escape. ch. 58

Fang Yuan later reads that choice as the story’s point that strength is the foundation: Ren Zu deals with Strength Gu and gives up wisdom. ch. 132 In another stretch of the legend Ren Zu still lists Strength Gu among his companions beside Hope Gu, Rules and Regulation Gu, and Attitude Gu. ch. 131

Form and classification in the legends

Early tellings mark it as the biggest of the three bargains and as able to land on Ren Zu’s shoulder after the second youth deal. ch. 5 ch. 58 No cited chapter prints a Chinese name or glyph for Strength Gu.

The Legends of Ren Zu describes Immortal Gu under their own names, using wisdom Gu and strength Gu as the examples, while mortal Gu are written more obscurely and need research to identify. ch. 405 That line keeps the legendary Strength Gu in the Immortal Gu set named in the book, rather than among the obscure mortal recipes readers must decode.

Rank nine Immortal Gu

When Fang Yuan thinks about what a completed Eighty-Eight True Yang Building would mean as a rank nine Immortal Gu house, the text groups legend Gu such as strength Gu, wisdom Gu, and fate Gu as rank nine Immortal Gu that have already vanished and are only revered in The Legends of Ren Zu. ch. 561

Self Gu takes a bite

When repeated failure Gu costs Ren Zu other companions, Strength Gu also flies out, calls him a failure unworthy of possessing it, and flees. Self Gu from Ren Zu’s heart bites Strength Gu as it flees, taking a piece; Strength Gu shrieks and vanishes like a streak of smoke. Self Gu then tells Ren Zu that from then on he will have his own strength, ch. 845 with no price to pay for using it, and that what is most reliable is one’s own strength. ch. 870 Later tellings repeat that Self Gu once ate a mouthful of Strength Gu, so Ren Zu has his own strength even when he no longer holds Strength Gu itself. ch. 1230 ch. 1619

Ordinary Abyss telling

In Ordinary Abyss, Strength Gu flies from felled trees and tells Boundless Forest Samsara that strength is hidden in the ordinary. It offers great strength for her youth, arguing that waiting decades to finish a ladder would spend that youth anyway. She takes the deal and builds much faster, then grows lazy while a miniman without Strength Gu keeps building until Perseverance Gu forms and he leaves the abyss. ch. 1276

A second bite planned

Weighing how to break free of fate, Ren Zu recalls that self Gu once ate a part of strength Gu, and resolves to have it do the same to wisdom Gu. ch. 2036

Path talk left unsettled

Hearing about heaven path Immortal Gu that take lifespan when they resonate with emotion, Su Qi Han asks whether strength Gu and wisdom Gu in The Legends of Ren Zu are also heaven path Gu worms. Imperial Minister Su answers that he is not sure. ch. 2121

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