The Medicine Emperor's attitude was resolute.
The Hundred-Legged Heavenly Lord smiled slightly. "Rest assured on that point, Immortal Friend. Chu Du has already seen the coming and discussed it with me. He is willing to make concessions in this regard."
"Good." The Medicine Emperor nodded.
The two exchanged words a while longer and played through about a third of their chess game. Once enough time had passed, the two immortals descended from the sky one after the other.
They then announced to everyone that in the preceding duel, the Medicine Emperor had prevailed by one move. The Blood Battle Martial Arts Convention had ended with victory going to the Golden Family's allied forces.
The Gu Immortals of the Chu Gate and the Hundred-Legged Family all wore ashen expressions. Only Chu Du remained calm, having long anticipated this outcome.
In contrast, the Gu Immortals of the Golden Family were wrapped in jubilation.
The details of the subsequent victors' verdicts need not be recounted. The Blood Battle Martial Arts Convention, which had shaken the Northern Plains' Gu Immortal world and even sent ripples across the other four regions, had thus drawn to a close.
Southern Border. The super dream realm.
A deep, dark stretch of seabed.
Darkness — one could not see one's fingers before one's face.
Fang Yuan was immersed in it, his injuries severe.
The pressure at the bottom of the sea was immense, and more critically, in the surrounding waters, countless lithe draconian figures drifted and circled around him.
These were flood dragons that lived in the sea.
Each sea dragon possessed the combat power of a Desolate Beast.
Densely packed, layer upon layer, the sea dragons numbered in the hundreds, even thousands.
The character Fang Yuan was currently inhabiting had already reached the Sixth Transformation Gu Immortal stage, yet against such a vast horde of sea dragons, even he could not hope to match them.
"Worse still, to clear this ninth scene of the dream, I have to kill every last sea dragon."
Fang Yuan let out a bitter inward laugh.
In reality, his odds of fighting through the encirclement and breaking free would be vanishingly slim.
And within this dream, its own rules applied. If Fang Yuan tried to break out and survive, that would count as a failed exploration of the dream.
There was simply no path to survival here!
"With the resources and methods available inside this dream, it's absolutely impossible to eliminate all these sea dragons!"
Therefore, if Fang Yuan wanted to clear this scene, there was only one option before him: the Immortal Dao killing move — Dream Unraveling.
"But with so many sea dragons, my Dream Unraveling move can be activated fewer than ten times. That's nowhere near enough to solve this enormous problem."
"So this scene must represent the final years of the dream owner's cultivation life."
A flash of understanding arose in Fang Yuan's mind.
Dreams fell into different categories. Most were realistic dreams — restorations of various episodes in some being's life. A smaller portion were bizarre, eerie, and grotesque.
The dream Fang Yuan was exploring was clearly a realistic dream. It might have been somewhat exaggerated beyond the original facts, but it still reflected things that had once truly occurred.
"This Gu Immortal was once a disciple of the War Immortal Sect."
"He had decent talent, but after advancing to the Sixth Transformation, he paled in comparison to the surrounding Gu Immortals."
"The ten great ancient sects of the Central Continent allocated cultivation resources based on sect contributions. This Gu Immortal's aptitude was mediocre, his combat power weak, and his methods unremarkable. It was very difficult for him to make any meaningful contribution to the sect, and even harder to obtain cultivation resources. That's why he thought to venture out and explore the Eastern Sea."
"In the end, he first suffered damage to his Immortal aperture's foundation while passing through the barrier wall of the five regions. Then, after falling for some rumor about the Immortal Gu House Dragon Palace, he came to explore this stretch of sea — only to be besieged by the sea dragon horde and perish here."
Having thought this through, Fang Yuan finally made his decision: he chose to give up.
He voluntarily withdrew from this dream.
Generally speaking, the deeper one explored such a dream, the greater the rewards from breaking through each scene — far exceeding what came before.
But Fang Yuan made the wise call to retreat in the face of an impossible challenge.
He preserved his Dream Unraveling killing move rather than squandering it here to no purpose.
A short while later, Fang Yuan returned to reality.
He used Courage Gu to heal his injuries, then checked his current condition.
Water Path quasi-grandmaster.
This realm had not changed.
He was still some distance from true grandmaster level.
But it was already sufficient to devour many of the Immortal aperture blessed lands in the market. After all, most of them were Sixth Transformation Water Path blessed lands.
"Given the current situation, the best approach is to raise everything evenly — first bring all my path realms up to at least the Master level."
"That way, I'll be able to devour any Sixth Transformation blessed land."
"Although Sixth Transformation blessed lands contribute less and less to my cultivation advancement, increasing the number I devour would still produce a respectable effect."
Fang Yuan mused over this.
Next, his main focus would be diving into his own dreams and refining some mortal Gu related to the Dream Path.