Fang Yuan had begun secretly developing another composite killing move once more.
His divine sense roamed within the Supreme Immortal Aperture. Under its sweep lay a heap of assorted mortal Gu Insects.
He casually extracted two wind-path Gu Insects from the pile.
The First Transformation one was called the Breeze Wind Wheel Gu, and the Second Transformation one was the Azure Wind Wheel Gu.
When the former was activated, it would coil a pale green whirlwind around each of a Gu Master's calves, increasing movement speed.
The latter was one of the upgraded refined results of the Breeze Wind Wheel Gu — it could form a pair of azure-green whirlwinds, like two arm rings, that strapped onto a Gu Master's forearms, accelerating the speed of their attacks.
"I currently lack means of movement for large-scale battles. Why not use these as the foundation to create one?" Inspiration struck Fang Yuan, and he sank into deep thought.
Ever since his clash with the Qi Sea Clone in the Ancient Two Heavens, he had developed this need.
Though the entire affair with the Qi Sea Clone had been a scheme — a trap laid for the Eastern Sea Righteous Path and the Great Alliance of Alien Races — Fang Yuan and the Qi Sea Clone had genuinely fought each other.
If not, how could they have produced such terrifying phenomena during their battle? After all, that sparring session between the original and the clone had cracked the very sky, raining down Sky-Rending Powder!
During that amicable exchange, most of the killing moves Fang Yuan had deployed performed admirably. The worst among them were at least mediocre — passable, if unremarkable. They hadn't produced any pleasant surprises, but neither had they been disappointing.
The sparring session also made Fang Yuan aware of his shortcomings. Although he had already developed quite a few composite killing moves, most were offensive or defensive in nature. Movement techniques still left something to be desired.
The two wind-path Gu Insects gave Fang Yuan a flash of inspiration.
In his envisioned design, once he activated the wind-path Gu Insects, two wind rings would condense beneath his feet, rotating continuously like a pair of wheels. As long as he kept channeling them, the wind wheels would spin faster and faster, pulling his body along at increasing speed.
"Let me see — how many wind-path Immortal Gu do I have?"
Fang Yuan possessed very few wind-path Immortal Gu in his arsenal. However, the recent large-scale battle had yielded him quite a few captured wind-path Immortal Gu.
Members of the Great Alliance of Alien Races had also held some in their possession.
As a last resort, Fang Yuan could always extort the entire Eastern Sea Righteous Path to obtain wind-path Immortal Gu.
His options were far too wide!
Before long, Fang Yuan acquired multiple wind-path Immortal Gu from his subordinates, all at the Seventh Transformation level.
After some careful study — cross-referencing numerous wind-path Immortal Gu recipes and wind-path killing moves — Fang Yuan's wind-path killing move was successfully drafted.
Upon its initial activation, two wind rings indeed formed beneath his feet, capable of propelling a Gu Immortal's body forward.
After test-driving the move, Fang Yuan's brow furrowed slightly as he identified its greatest deficiency.
Although this killing move could progressively grow faster, its starting speed was too sluggish. It required a sustained period of channeling before any noticeable improvement in speed kicked in.
How could he improve it?
This was actually a common problem in wind-path killing moves. Whether it was a gentle breeze or a raging gale, they all needed time to build up to their maximum power.
But if one wanted to reach maximum power from the very start, there were naturally many methods available. If one's wind-path attainment was profound, the killing move's structure could be redesigned with exquisite precision. Alternatively, one could sacrifice a large amount of time for preliminary buildup, then unleash everything in a single burst. Or one could expend far more Immortal Essence to achieve greater power.
However, Fang Yuan discarded every single one of these approaches!
Because they were all conventional methods.
Fang Yuan had his eyes on the Path of Flame.
The Path of Flame's performance in terms of explosive power left the Path of Wind far behind. In terms of raw explosiveness alone, the Path of Flame ranked among the very best across all Paths.
After selecting a few suitable flame-path Immortal Gu, the composite killing move was successfully improved!
"Let's call it the Wind Fire Wheel," Fang Yuan said casually, assigning it a simple name.
The Wind Fire Wheel killing move offered both explosive startup power for rapid acceleration and the ability to keep getting faster. More crucially, its Immortal Essence consumption was modest, and the mental burden it demanded was relatively light.
Fang Yuan tested it once more, feeling quite satisfied. All things considered, the Wind Fire Wheel killing move ranked among the excellent tier within the Seventh Transformation, stomping on seventy percent of existing killing moves!
However, if this killing move were to fall into the hands of other Gu Immortals, the situation would be entirely different.
Practically no Gu Immortal would be foolish enough to use it, because the internal friction between the wind-path and flame-path alone would drag the move's actual effectiveness down to the Sixth Transformation level.
Expenditure of Seventh Transformation-level Immortal Essence for only Sixth Transformation power — in the eyes of other Gu Immortals, such a killing move would be considered bottom of the bottom tier!
This was the marvel of possessing over three thousand Heavenly Dao Dao Marks.
The drastically reduced internal friction between different Path Dao Marks allowed many killing moves to be reborn in Fang Yuan's hands.
Most importantly, the difficulty of computing composite killing moves had been greatly reduced!
If an ordinary Gu Immortal who primarily cultivated the wind-path wanted to conceive a killing move like the Wind Fire Wheel, they certainly wouldn't be foolish enough to use flame-path Immortal Gu as a dual core. At most, they would incorporate a few low-transformation Immortal Gu from other Paths as supplements, and the quantity could not be large.
The most common approach was to use a massive number of flame-path mortal Gu to minimize internal friction as much as possible. But doing so would cause the number of Gu Insects in the killing move to skyrocket, the difficulty of activation would soar, the mental burden would increase dramatically, and the composite evaluation of the killing move would plummet.
For a killing move to be practical, the number of Gu Insects couldn't be too large, the Immortal Essence burden couldn't be too heavy, the effect had to be good, and there couldn't be any obvious vulnerabilities.
This was precisely why creating killing moves was such an incredibly difficult and monumental undertaking!
But in Fang Yuan's hands, conceiving composite killing moves not only allowed for dual cores, but also triple cores, quadruple cores, and other multi-core configurations. If the Path of Wind wasn't good at explosive power, he simply used the Path of Flame — freely choosing as he pleased.
The conceptual space for creating and refining killing moves within a single Path was limited.
Composite killing moves were even more so, because the consideration of internal friction meant that throughout the history of Gu cultivation, the number of composite killing moves was far fewer than those belonging to a single Path.