Daily slog and a fateful encounter

Gu Guangzhi went back to his refinements and was steadily making progress. He hadn't given up on refining his Rank 1 Hellrise bamboo bird Gu through conventional methods of refining. He would often be ridiculed by the other gu masters in the Higher Academy of Refinement but the Rank 4 gu master with master level attainment, Tie Gui Tian, could notice the improvement in Gu Guangzhi's refining.

Gu Guangzhi would routinely use up his allotted funds for his refinement experiments. He also needed to feed a lot of his gu insects so he would often go ask his grandfather for some primeval stones. Gu Yue Chao was an external elder who had amassed quite a bit of wealth to give his grandson a small amount of primeval stones every time he asked but as time went by, his wife started noticing this considerable expense. Thus Gu Yue Chao would often get chided by his wife for neglecting his son's future in favor of his grandson.

Even Gu Guangzhi would feel that he is taking too much from his grand father. In order to make up for it, he would take up breaks from refinement and go out on some missions to earn a bit of primeval stones. However, such high paying missions were rare and had a lot of competition. So he could only rely on his grand father for now.

He would also check up on his team once in a while to make sure they were improving. Sometimes, even he would join the team on some missions when Tie Xue Leng was busy. Time passed by without him noticing it. His mind was slowly being occupied by the mundane tasks of life. He rarely thought about taking revenge anymore. Yu Wen Zi and Gu Yue Chao were also happy about this change.

Another year was soon coming to end. A new batch of students were getting ready for their year end assessments. It was at this time that a high paying mission was put up. A new resource cave was discovered in one of the border clans that was subservient to the Tie clan. It was estimated that there were millions of earth path and metal path gu insects hiding deep within the cave. If discovered to be true, then it would become a new source of gu insects for the Tie clan.

One particularly troubling matter was that this cave was located near the regional walls that separated Southern border and Central continent. The clans in the Southern border had an immense respect and fear of Tie clan so they didn't dare to covet the resources of the cave even when the secret about the cave inadvertently spread. However, the sects of the Central Continent were a different matter. They were arrogant and often looked down on gu masters from other regions.

In the world of Reverend Insanity, gu masters of one region would be suppressed by one rank when going to a different region. This would usually deter gu masters to go to other regions. However, when the rumors about a resource cave spread, some gu masters of the Central Continent decided to take the risk and enter Southern border for some benefits. The border clan that was tasked with protecting the cave requested for reinforcements from the Tie clan.

If the estimates about the resource cave were confirmed, the Tie clan would've made it a priority but since they were only estimates at this point, the Tie clan didn't send large forces and instead decided to small teams to guard the resource cave and ambush the intruders till it could free up larger forces to thoroughly assess the resource cave. While all the other team leaders were focused on the the year end assessment, Gu Guangzhi took his chance to accept the mission. After discussing with Tie Xue Leng and Gu Yue Chao, he decided to bring his team along.

After Gu Guangzhi reached the border village, he was amazed by the Miasma regional wall. The regional walls were amazing phenomenon of the gu world. The greater the rank of a gu master, the more the suppression one would face while crossing it. They cleanly separated the gu world into different regions.

Gu Guangzhi and his team were greeted by the members of the border clan called Ruogang clan. Members of such small clans usually had limited access to different kinds of gu insects so facing off against members of the Central Continent's sects proved a bit difficult for them. Besides, most of the gains from the resource cave would go directly to the Tie clan. They would only get a fraction of benefits from this. So pushing the problem back to Tie clan was reasonable to them.

Gu Guangzhi and his team started patrolling the resource cave. They could feel a faint suppression from the regional wall as they moved closer to the wall so they weren't inclined to do a thorough sweep for the intruders. They could find the traces left behind by the intruders every once in a while. A few days passed by in this manner. Suddenly, one day, there were shrill noises coming from the depths of the cave. Gu Guangzhi's team was alerted by this and immediately went into the cave.

As they followed the noise, they came face to face with the fleeing intruders. Gu Guangzhi wanted to see how his team would fight the intruders so he took a back step. Tie Yue Sen was the first to react. He used Rank 2 Spike grass Gu to cut off their escape path. Several seeds were shot into the ground and swathes of sharp grass grew instantaneously covering the field with spikes. The intruders didn't falter. They immediately brought out their enslaved cranes and flew over the spikes. However, There wasn't much space to fly around freely in the cave. The cranes flew closely and made easier targets for Tie Ruo Nan and Tie He Xi. Tie He Xi used Rank 2 Steel mesh Gu to further restrict the intruders and Tie Ruo Nan used Rank 2 Golden Needle Gu with Rank 1 Stiff Gu to paralyze them. The wings of one of the cranes was badly affected due to these and it fell on the spike field bringing its rider along.

"Junior brother Shu!", cried one of the intruders while looking at his fallen companion. The fallen gu master was severely bleeding and as he was rolling around in pain, the spike grass hurt him more.

"Bastards, I'll make you pay for this!", said the gu master with the biggest crane. Saying so, he redirected his crane to attack Tie Yue Sen. The crane he was flying on looked like a beast king. If it wasn't enslaved, it could've commanded a thousand cranes in the wild. Gu Guangzhi's team grew leaps and bounds over the course of a year and were in various stages of Rank 2 but Gu Guangzhi felt that they couldn't handle this beast king on their own. So he decided to step into battle.