Vajra Shell

He delays leaving to defend Wu clan’s Frosty Peak for more than ten days while he stays shut in and deduces the still unnamed killer move’s modification. ^{ch. 1306}

In Southern Border, while sparring Xia Fei Kuai in divination tortoise form, Fang Yuan answers with a second immortal killer move, breathing out countless small tortoise shells that loop onto soaring essence strike and break apart against it until the strike is spent. This is the first time he displays it in Southern Border and the five regions. He had been perfecting this killer move before the spar, and what he displays here is that move joined to his divination tortoise transformation. Xia Zhuo Mo, a wisdom path Gu Immortal, sees that the shells are thoughts; after the tortoise transformation those golden thoughts appear as dark tortoise shells. Vajra thought Immortal Gu at rank six alone can create ten thousand vajra thoughts, and as a killer move the effect rises further; Fang Yuan’s many transformation path dao marks amplify the spawn until the shells cover the valley. Large numbers of mortal Gu are combined into the move alongside its two Immortal Gu, and the combination raises its might by a lot. Under the spar rule he may only defend, yet the shells still destroy Xia Fei Kuai’s saw light wheel after that move spends over six thousand of the thoughts. ^{ch. 1310}

Xia Fei Kuai answers with thirty-three heavenly lights, and the small tortoise shell thoughts hold through the first two flickers, shake at the third, crumble from the fourth, lose hundreds at the fifth and a thousand at the sixth as the outer ones begin to collapse. Before the seventh flicker fires, Fang Yuan draws the seventy or eighty thousand surviving thoughts back into his mind, spacious enough as a wisdom path ancient desolate beast to hold them all, and Xia Zhuo Mo understands that thoughts, being thoughts, can be stored back inside a Gu Immortal’s mind. With no thoughts left to burn, the remaining flickers achieve nothing, and Xia Fei Kuai has to carry the killer move to its thirty-third flicker before he can safely stop, spending a large amount of immortal essence. Over a hundred thousand thoughts then surge back out of his mind and surround the tortoise. Countless of them are destroyed defending him through Xia Fei Kuai’s final assault, and after the tenth move only slight injury marks show on the shell, and Xia Fei Kuai concedes the spar and leaves. ^{ch. 1311}

Reflecting afterward, Fang Yuan judges Vajra Shell quite effective but expects such a good result will not come easily again. He reasons that Xia clan’s Gu Immortals will surely gather their experience and hunt for a restriction on the move, or a full decipherment and counter, and that the counter is the harder of the two to reach. ^{ch. 1312}

After the spar Fang Yuan still finds vajra shell unsatisfying and open to improvement, and he trusts that feeling because his wisdom path and transformation path are both grandmaster. Working in a secret cultivation room, he activates a single rank one metal path mortal Gu and takes a backlash that shakes his body, pales him and draws blood from his lips. His attainment level only barely reaches what the improvement needs, so paying for it would be heavy, and he sets the small project aside. ^{ch. 1314}

After formation path attainment rises, Fang Yuan’s concept for vajra shell keeps vajra thought Immortal Gu and Perseverance Immortal Gu as cores and adds precaution Immortal Gu plus formation path mortal Gu so power would rise by multiple times. With the dream realms after Zhang Li’s unsuited to exploration, he shifts his focus to modifying the move. ^{ch. 1340}

Fang Yuan finishes designing the version that folds rank seven precaution Immortal Gu into vajra shell, and only the test remains. ^{ch. 1346} The first test breaks: as a divination tortoise he raises a mass of mortal Gu, then vajra thought Immortal Gu with further mortal Gu behind it, then precaution Immortal Gu, and the move falls apart before precaution can release its power, destroying the mortal Gu and leaving him spitting blood with damaged organs, while precaution Immortal Gu itself is unharmed. Several deductions later he finds the blind spot, that precaution Immortal Gu releases its power on the eleventh breath rather than the tenth, and he sets about adding time path Gu worms to cover the gap. ^{ch. 1347} Days of deduction bring the modification through, and he leaves seclusion with vajra shell completed and tested several times. ^{ch. 1348}

Vajra shell is already running when the fight against Black Tigress opens, its tortoise-shell thoughts circulating around the divination tortoise’s body in growing numbers. He has a composed plan, using these thoughts to defend himself first and sending the new ones outward, and does not take the bait when Black Tigress feigns an opening to draw him out. ^{ch. 1352}

Against Black Tigress he activates rank seven Immortal Gu Precaution already fused into the move; the original vajra shell stops and a new vajra shell runs instead. That version uses many time path mortal Gu to remove precaution Immortal Gu’s ten-breath delay, so its defensive effect is active as soon as vajra shell starts; the small tortoise-shell thoughts expand and harden, and the tortoise body takes on a darker metallic light. The shell thoughts keep spinning and multiplying while he shelters inside, lifting his defence and its range once more, and after a long while a hundred thousand of them surround him. ^{ch. 1353}