**Chapter 41: Painful Self-Discovery**
Hello, guys! Sorry for not uploading the last few days. The inheritance plotline will continue in the next chapter….
Also, please give some stones to creedfollower. My man has been putting in those hours.
1. How did you find my fic? (Recommended? Shoutouts? Or something different?)
2. Do you think every path has the potential for non-conflicting Dao marks? (In the way that only painting and transformation have discovered a method for their paths, maybe because it was easier in those paths.)
3. Do you think there is a chance for RI to ever continue? And if it does, do you think it can live up to the hype?
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*Psssst*
I move my head to avoid breathing in the mixture of poisonous gases that escaped the container I just opened.
*Cough*
*Cough*
*Cough*
Something I did more or less successfully…
After the gases escaped through the open basement window, I looked into the clay pot I just opened, directly at the Hydra Gu.
It was the only thing in there, as every last bit of poisonous liquid and the primeval essence stones I had put in had either been consumed by it or left as gas.
*Wobble*
*Wobble*
Through my will in the Hydra Gu, I commanded it to come to my side, a task it had significant trouble with.
'Interesting… it seems almost drunk…'
'But that is to be expected…. I fed it rank 3 poisons, after all…'
Because it was too slow to make its way over to me, I became impatient and ended up grabbing it with my right hand anyway.
"I hope you are not a disappointment, unlike the two before you…."
With an optimistic smile on my face, I moved my primeval essence, forming a miniature wind blade in my left hand.
*Shwoosh*
*Splat*
I clenched my right hand as the remaining head of my Hydra Gu screamed in agony and tried to wriggle itself free after I had cut the other one off.
*Drip*
*Sizzle*
*Drip*
*Drip*
*Sizzle*
Its dark red blood dripped over my hand and onto the floor, corroding both in the process.
'Come on…. Be a good little Gu and advance to rank 3….'
Slowly, the dripping and sizzling of the blood got slower and slower before it stopped entirely. Slowly, the open wound where the head was cut off began to wriggle, the flesh moving on its own.
"Hahahaha….. success."
I instantly knew that this refinement succeeded, as the remaining part of the neck from the Gu fell off in my other two attempts, resulting in the Gu degrading into the rank 1 Snake Poison Gu again.
With a calm gaze, I watched as two heads grew from what was once an open wound. Giving birth to the first rank 3 Hydra Gu….
Or rather the first three-headed Hydra….
'In the legends, it's said that the Hydra is a nine-headed snake, and each time it is beheaded, two heads grow from where it was beheaded….'
'A metaphor for problems that seem to multiply despite efforts to solve them….'
'My Hydra Gu, on the other hand, has only one head that will grow two additional ones… and only after a bath in poisons and devouring a lot of primeval essence stones….'
'The good thing about it is that it only requires luck to advance it….'
Mathematically, it should have taken me two tries to advance it to rank 3, but it took me three tries…. Which is still within a reasonable amount.
'The best thing about it…. It's a Gu that will be quite easy to get to rank 6…. in comparison to all others….'
'The downside is that it will be really hard to get it to rank 8 or even 9….'
'Just imagine having a rank 8 immortal Gu and taking the 1/8 chance to advance it to rank 9…. Now you fail, and have to take the 1/7 chance to advance it to rank 8 again…. But you fail…. And so on….'
'This is just because immortal Gu are unique….'
Petting my cute new Gu for a while, I take it back into my Aperture… with its calm Blossom Silver Primeval Essence, upgraded by the Liquor Worm I had refined two weeks ago.
Dozens of Gu worms were in it, some just staying put, some playfighting, and others like the Liquor Worm just playing.
'This makes it seven….' I thought with a bit of disappointment.
The primeval elder Gu that I had since I was a rank 1 Gu Master, Liquor Worm, Poison Refining Gu, and Hydra Gu that I have refined, as well as three Gu that I inherited from Long Hair Ancestor.
'Successfully refining three Gu in three weeks…. Abysmal…. Actually embarrassing, shameful….'
'But the recipes I create are just not good enough….'
The Fei Yu clan has tens of thousands of completed and incomplete Gu recipes for rank 1. The number of rank 2 recipes is about eight thousand.
But for rank 3, there are only less than a thousand recipes…
'For the rank 1 and 2 Gu I invented recipes for, I took heavy inspiration from a lot of existing Gu recipes, modifying them here and there and adapting them to poison path materials.'
'It's a pity that this process does not work as well if I do not have access to enough Gu recipes….'
So the last few weeks were primarily spent on studying the three parts of Long Hair Ancestor's Inheritance, so as to hopefully increase my refinement path attainment. Apart from about a dozen failed attempts at refining other Gu… but we don't talk about that.
'A Master attainment would grant me intuition in the refinement path… basically solving this problem in the first place.'
"No use complaining about things I cannot change…."
As I walk from the refinement room of my basement to the prison corridor…
*Click*
*Squeak*
The heavy metal door of cell number 7 opened to reveal all of its walls and its ceiling lined in metal, with the ground made up of strong earth path materials that rival concrete.
*Squeak*
*Click*
Closing and locking the door behind me, I go into the middle of the room and…
*Boom*
Violently punch the floor while the Acid Armor and Poison Muscle Gu are activated….
Piece by piece, the hard rock got destroyed, until after more than half an hour of hard work, the first pieces of soil showed beneath the floor.
'Who built this floor more than half a meter thick?'
As I was catching my breath, I stepped into the hole I just made and activated the Root Healing Gu, avoiding the stone and burying deep into the earth.
"Huuuh…. I really don't want to…. But no use delaying the inevitable…."
Rank 2 Root Healing Gu…. Activated.
Rank 3 Hydra Gu… Activated.
Rank 1 Composter Gu… Activated.
Rank 3 Imaginary Forming Gu… Activated.
Rank 1 Heat Vision Gu… Activated.
*Rank 3 Killer Move: Imaginary Healing*
The Three-Headed Hydra Gu left my Aperture and was just looking at my face.
'Just do it already, and stop staring at me….'
*Swoosh*
*Crunch*
*Crunch*
*Crunch*
The teeth of each of its three heads sunk deep into my blind left eye….
"Ahhhh…." My hands and teeth clenched harder than ever.
This was undoubtedly the worst pain I had ever endured in my whole life. My body went into a kind of shock as the three heads of the Hydra Gu devoured my blind eye.
"Huff…"
"Huff…"
"Huff…"
The three heads of the Hydra bit into my empty eye socket after they completely devoured my eye.
Ignoring the overwhelming pain in my eye, I observed as the Composter, Imaginary Forming, and Heat Vision Gu got activated.
*Screech*
Three-Headed Hydra Gu began to squirm in pain, an action I joined in very soon, as the open wound in my eye socket began to cauterize.
"Ahhh…."
With this being the second most painful thing to happen to me, just a few seconds after the most painful one.
*Blegh*
A bloody mess of mangled flesh was spit from the middle head of the Hydra Gu, after which it left my eye socket.
"Huh…."
This allowed me to close my eye, causing me to calm down, the pain to recede, and my pulse to slow down significantly.
"Hehehe… I definitely underestimated how painful this would be…."
As soon as the words left my mouth, a bright light began shining from my closed eye. At the same time, I felt a profound feeling of pleasure spreading from my eye.
'Imaginary Forming Gu, what a strange feeling to use it on my own body….'
Originally an Illusion and Rule Path Gu, it was often used in killer moves. But Long Haired Ancestor, or as he called himself, 'Third Old,' took one look at it and instantly thought about using it to make fusing Gu easier.
'Truly a genius of the refinement path… but it's only natural to see everything in the light of refinement when it's all you do all day….'
The pleasant feeling stopped, and my face instantly became white like a ghost.
Inspecting my Aperture, I noticed that my Heat Vision Gu had died.
'What? This was not supposed to happen….'
'Ok… stay calm, this is fine… I still need to figure out what happened though….'
Taking a slow and deep breath in, I carefully opened my newly regenerated eye. Only to find out that I now had absolutely perfect vision in it, better than it was before, and better than my other eye.
'This must be the peak of vision… at least that can be achieved without the use of Gu.'
There was only one small problem with my new eye.
"Why is my hand glowing?"
Closing my left eye, the glow disappeared. Once I opened it again, it reappeared. Closing my other eye did not have such an effect…
As I waved my hands in front of my left eye, and observed the familiar glow, I could not help but think:
'Is this the Heat Vision Gu that just died… Did it modify my body?'
'…'
'…'
'…'
'What? How? This was not supposed to happen…'
While I was lying there, staring at the ceiling of the metal room, I thought about the consequences of testing these killer moves on myself… Would it be permanent? How did I even do this without any transformation path Gu or attainment? Does this consume primeval essence?
"Whatever, it is what it is…."
So currently I am still lacking rank 3 Gus for the following:
- Investigation
- Storage
- Defense
- Movement
- Healing
And to be honest, I would still like to have one for a strong single target attack… Because my Hydra Gu is really best at taking care of groups…
'So to make it short, I need everything…'
'Hehehe… I am beating myself up a bit too much… after all, the next round of inheritance will have most contestants at rank 1 and 2… '
"So many worries…. And yet life is looking good…"
'I am supposed to meet Gao Ya tomorrow night…. She has rank 3 Gu, I should just take hers….'
'That is, if she survived the task….'