Immortal Gu Killer Move — Heavenly Secret Confusion!
Everything was silent and imperceptible.
But Fang Yuan knew precisely how much immortal essence he had consumed upon activating this Ninth Transformation killer move.
A full three hundred and sixty Ninth Transformation immortal essence!
After the Heavenly Secret Gu was successfully refined to the Ninth Transformation, the Heavenly Secret Confusion killer move had also been improved by Fang Yuan, becoming a complete Ninth Transformation killer move.
Compared to the previous Eighth Transformation Heavenly Secret Confusion, the Ninth Transformation killer move's immortal essence consumption had skyrocketed, its activation time extended by more than ten times, the steps required to activate it had become five or six times more complex, and the mental effort Fang Yuan needed to sustain it was far more draining.
Such a tremendous cost naturally meant that the Ninth Transformation Heavenly Secret Confusion was vastly more powerful!
This increase in power was not merely quantitative — it had undergone a qualitative transformation.
The original Eighth Transformation Heavenly Secret Confusion killer move could generate temporary Heavenly Dao traces in the form of a fishing net, layer upon layer, intricate and densely intertwined, covering Fang Yuan's entire body.
To use an analogy, it was like a silkworm spinning thread after thread to form a thick, dense, bloated cocoon.
The current Heavenly Dao traces were still shaped like a fishing net, but far finer and more refined. Moreover, they no longer layered on top of each other — just a single, simple layer.
This layer of Heavenly Dao net traces was no longer temporary, but had been fixed into place, forming a kind of permanent state.
Fang Yuan understood this situation thoroughly. He strained his senses to the utmost, activating his investigation killer move, and only then could he barely perceive this layer of Heavenly Secret net.
It existed in a state bordering between presence and absence!
This form of the Heavenly Secret net immediately reminded Fang Yuan of the Ghost Unnoticed killer move left behind by the Spectral Soul Demon Venerable.
In all honesty, the Heavenly Secret net still fell short of Ghost Unnoticed by a significant margin. But Fang Yuan could clearly sense that the two now shared some fundamental quality.
Ghost Unnoticed could be maintained for a long duration without consuming any immortal essence.
The Heavenly Secret net was now the same.
However, the Heavenly Secret net was still slightly inferior to Ghost Unnoticed, because although it could stabilize itself, it was not immune to depletion.
If external investigative methods were powerful enough, the Heavenly Secret net would suffer attrition from the effort of resisting them. If that attrition exceeded its self-repair rate, the Heavenly Secret net would gradually lose its equilibrium — like a ship slowly sinking beneath the waves.
Of course, Ghost Unnoticed had this same drawback. Its recovery rate and the upper threshold of its investigative resistance were simply much higher than the Heavenly Secret net's.
But since the intelligence on the Ghost Unnoticed killer move was already known to Fang Yuan's opponents, and they had developed countermeasures against it, the true value of Ghost Unnoticed was far inferior to that of the Heavenly Secret Confusion killer move.
Even though Ghost Unnoticed was genuinely superior to Heavenly Secret Confusion in many respects, it had become obsolete.
Beyond its massive increase in power and qualitative transformation, the Heavenly Secret Confusion killer move offered another benefit: the amount of Heavenly Dao immortal materials required to activate it had plummeted.
It had dropped to just twenty percent of what it was before!
This reduction in Heavenly Dao material consumption would be of tremendous help to Fang Yuan's future accumulation of such materials.
Heavenly Dao immortal materials were not easy to acquire.
It was only during the recent two days of confusion that Fang Yuan had such a favorable opportunity.
In fact, the ability for Heavenly Dao materials to appear in such large quantities was thanks to the deranged Spectral Soul Demon Venerable. Such an opportunity was truly once in a millennium.
The Ninth Transformation Heavenly Secret Gu, along with the Ninth Transformation Heavenly Secret Confusion killer move, held enormous strategic significance for Fang Yuan.
This was a race against time!
If the sprint failed and Fang Yuan was exposed, he would suffer the combined onslaught of two Venerables.
One need only look at how Star Constellation Immortal Venerable had treated Giant Sun Immortal Venerable over the Ninth Transformation Light Gu to understand the consequences.
She had been extremely aggressive, pressing hard without mercy.
In the end, Giant Sun Immortal Venerable had been forced to retreat into Longevity Heaven with the Light Emperor before Star Constellation finally relented.
Once Fang Yuan was exposed, it would be two Ninth Transformation Immortal Gu!
He had no equivalent fortress like Longevity Heaven or Heavenly Court.
And if Star Constellation Immortal Venerable and Giant Sun Immortal Venerable joined forces, it would be even more terrifying!
Star Constellation Immortal Venerable's Wisdom Path controlled certainties.
Giant Sun Immortal Venerable's Luck Path explored variables.
The two Venerables inherently restrained each other, but once they collaborated, their strengths and weaknesses would perfectly complement one another. The combined force of their alliance was not something Fang Yuan could withstand.
After all, Fang Yuan had not yet developed any offensive means at the Ninth Transformation level.
Even if Fang Yuan managed to hold his ground, the resulting three-way standoff would be extremely disadvantageous to him, and he lacked sufficient strength to offset the advantages of Longevity Heaven and Heavenly Court as their respective strongholds.
With both Giant Sun Immortal Venerable and Star Constellation Immortal Venerable standing in inviolable positions, deepening their cooperation, the likelihood of them pulling off some unforeseen scheme was very real.
It could be said that once exposed, Fang Yuan would be thrust into an exceedingly passive situation.
But now things were different.
With the Ninth Transformation Heavenly Secret Confusion killer move, at the very last moment, he had narrowly stabilized the favorable situation.
Refining the Heavenly Secret Gu to the Ninth Transformation was not inherently difficult, but Fang Yuan had still risked his life to achieve success.
The fact that he had succeeded in refining the Ninth Transformation Immortal Gu on his first attempt was partly due to luck.
This was the turning point of the three-way Venerable standoff!
Now, Fang Yuan possessed a Grandmaster-level attainment in the Heavenly Dao, a variety of killer moves such as Heaven's Envy of Brilliance, Heavenly Net Vast and Loose, Heaven and Earth Are Ruthless, Celestial Laws and Terrestrial Constants, and Heavenly Secret Confusion, along with Immortal Gu including the Heavenly Secret Gu, Heavenly Net Gu, Heavenly Envy Gu, and Natural Born Gu.
He also had the Truth Floating Ice.
By now, the Truth Floating Ice had been consumed to a little over half of its original stockpile.
It was worth mentioning that after Fang Yuan advanced to the Grandmaster level in the Heavenly Dao, his rate of dissolving the Truth Floating Ice had also accelerated significantly!
This was easy to understand.
An increase in Fang Yuan's Heavenly Dao attainment was tantamount to an improvement in his foundation. He could comprehend the Heavenly Dao mysteries contained within the Truth Floating Ice faster and more thoroughly.
Back during the competition at the Madness Demon Cave, Earth Bound Immortal Venerable had obtained the Truth Floating Ice and digested it at a remarkable speed, nearly vaulting directly to the level of a Dao Venerable!
"However, I consumed over half of the Truth Floating Ice just to elevate my Heavenly Dao attainment to Grandmaster. With only the remaining portion, pushing it further to Grand Grandmaster will be extremely difficult."
The higher a cultivator's level, the wider the gap between adjacent stages.
The same was true for attainment levels. Roughly half of the Truth Floating Ice had been enough to help Fang Yuan advance from an ordinary level to Heavenly Dao Expert, and then to Heavenly Dao Grandmaster.
But the same amount of remaining Truth Floating Ice would find it far more challenging to push Fang Yuan from Grandmaster to Grand Grandmaster.
Even so, Fang Yuan was already quite satisfied.
The Truth Floating Ice, this spoil of war from the Madness Demon Cave, had brought him tremendous value.