Chapter 682: Refining Group Strength Gu Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios Fang Yuan could faintly sense Hei Lou Lan’s tribulation would result in a huge battle. Hei Cheng was an experienced rank seven Gu Immortal, his battle strength surpassing Fang Yuan’s. Xue Song Zi was the owner of the seventh peak of Snowy Mountain blessed land and was also not an easy opponent. Even if Hei Cheng and Xue Song Zi did not create trouble, a tribulation of the Great Strength True Martial Physique would far surpass the severity of those of normal people. Fang Yuan immediately started making preparations after he returned to Hu Immortal blessed land. He needed to raise his battle strength in a short period of time. Battle strength usually depended on four aspects: immortal essence, killer moves, Immortal Gu and battle attainments. Fang Yuan was already very strong in his individual fighting attainment and it would be difficult to raise in a short period of time. He could only concentrate on the other three aspects to raise his battle strength. Fang Yuan first looked at his funds. To connect luck with Ye Fan, Fang Yuan made a trip to southern border and returned, costing him two beads of green grape immortal essence, which meant he had seventeen remaining. It was clear this amount was far from enough in a huge battle. According to Fang Yuan’s previous life’s memories, it was normal to spend dozens of beads of immortal essence in a huge battle, and sometimes it could even surpass a hundred. Fang Yuan also possessed a lot of Immortal Gu, thus he urgently needed to replenish his green grape immortal essence. And to replenish his green grape immortal essence, Fang Yuan only had one way and that was to refine immortal essence stones. However, Fang Yuan only had eleven and half immortal essence stones on him. Fang Yuan entered the underground cave and appeared before wisdom Gu again. “Wisdom Gu, I brought you some rather interesting stuff.” He greeted. In <>, wisdom Gu communicated with Ren Zu frequently, but legends were not exempt from exaggeration. Fang Yuan was also probing in regards to this. No matter what he said, wisdom Gu would remain silent, instead, the wisdom light halo flickered a few times. Fang Yuan laughed. According to his previous experiences with wisdom Gu, the flickering of the light of wisdom represented wisdom Gu’s agreement. Upon this, he smoothly took out the lingzhi king’s heart and planted it on the spot. Within a few breaths of time, the soil ruptured and stems of small lingzhi mushrooms sprang out, which then rapidly grew and hardened, reaching the heights of tables and chairs. Hu Immortal blessed land’s soil quality was different from the soil quality in Universal Life Academy’s land, and was not suitable for the growth of mushrooms. This was the limit that the mushrooms could grow here. Fang Yuan did not feel any regrets as it was just a passing thought from him. He then casually sat down on a lingzhi mushroom. The lingzhi trembled violently, but unexpectedly was able to bear the heavy weight of Fang Yuan’s immortal zombie body. This cave had been empty before, but now it was no longer dull; wisdom Gu was like a curious baby, flying and fluttering around the shorter mushrooms. At first, its speed was slow and careful, but soon its flying tracks revealed its cheerful state, like a baby finding an interesting toy. “Wisdom Gu, let’s get back to the main matter.” Fang Yuan looked on for a while before speaking. Wisdom Gu stopped on top of a lingzhi and emitted the light of wisdom again, which shrouded Fang Yuan. Fang Yuan silently activated delight in water and mountain Gu and began to deduce an Immortal Gu remnant recipe. Seven days later, he had succeeded in perfecting three Immortal Gu remnant recipes. Using a stargate, he completed the transaction with Lang Ya land spirit, gaining forty immortal essence stones. According to the price agreed upon beforehand, perfecting an over ninety percent complete Immortal Gu remnant recipe would pay off ten immortal essence stones, while perfecting an eighty percent or more completed Immortal Gu remnant recipe would pay off twenty immortal essence stones. Among the Immortal Gu remnant recipes Fang Yuan perfected this time, two were ninety percent completed remnant recipes while one was an eighty-nine percent completed remnant recipe. Not all Immortal Gu remnant recipes with Lang Ya land spirit were ninety percent or over completed remnant recipes, there were many with lower completion rates. Fang Yuan obtained many immortal essence stones in every transaction but he also had to spend a lot of immortal essence stones to completely deduce the Immortal Gu remnant recipes. Normally, his net profits were around twenty-six immortal essence stones in every transaction with Lang Ya land spirit. He got a piece of good news from Little Hu Immortal land spirit when he returned to Hu Immortal blessed land: A Gu Immortal seemed to have found the dead body of a six headed snake and its parts and organs were being separately sold in treasure yellow heaven. Fang Yuan immediately activated divine sense Gu and connected to treasure yellow heaven using his Eight Arm Immortal identity to contact the seller. His calamity beckoning Gu fed on the black blood of the desolate beast six headed snake. However, when Fang Yuan saw the store, there was skin, flesh, bones, eyes and snake tendons, but there was no blood for sale. “When I found this desolate beast carcass by accident, the six headed snake had already been dead for close to a hundred years. Thus, the black blood had completely seeped out. I am truly sorry.” The seller replied. Fang Yuan discerned the corpse of the six headed snake and saw that the Gu Immortal was indeed telling the truth. Fang Yuan was not discouraged, however. And still decided to buy the bones of this six headed snake. The six headed snake was a desolate beast with strength comparable to rank six Gu Immortals. Its whole body was a treasure and every part could be used in the process of Gu refinement. Fang Yuan had a lot of money on hand, directly buying off the whole skeleton, spending three immortal essence stones. The bone marrow in the bones could produce blood. In his previous life, Fang Yuan in his previous life was a blood path expert and excelled in extracting blood. With this skeleton, calamity beckoning Gu’s food was taken care of. After buying the skeleton, Fang Yuan then went to the store of Immortal Monkey King Shi Lei. As expected, divine senses were moving around frequently here and the business was thriving, all because of the Gu refinement material – stone monkey fur. Shi Lei did not personally stay in treasure yellow heaven, instead leaving behind a proud will to look over the store. Wisdom path inheritances were rare, but wisdom path Gu were not rare in treasure yellow heaven. Almost all Gu Immortals had some for the convenience in trading in treasure yellow heaven. If not, Fang Yuan would not have bought so many wisdom path Gu back then. “How much are you selling this stone monkey fur for?” Fang Yuan inquired Shi Lei’s will. Shi Lei’s will stiffly said: “One immortal essence stone for one hundred pieces of fur!” Even Fang Yuan who was very experienced was shocked by this price: “How is it so expensive?” Shi Lei’s proud will raised his head: “Expensive? You can go buy in other places then.” Fang Yuan snorted inwardly, this stone monkey fur was researched by Shi Lei, how could other places sell it? This was the benefit of monopolizing the market, the price could be casually set. On the contrary, even though the price was so high, many Gu Immortals were buying it. Which Gu Immortal did not have Gu recipes and Immortal Gu remnant recipes! Maybe one or two them might happen to require this stone monkey fur as a refinement material. There were also a portion of Gu Immortals who had other intentions. They bought stone monkey fur to attempt to research the secret of its production. If their blessed lands could also produce it, they could get a share of these exorbitant profits. “Don’t say I didn’t tell you later, if you want to research the production of this stone monkey fur, you need at least a thousand strands of fur. If it is any less, you won’t be able to research anything.” Shi Lei’s proud will also knew of the Gu Immortals’ intention and instead used this to peddle the goods, not in the least worried of the secret of stone monkey fur’s production being researched by others. Fang Yuan attempted to haggle but Shi Lei’s proud will did not yield, impatiently saying: “Go away, go away, don’t make a disturbance if you are not buying! There are plenty of other buyers! A poor wretch, and still wishing to buy ancient Gu refinement material!” Fang Yuan snorted. Immortal Monkey King Shi Lei was a rank seven Gu Immortal with a fiery and arrogant temper. Not only was he good at managing his blessed land, he also had outstanding battle strength. He was conceited but it was true he had the capital to be conceited. During the five regions chaotic war, he had dominated a territory. Later when Feng Jiu Ge perished while invading Lang Ya blessed land, there was no one that could suppress Shi Lei and his battle strength grew to the extent that even central continent’s ten great sects could not restrain him. He was unruly and untamed, not willing to be under anyone, creating chaos in central continent and even publicly announcing he would attack leading immortals! A great battle was imminent and Fang Yuan urgently required stone monkey fur to refine group strength Gu, thus regardless of how haughty Shi Lei’s proud will was, he could only suffer this grievance silently and buy stone monkey fur. He used five immortal essence stones to buy five hundred stone monkey fur. With stone monkey fur on hand, Fang Yuan started refining group strength Gu. Group strength Gu was an extinct Gu classified under strength path; its ability was to converge the strength of a group into one. If it was matched with the killer move myriad self, it would greatly raise Fang Yuan’s strength. Fang Yuan did not want to refine just one rank five group strength Gu, the more he had the better. At this moment, the old hairy men he had purchased before could finally display their worth. These old hairy men did not have long to live but each of them was a refinement path expert. Fang Yuan divided the group strength Gu recipe into different parts, leaving the unimportant, high success rate and repetitive procedures for the hairy men to work on. And he, as a refinement path master, concentrated on the crucial procedures. They worked for three days and three nights without any rest, refining a total of forty-five rank five group strength Gu. Gu refinement had its own difficulty, the higher the rank, the easier it was to fail. If every Gu refinement had succeeded, the five hundred stone monkey fur would have turned into five hundred group strength Gu. However, after spending large numbers of refinement materials and all the stone monkey fur, Fang Yuan only obtained forty-five in the end. This success rate was the result of the group strength Gu recipe already being easy to refine and having a high success rate. Fang Yuan could also naturally use the light of wisdom to improve group strength Gu’s recipe or find substitute materials for stone monkey fur. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚 However, Fang Yuan did not have the time to slowly deduce these. Even if he had time, he might not have the necessary refinement path foundation. After all, this was an ancient Gu recipe and was vastly different to the current systems of refinement path. Even if had the foundation and time, he had to calculate his expenses and benefits. The deduction process would cost him green grape immortal essence. And he was unable to estimate this amount of green grape immortal essence. After refining group strength Gu, Fang Yuan did not rest, instead he used the light of wisdom to ponder upon his killer move, myriad self. He spent a day of time before he was finally able to perfectly merge the forty five group strength Gu with myriad self. While Fang Yuan was refining, Little Hu Immortal finally completed her assignment, finishing the construction of the blood pool in the western part of Hu Immortal blessed land. The blood pool was extremely large, like a lake. In the center of the pool, the six headed snake’s skeleton was bobbing up and down; the intense odor of blood pervaded over a huge surrounding area. There were large numbers of Gu worms in the pool, creating a formation which continually consumed the skeleton to create black blood. The core of the Gu formation was the rank five Battle Bone Wheel which Fang Yuan had obtained from northern plains. Hu Immortal blessed land’s time flow was five times faster than the outside world of central continent. Because of this, Fang Yuan was able to make as much preparation as he could when there were only five to six days remaining till the appointed time in northern plains. Time passed and the day of Hei Lou Lan’s tribulation approached closer and closer. Tai Bai Yun Sheng returned to Hu Immortal Blessed Land through a stargate. He brought a pleasant surprise with him.