Hei Loulan was undergoing tribulation, and Fang Yuan had a vague premonition that a great battle was brewing.
Hei Cheng was a veteran Seventh Transformation Immortal Gu Master, whose combat strength surpassed Fang Yuan's. Xuesong Zi controlled the seventh peak of the Great Snow Mountain and was by no means an easy opponent.
Even without Hei Cheng and Xuesong Zi stirring up trouble, the tribulation for the Great Strength True Martial Body would bring calamities far heavier than what ordinary cultivators faced.
After returning to the Fox Immortal's Blessed Land, Fang Yuan immediately set to work, devoting all his efforts to war preparations.
To boost his combat strength as much as possible in a short time, he needed to work on four aspects: Immortal Essence, killer moves, Immortal Gu, and personal combat skill.
His personal combat skill was already formidable, and it would be difficult to improve it significantly in a short period.
To raise his combat strength, he could only focus on the other three areas.
Fang Yuan first reviewed the resources at his disposal.
Because of his fate entanglement with Ye Fan, he had traveled to the Southern Border and back, consuming two Green Grape Immortal Essence in the process, leaving him with seventeen.
Obviously, this amount was far from enough to sustain a great battle. According to Fang Yuan's memories from his previous life, a major battle would casually consume several dozen Immortal Essence, and sometimes over a hundred.
Fang Yuan had a large number of Immortal Gu, so he urgently needed to replenish his Green Grape Immortal Essence.
And to replenish Green Grape Immortal Essence, there was only one method available to him: refining Immortal Essence Stones.
The Immortal Essence Stones he had on hand numbered only eleven and a half.
Fang Yuan drilled into an underground cavern and once again came face to face with Zhi Hui Gu.
"Zhi Hui Gu, I've brought you something fun this time." He greeted it.
Although in the *Legend of Human Ancestor*, Zhi Hui Gu could converse normally with Human Ancestor, legends and stories were not without their share of rhetorical exaggeration.
Fang Yuan couldn't be sure one way or another.
Regardless, Zhi Hui Gu remained silent, though the Wisdom Light flickered a few times.
Fang Yuan smiled faintly.
Based on his previous experiences dealing with Zhi Hui Gu, seeing the Wisdom Light flicker meant it had agreed.
So he planted the Spirit Mushroom King Heart he had snatched along the way, right then and there.
In just a few breaths, the ground cracked open, and mushroom-shaped little spirit mushrooms sprouted at a speed visible to the naked eye, rapidly growing and swelling until they reached the height of stools and chairs.
There was nothing to be done about it. The soil of the Fox Immortal's Blessed Land was different from the soil in the valley of the Mass of All Beings Academy, and was unsuitable for the growth of mushroom forests.
This was already the limit for their growth.
Fang Yuan didn't mind. It had been a spur-of-the-moment act anyway. He casually sat down on one of the spirit mushrooms.
The mushroom trembled violently several times, yet somehow managed to bear the enormous weight of Fang Yuan's Immortal Zombie body.
This cavern had originally been empty, but now it was no longer so barren. Zhi Hui Gu was like a curious infant, darting and weaving through the low mushroom forest. At first it was cautious, but before long, the trajectory of its flight revealed an air of delight — like a child who had discovered a new toy.
"Zhi Hui Gu, time to get to work," Fang Yuan said after watching for a while.
Zhi Hui Gu came to rest atop one of the spirit mushrooms and once again扩散 Wisdom Light, enveloping Fang Yuan within it.
Fang Yuan silently activated the Le Shan Le Shui Gu and began calculating Immortal Gu recipe fragments.
Seven days later, he had thoroughly succeeded, completing three more Immortal Gu recipe fragments. Using the Star Gate, he arranged an exchange with the Lang Ya Earth Spirit and obtained forty Immortal Essence Stones.
Under their previous pricing, completing a recipe fragment to ninety percent earned ten Immortal Essence Stones, and completing one to eighty percent earned twenty.
The recipe fragments Fang Yuan completed this time included two that reached ninety percent, and one that reached eighty-nine percent.
The Immortal Gu recipe fragments held by the Lang Ya Earth Spirit were not all ninety-percent-complete; many had relatively low completion rates.
Although Fang Yuan earned more Immortal Essence Stones each time, calculating and perfecting low-completion-rate fragments consumed more Green Grape Immortal Essence. On the whole, each trade with the Lang Ya Earth Spirit yielded a net profit of roughly twenty-six Immortal Essence Stones.
Upon returning to the Fox Immortal's Blessed Land, the land spirit Little Fox delivered good news: it seemed an Immortal Gu Master in Treasure Yellow Heaven had stumbled upon the remains of a six-headed great serpent, which had already been cleaned up, sorted by category, and put up for sale.
Upon hearing this, Fang Yuan immediately used his Divine Sense Gu to connect with Treasure Yellow Heaven, contacting the seller under the identity of the Eight-Armed Immortal.
The Disaster-Attracting Immortal Gu in his possession needed the black blood of the wild beast six-headed great serpent to feed it.
But after inspecting the goods, Fang Yuan found that the stall had skin, flesh, bones, eyeballs, and serpent tendons — yet not a single drop of the six-headed serpent's black blood was available.
"When I stumbled upon these wild beast remains, nearly a hundred years had already passed since the six-headed serpent's death. All the black blood had long since drained away. My apologies," the selling Immortal Gu Master explained.
Fang Yuan examined the skeletal remains of the six-headed great serpent and confirmed the seller's account was truthful — it was exactly as described.
Still, Fang Yuan was not discouraged and decided to purchase the bones of the six-headed great serpent regardless.
The six-headed great serpent was a wild beast whose combat strength rivaled that of a Sixth Transformation Immortal Gu Master. Every part of it was a treasure, all usable for refining Gu.