Riches

Gu Guangzhi took away all the gu worms on their body except their vital gu and sent them back. A clan could tolerate some of their gu masters killed by other clans in skirmishes but if two elders died, the consequences could be serious. Gu Guangzhi didn't want to spare anyone that tried to take his life but he wanted to avoid a serious war between the clans. The compensation received from them seemed enough to Gu Guangzhi. As Gu Guangzhi was collecting the gu worms from the corpses, Yu Wen Zi suddenly appeared near Gu Guangzhi. He didn't notice it but his water wolf observed it and communicated to him.

"You… you were here the entire time?", asked Gu Guangzhi.

"Of course. I watched he whole thing. I was surprised that you were able to battle all those gu masters easily.", replied Yu Wen Zi.

"Easy, my ass! I wanted to hide my trump card in case I got into battle with Bai Ning Bing again. But now I had to use it so early."

"You mean those Fish Bubble Gu? Such simple tricks can't be called trump cards."

"It's easy for you to say that. My river wolf spent a lot of time hunting these gu for me. Those are rare gu insects in these parts.", complained Gu Guangzhi.

Fish Bubble Gu were used to store gu master's primeval essence. When Gu Guangzhi was still a Rank 2 gu master, his river wolf had already grown to Rank 3. His river wolf once found Fish Bubble Gu on a Struggle stream fish in the river. Ever since, Gu Guangzhi looked for Struggle stream fishes to find Fish Bubble Gu. After trying hundreds of times, he found three Struggle stream fishes with Rank 3 Fish Bubble Gu. When he was still using boiling essence, Yu Wen Zi told him that he couldn't use Fish Bubble Gu to supplement his primeval essence. So, he caught them carefully and stored them in a secret underground stream created by the river wolf. After breaking through to Rank 3, he retrieved them from the fish and refined them. They could store enough primeval essence to fill up to 30% of Gu Guangzhi's aperture.

Yu Wen Zi said, "By the way, I liked how you used Bamboo swamp Gu. Using them together with Turn Rock Gu and Grass Puppet Gu has produced much stronger grass soldiers."

Gu Guangzhi replied, "I designed it for exhausting multiple gu masters at once. By mixing in regular grass soldiers with modified grass soldiers, I can confuse the opponent into spending more primeval essence when not needed or use less primeval essence when needed. It seems to have worked well. I have another combination as well. I designed it specifically to counter Bai Ning Bing."

"That's good. I'm looking forward to it. What do you plan to do about all these gu insects collected from the Bai clan gu masters?"

"I'll hand over most of the gu insects to the clan. Such an incident will surely be found out by both the clans. So I can't keep it a secret. I'll keep the Rank 3 Flowerbud Gu though. I can't hold my Bamboo culm Gu in my aperture so, it's a bit of a problem to me to store things efficiently.", said Gu Guangzhi.

As Gu Guangzhi was looking through the items stored in the Flowerbud Gu, he noticed several high rank blood path resources in it.

"Hmm… It seems that the Bai clan gu masters were indeed on a mission to kill a high ranked blood path gu master. This storage gu has many blood path mortal materials in it. May be I can make use of these materials in my refinement.", said Gu Guangzhi.

"I'm glad that your first thought isn't to destroy all these blood path materials. All gu contain traces of the great Dao. Blood path gu insects are the same.", Yu Wen Zi added.

Gu Guangzhi kept quiet and didn't answer. He actively disliked using blood path gu insects because of their violent origins. He went on several missions to fight blood path gu masters during his time as a Rank 2 gu master. These blood path gu masters would often find some inheritance left behind by someone and quickly rise to power by slaughtering innocent mortals. Soul path was also a very cruel path but it was not as easy to cultivate as the blood path. Some righteous forces in Southern border were able to adopt this path and suppress the demonic gu masters of blood path.

Gu Guangzhi initially wanted to destroy all such resources so that the foundation for blood path gu masters was eliminated but Yu Wen Zi was able to slowly show Gu Guangzhi the use of blood path materials in refinement. Gu Guangzhi slowly learnt the usefulness of blood path but he never used any blood path gu insects. This was because it required a large amount of blood to constantly feed these gu insects. If he started using them, he too, like an addict, would end up killing innocents for the sake of increasing his power and using these gu insects again.

Gu Guangzhi and Yu Wen Zi reached the Xiong village and made their way to the clan pavilion. Seeing Gu Guangzhi's clothes, everyone present guessed that he got into another fight. Gu Guangzhi poured out several gu worms that he had collected in front of the clan leader. Since Gu Guangzhi killed everyone quickly and suddenly, they didn't have enough time to destroy their gu worms in their aperture. There were over eight Rank 1 gu worms, twelve Rank 2 gu worms and two Rank 3 gu worms.

Gu Guangzhi stated, "I was ambushed by eight Bai clan gu masters in the mountains. Luckily, they didn't know I managed to break through to Rank 3 so I was able to take them out by surprise."

"You… you defeated a Rank 3 gu master as well? Who do these Rank 3 gu insects belong to?", asked an elder in surprise.

"There were two elders. Bai Xu Delan and his daughter Bai Xu Lan. They surrendered and I took all their gu worms except for their vital gu and spared their lives. But I killed the rest of the Rank 2 gu masters."

"You defeated two Rank 3 gu masters?!", the elder was even more surprised.

The elders and the clan leader viewed Gu Guangzhi suspiciously. He relented and told everyone about his Fish Bubble Gu. Earlier, Gu Guangzhi was just a Rank 3 gu master with D-grade aptitude and some special insight. But now with his Fish bubble Gu, he could make up for his low primeval essence reserves instantly making him a top-tier powerhouse in the village. He also had a Rank 3 peak strength water wolf. So now, he had become extremely valuable.

The clan leader spoke up, "You did the right thing by not killing Bai clan elders. We have tacit agreements between villages not to kill elders unnecessarily. These gu will be added to the clan treasury and will be used as contributions in upcoming wolf tides. You will be compensated appropriately. However, as things are now, it is not advisable for you to leave the village. You are not an elder of the village so Bai clan may just kill you. Your one month deadline is also coming to an end. Tell me, have you chosen a suitable person to marry?"

Gu Guangzhi was once again put on the spot but before he could respond, a senior member from the Yuan faction spoke up, "Clan elder, please give some more time to continue talks with Gu Guangzhi. My daughter wants to marry Gu Guangzhi and I have yet to conduct proper talks with him." This elder was Xiong Yuan Dong. He didn't want Jiao faction to grow more powerful so he wanted to draw Gu Guangzhi to his side using his own daughter. Xiong Jiao Mei opposed this vehemently and both factions got into an argument.

The clan leader rubbed his forehead, called for silence and spoke up, "Gu Guangzhi. You are ordered to not step out of the village till you get married!"