Liu Wenwu was defeated.
Defeated unwillingly, but iron facts do not bend to one's will.
Liu Wenwu, Ouyang Bisang, and Mo Shikuang all possessed methods of flight. But in terms of aerial mastery, they were far inferior to Fang Yuan.
The sky was different from the ground. In the sky, one could soar freely — dodge and weave in any direction, up, down, left, right, north, south, east, west. On the ground, one's room for evasion was far more limited.
No matter how the three Liu brothers pursued and intercepted, they couldn't lay a finger on Fang Yuan.
Meanwhile, while dodging, Fang Yuan simultaneously commanded the massive wolf army, slaughtering and butchering great swaths of Liu family troops.
The three Liu brothers had no choice but to abandon their pursuit of Fang Yuan and instead support the lower-ranked Gu Masters in culling the wolf packs.
But this was exactly what Hei Loulan, Fang Yuan, and the others wanted!
Using the lives of wolf kings and extraordinary beast wolves to drain the precious True Essence of the three Liu brothers — this was an extremely cost-effective trade, one that heavily favored Fang Yuan.
A Gu Master, as long as they had not ascended to Immortal rank, had finite True Essence. Once a Gu Master's True Essence ran dry, their combat power would plummet to rock bottom.
The wolf tide surged without end. The more wolves the three Liu brothers slaughtered, the more violently their True Essence was consumed.
The wolf packs were enormous in scale, ceaselessly replenishing. The three brothers slaughtered until their arms went limp, and their True Essence ran dry.
When they were forced to conserve what little remained, they could no longer fight as they pleased. The high-level forces of the Hei family finally gained the upper hand, pressing them down.
"Hei Loulan! Today I was not defeated by you, but by Tai Bai Yun Sheng and Chang Shan Yin!" Liu Wenwu's hair was in disarray, his body riddled with wounds, all composure gone as he let out an unwilling roar.
He believed that with the three brothers' killer move, "Three Heads Six Arms," their combat strength was formidable enough to crush the entire battlefield. If they had targeted Fang Yuan from the start, relying on their absolute speed, they surely could have killed him, causing the wolf packs to collapse and securing a great victory over the Hei family army.
But Tai Bai Yun Sheng's Fifth Transformation healing Gu, Ren Ru Gu, had an effect that was simply extraordinary, severely diminishing the effectiveness of their killer move.
When they tried to make amends by chasing down the wolf kings, they despaired to discover that Chang Shan Yin — a Slavery Path grandmaster — was also a master of flight!
The three brothers couldn't catch up, and could only watch as the situation crumbled. In the end, the Liu family suffered a catastrophic rout, pursued and struck down by the Hei family in their momentum, suffering devastating casualties with countless surrenderers.
And as alliance leader, Liu Wenwu and his companions, their True Essence completely spent, were all captured.
The Hei family and Liu family had always been locked in competition, and the tension between the two super-families was well-known throughout the Northern Plains. But although Hei Loulan had captured Liu Wenwu and the others, she did not kill them. Instead, she wisely used them to extract massive war reparations from the Liu family.
Liu Wenwu was one of the Liu family's seeds for Gu Immortal ascension. Killing him would cross the bottom line of this Royal Court Struggle.
More critically, the Hei family had barely won this battle and had suffered devastating losses themselves. Without Liu Wenwu as a key bargaining chip for reparations, ordinary war indemnity alone would be insufficient to restore the Hei alliance's strength. This would be extremely detrimental to the upcoming Royal Court Struggle.
Three days later, the Liu family's reception envoy arrived, taking the Liu tribe and all the families that had defected to them back to their blessed land.
Meanwhile, the Hei family army — battered and exhausted — made camp on the spot, reorganizing the surrenderers, rebuilding the alliance, tallying war merits, distributing supplies, and digesting their victory.
Inside the Great Lizard House Gu, Fang Yuan sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, eyes closed in bitter cultivation.
A Fourth Transformation Wolf Soul Gu, responding to his mental command, was drawn out from his body.
The Wolf Soul Gu was only the size of a thumb, resembling a small grey plush wolf doll. Now it hovered in the air, enveloped in a layer of dim blue radiance.
The True Essence sea within Fang Yuan's Empty Orifice dropped a small notch. The Wolf Soul Gu received the True Essence infusion and rapidly swelled.
Awoooo!
The Wolf Soul Gu expanded and transformed into a pure grey wolf spirit, the size of an elephant.
Immediately after, the wolf spirit opened its mouth and let out a silent howl, hurtling toward Fang Yuan's body.
Fang Yuan smiled faintly. A thousand-person soul — could it truly be shaken so easily? The wolf spirit slammed straight into his thousand-person soul and instantly subsided, thoroughly suppressed.
The two souls churned and tumbled, forming a soul mist. After a moment, the thousand-person soul absorbed the wolf spirit and re-emerged.
Now the thousand-person soul had grown a pair of slender wolf ears atop its head, and its entire frame was leaner than Fang Yuan's physical body, its nose sharper and more prominent. Though it had yet to manifest waist-length hair, wolf eyes, and a wolf tail.
"Ever since the Royal Court Struggle began, I've been consuming the Wolf Soul Gu every day, tempering my soul. I've now achieved initial results — roughly thirty percent wolf-man soul."
Once he fully converted to a wolf-man soul, his command over wolf packs would undergo another qualitative transformation. Not only would the number of wolves under his control surge dramatically, but he would direct them with even greater precision, as effortlessly as moving his own limbs.
After intense battles, the degree of soul depletion he suffered would also decrease significantly.
"However, at this pace, by the time I've fully tempered the wolf-man soul, the Royal Court Struggle will have long since ended. I only have a Fourth Transformation Wolf Soul Gu — the efficiency of soul tempering is simply too low." Fang Yuan sighed.
If it were a Fifth Transformation Wolf Soul Gu, it would be more manageable, matching his current situation. But the Fourth Transformation Wolf Soul Gu felt like a strong man trying to fell a great tree with a small knife.
In truth, Fang Yuan's cultivation efficiency in soul arts was already extremely fast.