Northern Border, Celestial Phoenix Grotto-Heaven.
Eight-Transformation Gu Immortal, Celestial Phoenix Crown Prince, sat cross-legged in silence, his eyes tightly shut.
Firelight wreathed his body like flowing rainbow garments, brilliant and multifaceted, like dragons and snakes dancing, noble and unmatched.
Suddenly, Crown Prince opened his mouth and spat out a tiny flame bead.
The flame bead grew with the wind, and after a single breath, swelled into an orange-red fireball the size of an infant's head.
The fireball circled around Crown Prince continuously, moving up and down, left and right.
In a moment, Crown Prince opened his mouth again and spat out another flame bead.
Soon, eight fireballs were whizzing around Crown Prince, not colliding with each other, each following a mysterious trajectory to constantly orbit him.
At that instant, Crown Prince's eyes snapped open.
An incredibly sharp, piercing light shot from his gaze, impossible to face directly.
*Boom! Boom! Boom!...*
The eight fireballs exploded one after another, dissolving into scattered flames that immediately dispersed in the air.
"Failed again, I see. No trace of Fang Yuan was calculated." Crown Prince's eyes burned intensely as he stared fixedly at the flames dispersing from the detonated fireballs.
If the calculation had succeeded, these flames would have instantly depicted Fang Yuan's current location and what he was doing.
But obviously, Crown Prince had failed once more.
He had found nothing.
"I am not a Wisdom Path Gu Immortal after all. Just using Fire Path methods to simulate the Wisdom Path, it seems impossible to calculate Fang Yuan's location." Crown Prince sighed.
He had been tasked with capturing Fang Yuan, but the trouble was that Fang Yuan hid himself too deeply. Often, he stayed deep within his blessed land and didn't come out. Blessed lands, grotto-heavens—unless fused with fragments of the Nine Heavens—were completely separate worlds. Totally isolated from the outside world of the Five Regions, even Fairy Zi Wei couldn't calculate them.
Crown Prince, who primarily cultivated the Fire Path, made it even more impossible.
Of course, Fang Yuan would go out sometimes.
But he possessed "Meeting Before Familiarity" and even the Gu Immortal "Covert Crossing." Combined with the numerous Dark Path dao marks on his body, Fang Yuan could conceal his tracks every time.
"Lord Phoenix Prince, someone from the Gong family is here, requesting an audience." Just then, a female Gu Immortal in yellow robes arrived in the main hall and reported.
She was beautiful as a flower, with watery eyes and a cherry-red mouth—one of Crown Prince's two Gu Immortal maidservants, Le Yao.
"A visitor from the Gong family? Hmph." Crown Prince's eyebrow lifted slightly. "I won't see them."
"But the Gong family Gu Immortal brought the Longevity Decree." Le Yao hesitated.
Crown Prince sneered coldly, "And what of the Longevity Decree? Can it command the Golden Bloodline? I'm not one of them."
Le Yao pouted slightly, "But my lord, you've forgotten. We're all undercover agents planted in the Northern Border now. Your public identity is still the Gong family's son-in-law and an external Grand Elder. Openly disobeying the Longevity Decree... wouldn't that be inappropriate?"
"Ha ha." Crown Prince laughed heartily. "Le Yao, you're only half right. Longevity Heaven is not to be underestimated—it's a Nine-Transformation Grotto-Heaven, possessing the foundation of the Immortal Venerable Ju Yang. It's unfathomable. Here in the Northern Border, it's like the Heavenly Court in the Central Continent! But Longevity Heaven suddenly issuing an order to unite the Golden Bloodline clans, having all the righteous superpowers besiege the Bai Zu family—this is a unified external campaign of the Golden Bloodline. The fall of the Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, the establishment of the Bai Zu family, and the founding of the Chu Sect have repeatedly provoked Longevity Heaven's bottom line. This time, Longenery Heaven definitely won't issue an order for me to act. Medicine Sovereign is their only choice!"
Crown Prince's incisive analysis made Le Yao's eyes light up, but she was still puzzled, "Then why did the Gong family Gu Immortal specifically come with the Longevity Decree?"
A cold glint flashed in Crown Prince's eyes, "These people from the Gong family are the fox borrowing the tiger's might. They want to use the Longevity Decree to bluff me into taking action. You know what the Gong family wants—these people are still dreaming of becoming the number one righteous power."
"I see! Then we won't see them!" Le Yao laughed, revealing teeth like pearls, her smile brilliant as a spring landscape.
Exactly as Crown Prince had analyzed, a few days later, the Longevity Decree spread to all the righteous Golden Bloodline families on the Northern Border and ultimately landed in the hands of Medicine Sovereign.
Medicine Sovereign held the Longevity Decree in his withered old hand and let out a long, drawn-out sigh.
"So, this Longevity Decree had to end up in my hands after all."
His self-murmuring indicated that Medicine Sovereign had long been resigned to this.
In fact, the situation was quite clear.
Lord Bai Zu was an Eight-Transformation Gu Immortal. When the righteous forces of the Northern Border united to deal with the Bai Zu family, they needed at least one Eight-Transformation Gu Immortal to confront Lord Bai Zu.
Of all the publicly known Eight-Transformation Gu Immortals on the Northern Border, Lord Bai Zu was excluded first, Old Ancestor Snow Beard was Demonic Path, and the Pentastyle Grand Mage was a rogue cultivator who had offended Longevity Heaven and was now imprisoned in the Pagode of Catastrophe. Only Crown Prince and Medicine Sovereign remained.
Crown Prince's background was his biggest flaw.
He wasn't Golden Bloodline; he was just the Gong family's son-in-law!
If they relied on Crown Prince to defeat the Bai Zu family, wouldn't that prove the Pentastyle Grand Mage's words correct? The mighty Golden Bloodline, the descendants of Immortal Venerable Ju Yang—could they truly not solve their own problems against a powerful enemy?
Therefore, the person Longevity Heaven had always preferred was only one—the Eight-Transformation Refinement Path Gu Immortal, Medicine Sovereign!
In truth, deep down, Medicine Sovereign really didn't want to get involved in this mess.
These past days, he had still been busy refining the Gu Immortal "Reviving the Dead and Bringing Back to Life."