A day later.
On the futon, Fang Yuan sat cross-legged.
A large face-sized white light was an arms' distance from his face, silently floating.
Fang Yuan took out piece after piece of primeval stones from his money bag and threw them into the light ball.
The white light contracted, but became more eye-piercing.
When it shrunk to a fist-size the white light was glaring, and Fang Yuan could only squint his eyes to observe it.
"Probably the last piece…" Fang Yuan played around with the primeval stone in his hand, knowing that the critical moment was here.
He tossed the primeval stone into the light ball.
He could vaguely see the primeval stone floating around in the light ball, like snow dropping into boiling water, constantly melting away.
A large amount of rock powder fell on the ground.
The primeval stone vanished, and the light ball exploded!
With a bam, the three Gu worms flew in three directions. One fell on the bed, while the other two flew to the walls, and then dropped to the ground.
Refining the Moonglow Gu had failed!
Fang Yuan's heart sank. He quickly moved his finger, calling back his Gu worms.
The Moonlight Gu and Little Light Gu wavered their way to Fang Yuan as they floated around, slowly landing in his palm, but the other Little Light Gu had no response.
It laid on the ground, its milky-white five star-shaped body gradually dissipating into the air.
After a few breath's time, it had completely vanished with no lingering traces.
This was the price of a failed fusion—according to the different fusing recipes, the Gu worm might get injured as a result, or when unlucky, might even die.
Even with his rich experience, adding on to the fact that Fang Yuan could multitask and had the right recipe, there was still a chance of failure.
Fang Yuan was not upset, he had seen such an event many many times. He had already performed to his best, and if the result still failed, it could only be attributed to luck.
"Luckily, it was not the Moonlight Gu that died, but the Little Light Gu. I can just buy another one from the shop, it is easy to replenish. If the Moonlight Gu died, it would not be easy trying to get another one." He had lots of cash now, even if one Little Light Gu died, he could just purchase another one.
Next, he inspected the Moonlight Gu and the remaining Little Light Gu. On the surface of both Gu, it was slightly dimmer than usual. This was the result of an injured Gu due to fusion failure.
"Once a Gu worm gets injured, the chances of a successful fusion would drop drastically. I have to wait for them to recover before I continue trying." Fang Yuan knew that haste does not bring success, and quickly kept the two Gu.
He estimated the time, around at least three days later would he be able to perform another try.
Cultivation did not end there.
Fang Yuan opened his right palm.
His left hand was pale, and on his palm, there was a green insignia with a grass pattern, like a dark green tattoo.
Fang Yuan's thought moved, and the primeval essence in his aperture began to move, like light red fog flowing towards the insignia on his left arm.
The green insignia was instantly brought alive. From Fang Yuan's palm, the tip of the grass emerged, followed by the round leaves of nine dark green leaves, lastly followed by the jade green transparent stem. As for the roots, they were not exposed.
On his palm, the original dark green tattoo was gone, only leaving behind traces of dark green lines. It represented the intertwining of the grass with Fang Yuan's palm.
It was the Rank two grass Gu—Nine Leaf Vitality Grass.
Right now, Fang Yuan's palm was like a piece of land, and a Nine Leaf Vitality Grass was growing on top of it, like the exquisite art made of jade stone carvings.
Fang Yuan stretched out his right hand's finger and plucked the leaves.
With every piece of round leaf that he plucked, Fang Yuan could feel a slight pain himself, like the feeling of pulling his hair.
After the nine pieces were plucked and placed at the bedside by Fang Yuan, there was only the bare stem of the Nine Leaf Vitality Grass left on his palm.
Fang Yuan continued to deploy his primeval essence. The light red-coloured Rank two primeval essence continued to rise from his palm like a cloud of mist, and covered the jade green stem.
The stem continued to absorb the primeval essence, and eventually a bud started to grow from deep within the stem.
This budding was pinkish green, small, delicate and very fragile, breaking upon contact.
Fang Yuan continued to use his primeval essence, and the bud grew bigger, its colour deepening. Eventually it grew into a piece of dark green colour, a completely mature leaf.
"I used up 20% of my primeval essence." Fang Yuan inspected his aperture and concluded.
He only had 44% primeval essence in his sea, that meant that he could only create two vitality leaves at one go.
After creating another piece, Fang Yuan grabbed a piece of primeval stone and rapidly recovered the primeval essence in his aperture.
When the primeval essence rose to 40%, he nurtured the vitality leaf again.
Rinsing and repeating like this after half a day, he had finally made the Nine Leaf Vitality Grass grow back to nine full leaves.
He did not pluck the leaves this time, but with a thought, kept the Nine Leaf Vitality Grass back into his left palm, turning it back into a green insignia.
He took the leaves that he plucked and placed them into a small bag, bringing it with him.
A piece of vitality leaf was a Rank one Gu worm, each worth around fifty primeval stones in the market. This meant that with just these nine leaves, it could allow Fang Yuan to earn four hundred and fifty primeval stones.
Of course, he incurred costs in creating them, but excluding costs, he still profited around four hundred primeval stones.
Among all of the family assets, the most valuable one was no doubt this Nine Leaf Vitality Grass. Owning it was tantamount to owning a gold mine! And this Nine Leaf Vitality Grass had an advantage too—it was easy to feed. It only needed water and sunlight to survive, thus there was virtually no cost in raising it.
To Fang Yuan, he could give up all the other family assets, but for this Nine Leaf Vitality Grass, he needed to grasp it firmly in his hands!
Of course, this type of Nine Leaf Vitality Grass Gu was not owned by Fang Yuan alone. In the village, others held this grass Gu as well.
In fact, there were five Nine Leaf Vitality Grass Gu that was collective property owned by the clan. Everyday there were specialized Gu Masters whose missions were to create large numbers of vitality leaves.
To Fang Yuan, this is a good thing.
If he alone had the Nine Leaf Vitality Grass, the clan would definitely strike and buy this grass Gu by force. Just like how Gu Yue Qing Shu represented the clan and came to buy his Liquor worm.
Precious Gu like Liquor worm, Black and White Boar Gu and the Nine Leaf Vitality Grass, the clan higher-ups all wanted to control it and make it useful for the whole clan.
Three days later.
A light ball under Fang Yuan's supervision suddenly exploded, and a new Gu worm floated in midair slowly.
It was sparkling and translucent, bent like a crescent, resembling a piece of water blue crystal. In a nutshell, it was like the Moonlight Gu that was enlarged in size by twofold.
Yet it was not the Moonlight Gu, but the higher-ranking Rank two moonglow Gu.
This time, Fang Yuan's fusion succeeded.
The Moonglow Gu is made by fusing a Moonlight Gu and two Little Light Gu. A Little Light Gu can raise the power of the moonblade by 100%, but two Little Light Gu still raised its power by 100%, this boost was not additive.
But the refined Rank two Moonglow Gu, its attack power reached three times of the Moonlight Gu!
Actually, there are many different recipes to refine the Moonlight Gu, and it has many advancement paths.
Fang Yuan took this path to raise the moonblade's attack power to the limit. The attacking range remained unchanged, it still had a scope of ten meters.
There was a route—using the Moonlight Gu and the Stone Scar Gu to perform fusion, the result would be the Moon Scar Gu. Its attack power remained unchanged, but the range doubled, reaching twenty meters.
There was another common route, which was using the Moonlight Gu with the Whirlwind Gu to fuse, creating the Moonwhirl Gu. Using it, the moonblade turns from blue to green, and at the same time its attack trajectory becomes curved. Gu Yue Qing Shu took this path.
As for Gu Yue Fang Zheng, he used the Moonlight Gu and Jade Skin Gu to create the Moon Raiment. This was a rare route and had an upper limit of Rank five, becoming the Moonlight Treasure King Gu.
However, having a Rank five recipe did not mean it was definitely possible to create a Rank five Gu worm.
Many Rank five Gu Masters did not have a single Rank five Gu in their possession.
What causes this awkward situation is not a lack of ingredients, but the success rate.
Gu fusion was not a 100% success rate. The higher the ranking of the Gu worm you are trying to refine, the lower the success rate. In his previous life, Fang Yuan's Spring Autumn Cicada had a success rate of less than 1%, and it failed countless times. Sometimes, he was lucky and less Gu worms died; other times, all the Gu worms died together.
To refine the Rank six Spring Autumn Cicada, it needed all Rank five Gu worms. Once these Gu worms die, all of Fang Yuan's hard work and accumulation would go up into smoke, becoming an illusion.
Fang Yuan failed countless times and started over many times, fusing once again and collecting Gu worms and special ingredients all over again. Eventually, he caused too much of a commotion and incurred a public outrage, causing the will of the people to become disorganised, and many deaths forming seas of blood and floating corpses.
He was lucky though, as he finally succeeded and obtained the Spring Autumn Cicada.
But once he obtained this Rank six Gu, all the righteous cultivators who were eyeing his Gu all along came to attack, and before he even got a chance to familiarise himself with the Gu, he suicided.
Thousands of millions of years, it was because of this disgusting failure rate that caused many high-ranking Gu Masters to waste their efforts, and go back to square one.
The only way was to slightly curb this failure rate.
And that is —
Vital Gu.
No matter the fusion result, failure or success, the vital Gu never dies. At most it gets injured.
Why?
Many people guessed that it was because the vital Gu is the Gu Master's first Gu worm and is linked to the Gu Master's life, forming a mystical relationship and connection.
As long as the Gu Master is alive, if the vital Gu's fusion fails, at most it would be almost dead.
Of course, the other Gu worms used in the fusion had a possibility of death.
Even so, a portion of the Gu Master's fruits and labour can be preserved and accumulated.
The vital Gu is the Gu Master's greatest fortune and fallback. Whatever the vital Gu is, it can to a large extent affect the Gu Master's development path. Conversely, Gu Masters also find new recipes aggressively to raise the level of their vital Gu.
Some Rank two and Rank three garbage recipes, to Gu Masters, it worsened their future prospects.
When Fang Yuan found that the Spring Autumn Cicada had become his vital Gu, why was he so happy?
This was why.
The Spring Autumn Cicada was an extremely rare Gu worm, allowing others to rebirth, it was a heaven-defying ability. No matter how it is refined, it will not die. If this was Fang Yuan's previous life where the Spring Autumn Cicada was not his vital Gu, if he continued refining, it could potentially die.
Spring Autumn Cicada was Rank six, something many Gu Masters would never be able to reach in their lifetime. An extremely large number of Gu Masters did not even have a Rank six recipe, and are still desperately searching!
Spring Autumn Cicada, although unable to be used to its full potential by the current Fang Yuan, was still his greatest treasure. The Flower Wine Monk's inheritance compared to this, was a difference between heaven and earth.