Even with the business of Courage Gu, far too little time had passed. The Immortal Yuan Stones in Fang Yuan's possession had not accumulated to any great sum.
To make matters worse, the continuous expenditures during this period — refining Gu, condensing bat wings, and more — had slowed his savings to a crawl.
The Auction Grand Meeting and the Refinement Grand Meeting were fast approaching, one after the other. The former, in particular, was nearly upon him. Where could he possibly lay his hands on a massive sum of Immortal Yuan Stones at this juncture? The only answer was a Gu Immortal's Blessed Land — and that meant the Langya Earth Spirit's.
"If only my Immortal Aperture Blessed Land hadn't died. Then I could devour other Blessed Lands. The first person to buy one up would have been me!" Fang Yuan sighed inwardly.
Immortal Apertures were miniature worlds. They could merge and devour one another, but there were rules to the process.
First, a dead aperture could not devour another. It could only continue to crumble and disperse until nothing remained.
Second, a smaller aperture could not consume a larger one.
Finally, devouring a Sixth Transformation Blessed Land required a grandmaster-level attainment, the better to regulate and integrate two different worlds into one. Devouring a Seventh Transformation Blessed Land demanded a supreme grandmaster attainment. Devouring an Eighth Transformation Blessed Land required a paramount grandmaster attainment.
In other words, if Fang Yuan wished to devour other Immortal Apertures, two conditions had to be met. First, he had to be reborn so that his Immortal Aperture became living land once more. Second, he could only devour the Blessed Lands of Gu Immortals who walked the Blood Path, Strength Path, Refinement Path, or Transformation Path. Though his attainment in the Blood Path and Strength Path had already reached paramount grandmaster level, his cultivation at the Sixth Transformation meant he could only devour Sixth Transformation Blessed Lands.
After all, the Immortal Aperture was the very foundation of a Gu Immortal's cultivation. Devouring a Blessed Land — seizing another's foundation to cause one's own cultivation to surge — was the supreme shortcut.
Any Gu Immortal understood the value of a Blessed Land. An auction of Blessed Lands would inevitably ignite a tremendous wave of excitement at the Grand Auction.
In the days that followed, Fang Yuan refined Collective Strength Gu and Petty Spirit Gu on one hand, while on the other he employed the Zhi Hui Gu's halo to attempt improving the Transformation Path killer move — First Encounter, No Recognition.
Meanwhile, the wild beast carcasses in Treasure Yellow Heaven remained on sale.
Half a month passed in the Fox Immortal's Blessed Land. The only Seventh Transformation beast carcass in Fang Yuan's possession — a Qi Barrier Flying Pig — finally sold.
Fang Yuan obtained a Wisdom Path inheritance he had been longing for day and night for a very long time.
"Malicious Thought Gu..." Several days later, Fang Yuan held a Fifth Transformation mortal Gu in his hand, his expression complex.
This Malicious Intent Gu was something he had personally refined, following the Gu recipe contained within the Wisdom Path inheritance.
It was quite large — about the size of a washbasin. Shaped somewhat like a spider, but its eight legs were like iron needles, tipped to an extreme sharpness. The spider's body was covered in hard, barbed bristles. Were it not for Fang Yuan's Immortal Zombie body, an ordinary flesh-and-blood mortal merely touching this Gu would draw blood. The malicious thoughts it produced resembled bubbles, though their surfaces were also studded with barbs. Fang Yuan tried using these malicious thoughts to think, and immediately the bubbles crashed into one another.
The manner of their collision was quite peculiar.
The barbs on each bubble's surface hooked together, and then either annihilated each other or merged into a single, larger thought.
Soon, all the malicious thoughts were spent.
Fang Yuan opened his eyes, a trace of barely concealed joy in his gaze.
"So that's how it is. Even for a Wisdom Path Gu Immortal, the primary means of deduction is still thoughts. As long as you use malicious thoughts to scheme and plot, to calculate others' plans, your efficiency multiplies enormously. A single malicious thought is worth several — even a dozen — joyful thoughts, star thoughts, or void thoughts."
Previously, Fang Yuan had used the Joy of Mountains, Joy of Intent Immortal Gu to generate a massive quantity of joy, assisting his thinking. In truth, he had been walking down the wrong path.
Though will was composed of thoughts, its true purpose was not for thinking — it was for autonomous action once separated from the main body.
Gu Immortals created streams of will and sent them into Treasure Yellow Heaven to help sell their goods. Great Sun Immortal Venerable had left behind his Great Sun Will to guard the Eighty-Eight True Yang Building. This was the proper use of will.
To use an analogy: thoughts were like a kitchen knife, while will was like a long-handled broadsword. Solving problems was like chopping vegetables — of course a kitchen knife was better suited. What cook used a long-handled broadsword to cut vegetables?
Different trades were worlds apart, and the Wisdom Path was the most enigmatic of all schools. Fang Yuan had not understood this before, and using joy to think about problems had seemed to work well. In reality, it was wasteful, far inferior to using joyful thoughts directly.
"Now that I have the Gu recipes for Malicious Thought Gu and Malicious Intent Gu, I can mass-produce these two mortal Gu. I have already become an Immortal, with an infinite supply of True Essence. Generating massive quantities of malicious thoughts — cheap and effective. Spending Green Grape Immortal Essence to power the Joy of Mountains, Joy of Intent Immortal Gu — that price is far too steep."
In the past, Fang Yuan had only a small number of Wisdom Path mortal Gu, all purchased from Treasure Yellow Heaven.
Using these mortal Gu to generate thoughts yielded too few, and their differing types made it difficult to sustain the violent consumption required when deducing Immortal Gu recipes.
That was why he had resorted to the Joy of Mountains, Joy of Intent Immortal Gu.
Now that Fang Yuan possessed the Gu recipes for Wisdom Path mortal Gu, the natural first choice was to mass-produce them. A single mortal Gu produced only a scant few thoughts, but once the quantity of mortal Gu scaled up, the total volume of thoughts became quite impressive.
Using the Joy of Mountains, Joy of Intent Immortal Gu was not only costly but overkill for the task.
"It's a pity this Wisdom Path inheritance appeared a bit too late. My Immortal Yuan Stone transactions with the Langya Earth Spirit had already entered another phase. If it had appeared earlier, I could have saved a tremendous amount of Green Grape Immortal Essence. And with those savings, my costs would have dropped sharply — every profit I earned would have increased dramatically, far beyond the twenty-six or so Yuan Stones per transaction I was making before."
At this thought, Fang Yuan felt a twinge of regret.
But there was nothing to be done. That was just how life was.