"Fang Yuan, what are you doing?"
"Stop this at once! With a powerful enemy before us, how can we turn on each other?"
"Stop, or else— ugh!"
The crowd was horrified. Fang Yuan struck again without mercy, cleaving another clansman to death.
"I'm only killing members of the Guye Clan! Everyone else, back off! Or I'll slaughter you all too!" Fang Yuan roared.
The crowd froze and retreated in unison. None of them had ever anticipated that Fang Yuan would be this unhinged.
"Fang Yuan has lost his mind!"
"He's lost his reason! Everyone, attack him together!"
"That's right! If this keeps up, we'll be killed by Fang Yuan before we even get the chance to drive back our enemy…"
Fang Yuan had stirred up a hornet's nest. Everyone was furious, yet no one dared to make the first move. Many were roaring and shouting, trying to rouse others to action.
"Hahaha, interesting!" Bai Ningbing suddenly burst into laughter and struck out, killing someone beside him as well.
"Lord Bai Ningbing, you—!" The person who had fallen was none other than a member of the Bai family.
"Lord Bai Ningbing has gone mad too!" The crowd was terrified beyond belief.
Fang Yuan narrowed his eyes, looking at Bai Ningbing. He hadn't expected this kind of transformation from him.
Bai Ningbing laughed crazily. "If you can kill your own clansmen, I'm certainly no worse. Sigh, the situation is already lost regardless. No matter how this ends, the casualties will be too severe—the Bai Family Stronghold will never recover. The only patriarch who ever showed me kindness is dead. Might as well kill everyone and make things interesting."
"Hehehe, that would be perfect." Fang Yuan laughed aloud, his figure flickering as he began a full-scale slaughter.
These clansmen were going to die anyway. Better they die by his hand—to raise his own aptitude, not Gu Yue Yidai's.
Inside the blood dome, these people stood no chance against the combined might of Fang Yuan and Bai Ningbing. Bai Ningbing in particular, approaching death and wielding fearsome power, killed far more than Fang Yuan did.
Fang Yuan followed behind him, delivering finishing blows and draining their blood.
After killing a hundred people, the Blood Skull Gu reached its limit. The surface of the crystal skull turned a vivid, dripping red.
Fang Yuan laughed heartily, channeling the Blood Skull Gu and suspending it above his head.
The skull's jaws parted, spewing a fragrant fountain of blood that drenched Fang Yuan from head to toe.
Fang Yuan relished it, taking deep breaths and savoring every moment.
With his black hair and black robes now drenched in blood, he looked like a demonic fiend emerging from the depths of hell. Those around him trembled in terror, letting out wretched screams.
"My aptitude—it really has increased!" Fang Yuan's aptitude had originally been only forty-four percent, Grade C. After the Human and Beast Burial Gu, it had dropped to forty-three percent. But now, with the blood spring seeping into his body and irrigating his Empty Orifice, his aptitude had surged by a full ten percent, reaching fifty-three percent!
"It really is a treasure. No wonder Gu Yue Yidai treasured it like his own life!" Fang Yuan opened his eyes, nodded with satisfaction, and began a new wave of killing.
The two of them stirred up a storm of blood within the blood dome.
It was a massacre.
"Fang Yuan, you insane beast!" Gu Yue Moyan charged forward.
Fang Yuan sidestepped her attack, then raised the Serrated Golden Centipede high and brought it crashing down.
The young girl was cleaved in two.
"Fang Yuan, spare us! We're your uncle and aunt!" Guye Dongtu and his wife knelt on the ground, begging for mercy.
Fang Yuan sneered. With a wave of his left hand, a blood-red Moon Blade shot out, and two heads tumbled to the ground.
…
The Blood Skull Gu extracted all the blood from the Guye clansmen, refining it into an essence blood spring that once again bathed Fang Yuan.
"Wonderful…" Fang Yuan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt a warm current coursing through his entire body, making him feel revitalized, as though reborn.
His aptitude rose by another ten percent, reaching sixty-three percent!
A Gu Master's aptitude was graded as follows: forty to fifty percent was Grade C, sixty to seventy percent was Grade B, and eighty to ninety percent was Grade A.
At this moment, Fang Yuan had officially broken free from Grade C and become Grade B!
"But my cultivation has dropped…" Fang Yuan opened his eyes, his gaze heavy and somber.
Fang Yuan's aptitude had risen to Grade B, but his cultivation had fallen from Third Transformation to Second Transformation.
How strange!
Gu Yue Yidai's cultivation hadn't decreased at all, yet his aptitude still increased. So why had things gone wrong with Fang Yuan?
"This is troublesome. It must be the Stone Orifice Gu!" Fang Yuan sighed inwardly.
He, Fang Yuan, had once used the Stone Orifice Gu to drain his Empty Orifice's potential, causing his cultivation to skyrocket to the peak of the Third Transformation. The Blood Skull Gu, on the other hand, irrigated the Empty Orifice with essence blood spring, increasing the potential within and raising Fang Yuan's aptitude.
Without a doubt, these two Gu were in conflict with each other.
But the Blood Skull Gu was a Fourth Transformation Gu, while the Stone Orifice Gu was only Third Transformation. The Blood Skull Gu overpowered the Stone Orifice Gu, gradually transforming Fang Yuan's Empty Orifice from stone back into a Light Film. However, the cultivation boost that the Stone Orifice Gu had provided was also fading. It even began to erode Fang Yuan's cultivation level.
This development was something Fang Yuan hadn't anticipated.
However, as Bai Ningbing grew ever more powerful, slashing through everyone with abandon, Fang Yuan was able to conserve his energy. He stopped taking the initiative, content to continue harvesting the clansmen's bloodline.
Outside the blood dome, Gu Yue Yidai watched as the crowd was slaughtered. He was furious, roaring again and again, but there was nothing he could do.
He had guarded his inherited bloodline for hundreds of years, planning to kill off his own descendants in order to raise his own aptitude. After all that scheming, in the end, someone else had reaped the rewards.