Formation Path Dream Realm

Fang Yuan weighs using his killer move Unravel Dream to solve the puzzle outright, but decides the first stage is not worth the cost while he can still fail and try again. Left to guess, he settles water and wind path Gu around formation heart Gu, then adds the fire path Gu; the fire Gu’s power joins the wind Gu and conflicts with the water Gu, and the clash explodes, destroying formation heart Gu outright and leaving the other three worms badly hurt. Tu Shi Cheng calls it a failure and says Fang Yuan disappoints him, and Fang Yuan is expelled from the dream with a soul injury that two Guts Gu heal. ^{ch. 1324}

Between attempts, Fang Yuan uses connecting heaven Gu to reach treasure yellow heaven and buys The Encyclopedia of Earth Path Gu Worms along with other information, including some mortal formation path inheritances, to identify the one Gu worm among the four he does not recognize. ^{ch. 1324}

That research turns up a Late Antiquity Era formation path concept: the four basic elements of earth, water, wind, and fire can make a Gu formation stable and are the most inclusive way to build a basic one. Realizing all four mortal Gu must be used together, Fang Yuan fails his second through sixth attempts, one of which self-detonates all four Gu at once, before succeeding on the seventh: water and fire path Gu circle formation heart Gu in an elliptical orbit, moving nearer and farther from it, while earth path Gu hovers still below it and wind path Gu hovers still above it, and the finished formation lets a Gu Master’s primeval essence recover at twice the normal speed. Tu Shi Cheng laughs and praises his son’s natural talent for formation path, and the first stage ends. ^{ch. 1325}

The second stage puts Fang Yuan’s dream body inside an enormous cage that holds a smaller cage with a starving black panther, and gives him five new rank one Gu worms, one of them again formation heart Gu. Tu Shi Cheng gives five minutes to build a Gu formation, promising not to interfere and warning that failure means the boy is not worthy to be his son. The first attempt fails with a backlash that leaves Fang Yuan spitting blood; the second destroys formation heart Gu itself, and Tu Shi Cheng refuses to lend a replacement. When the time runs out the panther is released and kills him inside the dream, an experience it renders in full sensory pain, and repeated failures over many more attempts each end the same way. ^{ch. 1325}

Fang Yuan eventually succeeds: earth path Gu hovers above formation heart Gu, fire path and wind path Gu revolve around the water path Gu, and the water path Gu spans a hand’s distance below formation heart Gu, moving continuously up and down, while the finished formation throws a hazy white light that traps the panther rather than defending the Gu Master. ^{ch. 1326} Tu Shi Cheng calls him his son again and warns that a stricter test concerning his life and death comes in a month; the second stage ends. ^{ch. 1326}

Tu Shi Cheng leads Fang Yuan to a river running red like blood, which Fang Yuan recognizes as Southern Border’s red dragon river, one of the region’s three great rivers, then pushes him in without warning and leaves him to arrange a formation from twelve mortal Gu while the current sweeps him along. Fang Yuan activates Unravel Dream for the first time in this dream realm, learning the formation’s first three steps on the first use and the next three on the second, but a whirlpool swallows him before he can use it a third time, and he is knocked unconscious against a floating tree, ending the attempt. Healing the soul injury from that stage takes six Guts Gu, far more than the earlier stages. ^{ch. 1326}

The dream realm’s source is not Tu Shi Cheng but the son he is teaching, the boy Fang Yuan plays. Fang Yuan judges the youth to have clearly been a major figure. ^{ch. 1326}

Passing only the first two stages already raises Fang Yuan’s formation path attainment from below ordinary to quasi-master, a level most Gu Masters find hard to reach in a lifetime. ^{ch. 1326} Using Unravel Dream to pass the third, fourth, and fifth stages raises it again, first to master and then to quasi-grandmaster, with at least two stages of the dream realm still ahead by its size; Fang Yuan holds off from continuing for a time so as not to draw the attention of Chi clan’s Chi Shang, who is inspecting the Southern Border super Gu formation that the dream realm sits inside. ^{ch. 1327} He later finishes the last two stages with further uses of Unravel Dream and reaches formation path grandmaster. ^{ch. 1334}

Fang Yuan later recalls Tu Shi Cheng’s training of his son in the dream realm as quite traumatic when he needs the same four elements concept for a real Gu formation’s second layer and lacks the earth path Immortal Gu it calls for; reasoning from his formation path grandmaster attainment, he substitutes his own dark limit Immortal Gu for the missing earth path piece and completes the formation. ^{ch. 1356}