The lingering glow of the setting sun fell upon the Zhouxi Oasis.
Where gentle wisps of cooking smoke once curled skyward, thick plumes and roaring flames now took their place.
Peace and serenity had vanished without a trace. Houses and buildings had crumbled into heaps of rubble. Among the ruins, along the streets, by the lakeshore, beneath the trees, pools of blood spread endlessly, and corpses lay strewn everywhere.
Fang Yuan returned to the Patriarch Pavilion once more, standing atop a pile of shattered tiles and broken bricks. Satisfied, he recalled the Poison Path Immortal Gu, Woman's Heart, back into his Immortal Aperture.
After slaughtering for most of the day, he had finally fed the Woman's Heart to satiation.
Woman's Heart combined the processes of raising and refining Gu. If he kept feeding it, it would enter the Gu refinement stage. The more human hearts it consumed, the greater its power became.
However, Fang Yuan had no intention of refining Gu at the moment.
With his strength alone, slaughtering mortals was easier than butchering pigs or dogs. But there were so many mortals, and it still cost him most of the day.
Moreover, Woman's Heart was a single-use consumable Immortal Gu. However powerful, once used, it was spent. The investment prospects were meager—unless Fang Yuan possessed the Immortal Gu recipe for Woman's Heart.
Standing upon the ruins of the Patriarch Pavilion, Fang Yuan simultaneously activated several hundred Gu within his Immortal Aperture, conducting a comprehensive sweep.
After two breaths, he located an underground entrance.
He walked to the opening and stomped his foot, shattering the hollow ground to reveal the entryway.
The passage was large enough for ordinary people, but to Fang Yuan it was far too small.
He forced his way downward, smashing through as he went. After several hundred steps into the tunnel, the space finally widened enough for him to walk while hunched over.
Moments later, a massive stone door appeared before Fang Yuan.
Carved into the lintel were large characters: "Clan Treasury — Authorized Personnel Only."
Fang Yuan let out a cold laugh and blasted the stone door apart. Instantly, hundreds of golden light blades slashed across his body, while a piercing alarm wailed. These were obviously the Lan family's defenses against thieves, but regretfully, they couldn't even scratch a single barb on his exoskeleton armor.
Fang Yuan stepped through the ruined doorway and beheld a huge pile of Yuan Stones. A rough estimate put the count at over one hundred thousand.
If Fang Yuan were still a mortal, these Yuan Stones would represent an enormous fortune. But having already become an Immortal, his True Essence was limitless and his demand for Yuan Stones had dropped to a bare minimum.
Still, he collected them all into his Immortal Aperture—purely out of convenience.
Before long, he shattered the second stone door and entered.
He found a large quantity of Gu refinement materials, neatly organized and sorted by category. They were all common materials. While Fang Yuan had some use for them, the quantities were too small. Whenever he actually set about refining Gu, his requirements would be enormous. He would still need Immortal Gu Masters to carry out large-scale procurement.
But having something was better than nothing. A thief never leaves empty-handed, and Fang Yuan swept these into his Immortal Aperture as well.
The third, fourth, and fifth stone doors all contained Gu refinement materials—different varieties, stored under different conditions. Fang Yuan collected every last one.
At the sixth stone door, he finally found Gu.
A vast quantity of Mortal Gu were stored here. This was the Lan family's Gu treasury—the foundation of the clan's strength.
Fang Yuan took them all. With his extensive memories and experienced eye, he recognized every single one of these Mortal Gu—none were essential.
But for mortal Gu Masters, among these Gu there were rare specimens, including Fifth Transformation Gu and Fourth Transformation Gu. Obtaining just one could improve one's entire life, perhaps even alter the trajectory of one's fate.
Just like how Fang Yuan had obtained the Wine Worm atop Qing Mao Mountain; the Flesh and Bone Connection Gu at White Bone Mountain; and the All-Out Effort Gu in Merchant City.
There were three such Gu treasuries, and five Yuan Stone vaults.
Beyond these, there were vaults within vaults and hidden compartments—none escaped Fang Yuan's search.
Some of these secret vaults were already in complete disarray, littered with Gu Master corpses and signs of battle. Clearly, while Fang Yuan was massacring the surface inhabitants, some greed-driven Gu Masters had realized the Lan family was finished and stormed these vaults to seize every usable resource.
They had clashed with one another here, fighting over treasures that could be carried away. Some among them had fallen to the defensive Gu insects guarding the vaults.
Fang Yuan's expression remained utterly calm as he walked through these vaults, following a main passage deeper underground.
Along the way, Gu Master corpses grew ever more numerous. Mixed among them were the bodies of sand gulls.
These sand gulls resembled a cross between an ostrich and a seagull—thick, powerful legs with well-developed muscles, paired with broad wings that allowed them to ride air currents across the sky.
Sand gulls could sprint at high speeds across the desert, carry passengers in flight, and subsisted on nothing but clean water and grass. They were easy to raise, docile in temperament, and the most commonly used means of transportation for Western Desert Gu Masters.
The only drawback was their low reproductive rate. Of ten sand gull eggs, typically only three or four would successfully hatch into healthy sand gulls.
However, the sand gulls raised by the Lan family were numerous—far exceeding what a force of comparable size would normally possess. During his rampage, Fang Yuan had killed quite a few of them. He speculated that the Lan family might have possessed some unique method for hatching sand gulls.
If such a method truly existed, it would be the only thing in the entire Lan family that Fang Yuan would find even remotely noteworthy.
Fang Yuan descended several thousand more steps, encountering still more Gu Master corpses. Finally, in one section, he discovered a large concentration of Gu Master corpses, along with many sand gulls that had also perished here.
"It seems the Gu Masters who made it this far ran into the sand gulls' interception. After a fierce battle, every last one of them perished. They risked coming here because something of tremendous value must have been luring them," Fang Yuan analyzed.