Whizzzz!
Three face-sized moonblades slashed through the air, carrying an eerie blue light.
Screeeech!
Instantly, sixteen to seventeen jade eye stone monkeys were killed on the spot.
The stone monkey groups chasing after Fang Yu were instantly cut down by a small half.
Fang Yuan stood on the spot and didn't retreat. Instead, he lifted his right hand and slashed the air three times.
Three moonblades ran through the stone monkey group, beheading any stone monkey in its way.
The corpses of the stone monkeys fell on the ground, shattering into countless pieces. Their eyes turned into jade pearls and rolled on the blood-filled ground.
Fang Yuan inspected his aperture; he still had greater half of dark red primeval essence remaining.
The Moonglow Gu required ten percent of light red primeval essence to use a moonblade. Fang Yuan could only use four moonblades repeatedly at Rank two initial stage. The number increased to eight when he reached the middle stage. And at the upper stage, the number doubled once more, reaching sixteen.
Fang Yuan wasn't really at Rank two upper stage, but with the Four Flavours Liquor worm's refining of upper stage primeval essence, he could be considered to be at false upper stage; his fighting strength was rising sharply.
Before, he would have needed to fight while retreating when chased by these seventy or eighty stone monkeys. Now, he just attacked with the moonblades, rapidly killing most of them. The remaining stone monkeys had escaped.
"I cleared up three stone pillars within just two days. This speed is many times faster than before! If this goes on, I will be able to re-open a path to the central area in about half a month," Fang Yuan pondered.
"From the Flower Wine Monk's style, the underground cave in the central pillar should be the next barrier. It is very likely that there will be another Earth Treasure Flower Gu at the barrier. I reckon the Flower Wine Monk's strength inheritance is almost over. After all, he was seriously injured and his state was far from good, thus he hurriedly set up this inheritance.
At most, there will probably be two more obstacles remaining."
Fang Yuan recalled the scene on the image wall; the blood-soaked Flower Wine Monk on his last breath. With his previous life's deep experience, he reached this conclusion.
Flower Wine Monk had too little time to set up this legacy, there was no way for him to do more. However, this was a special case.
Gu Masters normally used years to set up their legacies. There were some large scaled legacies that would only open once every ten or more years. Some legacies were even divided and scattered across different areas and could even be at the different ends of the world.
The latter generations would need ten or more years or even decades of time to go through all the tests of such legacies.
Some legacies might not even be explored completely throughout a Gu Master's life; the Gu Master would often leave this incomplete task for their descendants.
"Flower Wine Monk's inheritance can be classified as a micro-scale legacy; its shortcoming being the small amount of inheritance items. But this also has its advantage—the first barrier is arranged according to the local conditions and is thus simple. I have successively obtained White Boar Gu, Jade Skin Gu and Liquor worm from this inheritance.
Stealth Stone Gu can be barely considered as the inheritance. Next, there are probably only two more earth treasure flowers remaining. I hope that the Gu worms in them will be related to scouting or movement-type!"
Time passed quickly, autumn went and winter arrived.
Early winter, the first snowfall had come.
The sky was grey, snowflakes floated and fell on Qing Mao mountain.
Fang Yuan was moving alone through the snow. He had just come out from the secret cave in the stone crack and was hurrying towards the village.
"Over two months have passed, but my progress in clearing the stone pillars has not been good." Fang Yuan's countenance carried a dark scowl.
It was not because he hadn't put in effort, but rather the prelude to the wolf tide had already shown its signs.
Food was scarce during the winter; the growing wolf packs started to increase their hunting scale to gather enough foods to eat their fill.
The wild beast groups in the surroundings were purged due to this. Small beast tides frequently started to occur due to the disorder; similarly, there were also the crippled wolf packs.
These crippled wolves were expelled from the nest. These wolves gathered together and formed a group; they had started making frequent movements near the village.
It hadn't reached the wild stage of attacks on the village yet, but the hunter families no longer went up the mountain to hunt. Similarly, there were occasionally some villagers who lost their lives to the wolves.
Gu Yue village mobilized many Gu Masters to carry out a clean-up operation. Due to this, there were many people moving about, along with lot of scouting Gu Masters among them. Thus, Fang Yuan sensibly decreased the amount of times he went to the secret cave inside the stone crack.
No doubt, this caused the speed of his progress in the stone forest to fall steeply.
The cold wind was getting stronger; snow was also falling heavily.
Houuuuu…
A deep beastly howl suddenly spread through the wind and snow.
Fang Yuan swiftly stopped and looked around, alert.
A small scale wolf pack with about twenty or more lightning wolves quickly appeared in range of his sight.
"Here we go again….." Fang Yuan muttered, this was already the eighth beast group he had encountered this month.
However, this time was somewhat different.
"The wolf packs are starting to make their moves so near to the village. Next, the clan's Gu Masters will make their moves more often. The stone crack's secret cave is not far away; looks like I can't go there for some time." Fang Yuan's heart sank upon this thought.
The journey was difficult, there would always be some obstacles preventing people from progressing.
The wolf pack closed in on Fang Yuan.
Houuu! Houuu! Houuu!
They howled before charging at Fang Yuan, coming at him one after another.
"Moonglow Gu," Fang Yuan willed; a moonblade flew out from his hand.
The eerie blue moonblade slashed through the wind and snow, going through the sickly wolves. It instantly beheaded three wolves, but when it reached the fourth wolf, the wolf suddenly rolled and cleverly dodged the moonblade.
Although most of these crippled wolves were handicapped, blind or missing their tails, they had plenty of battle experience and were very cunning.
A normal Rank two middle stage Gu Master would be in intense danger if they ran into such a group of crippled wolves and especially if they were surrounded by these wolves.
But Fang Yuan was calm.
His plentiful battle experience and the refined upper stage dark red primeval essence were the source of his confidence.
Kill, kill, kill!
He nimbly moved under the joint attacks from the crippled wolves, calmly dodging and decisively attacking.
The wolves continued to die by his hands.
After a short while, the number of the lightning wolves in the pack had sharply decreased by half.
Houuu—!
A wolf gave a mournful howl; the wolf pack immediately stopped their offensive attacks and began retreating.
This was the cunningness of these wolves.
When they discovered that Fang Yuan was a tough bone, they decisively retreated, giving up their plan to hunt Fang Yuan.
These old, sickly and injured wolves weren't in a perfect state but being able to live till now showed their survival wisdom.
Fang Yuan stood on the spot, calmly looking at these crippled wolves disappearing into the wind and snow. If he could hide his strength, then he didn't feel it necessary to reveal it.
After confirming that the wolf pack had completely escaped, he promptly collected the items on the wolf corpses.
Wolf skin, teeth and so on were all valuable.
Although their market price was on the low end, it could be made up by the quantity.
In these two months, Fang Yuan had made some earnings from the spoils of war from eradicating these crippled wolves.
The blood flowing from the wolf corpses were still warm. There were some crippled wolves who still had some breath left, their eyes showing a trace of vigor.
"In this world, not only humans but all living things are struggling to survive. This world is using life and death to unfold a brilliant stage!" Fang Yuan sighed before ruthlessly killing off these dying wolves.
A crippled wolf's fighting strength was higher than two jade eye stone monkeys. Under the coordination with the pack, their fighting strength would double.
"I can still deal with these small-scale crippled wolf packs. But it would be troublesome to handle large scale crippled wolf packs or a small scale healthy wolf pack."
Fang Yuan could feel a faint pressure.
"The wolf tide will break out soon and the whole clan will be mobilized. I won't be able to act aloof. If I want to hunt the lightning wolves by myself, I must have a scouting or movement-type gu. Otherwise, I will fall to the wolf tide."
Fang Yuan clearly recognized his shortcomings due to his ample experience.
His fighting strength had increased sharply after getting the Four Flavours Liquor worm. With the Moonglow Gu and Jade Skin Gu, he had both offense and defense. With his previous life's deep accumulation, he could totally be ranked along with Qing Shu, Chi Shan and Mo Yan.
One could say, he was barely, but already able to stand in the top ranks among the Rank two Gu Masters of the clan.
Why it was barely, was because he was not truly at the upper stage, and at the same time his aptitude was also only C grade and was thus very limited.
Being able to accomplish this much with his fighting strength was already the best result, but fighting strength was only one aspect in surviving the wolf tide.
"I must have a scouting method. If I have a scouting Gu worm, I will be able to sense the movements of the wolf pack and quickly retreat or move through another route. Or use movement-type Gu worms to quickly run and escape from the wolf pack's besiegement," Fang Yuan pondered.
His survival rate would greatly increase if he had just one of these two Gu worms. If he had both, then he would be able to move about easily.
"I hope Flower Wine Monk's legacy contains such Gu worms. It's not a problem even if it doesn't. From my memories, the three clans would jointly establish contributions list during the wolf tides and put their stored Gu worms out for exchange. There were many precious Gu in the list. At that time, I can use my contributions and exchange them for Bai or Xiong village's Gu worms."
Fang Yuan planned in his mind and stood up.
He had swiftly arranged the spoils of war in a short period and packed them in a bag which he then carried on his back.
The snow continued to fall and soon froze the wolf blood, covering their corpses.
"Look, Fang Yuan is back.""He is carrying a bag, did he go out to hunt the crippled wolves again?""It was him that saved our village?"
"Hey, it was only by a stroke of luck. We both know how it went, if I had such great strength, I could also do that. It's no big deal."
As Fang Yuan walked through the village, the people made way for him; there were praises, curiosity and also envy.
"Fang Yuan!" Chi Shan suddenly appeared from a corner and shouted.
Note: The 'blizzards' in the chapter title "There are many blizzards in life" is a metaphor for 'obstacles'.