Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Gu were the essence of heaven and earth, mortal Gu contained a trace of law fragments of the Great Dao, while Immortal Gu were fragments of the Great Dao.
Gu refinement involved the fusion and interaction of the laws of the Great Dao, it was even more mystical than chemistry, and even more dangerous than processing gunpowder.
Fang Yuan was in the air, he observed for a while, more than ten hairy men had failed Gu refinement, they suffered injuries, a few of them died on the spot.
He could not help but sigh inwardly: “As my production expands, the loss of hairy men is becoming a bigger issue.”
Hairy man slaves were most expensive among slaves, they were even more expensive than human Gu Masters!
This might be quite shocking, how could the price of humans be lower than mere hairy men?
The answer was simple — humans were the spirit of living beings, the human mind was fickle, they were not easy to control. Variant humans were comparatively more simple minded, Fang Yuan could control so many hairy men, making them refine Gu all day along, only giving them time to eat and sleep, with none allocated to leisure.
If these hairy men were human Gu Masters, this life would be impossible.
If human Gu Masters engaged in such strenuous activities for an extended period without rest or entertainment, they would feel extremely angry and hateful, they would attempt to resist.
The arrangement of the stone nest was very simple, it could not block the intelligence of humans. They would definitely cause destruction secretly, and communicate with each other. When the time was ripe, they would resist by protesting, or directly revolt using their own strength.
Thus, Fang Yuan chose to buy hairy men slaves which were most expensive, rather than placing his attention on human Gu Masters.
This was also one of the reasons why Fairy Li Shan desperately wanted Miniscule Mountain. It was not just because of the Gu refinement materials in Miniscule Mountain, but also because it was the base of a miniman tribe. Controlling this tribe would grant her great benefits. Otherwise, the old and sly Dong Fang Chang Fan would not have signed an agreement with the miniman tribe.
“In the past, I could not feel the loss of hairy men, that was because the scale was still small. Now that I have three stone nests, and with the Gu refinement processes becoming tougher, the effect is becoming evident. If this goes on, a problem will arise if I do not create a solution.” Fang Yuan was trying to think of a way.
At this moment, Hei Lou Lan also advised: “Fang Yuan, your loss of hairy men is a bit high. In a month, you lose at least a hundred hairy men. It is quite costly if we think about it, if you can reduce this number, our cost would lower, and the profit of guts Gu would be higher.”
If she was not roped into the guts Gu trade, she would not have said it.
But now that the guts Gu trade also involved Hei Lou Lan’s interests, she had to mention it when she saw a problem.
Fang Yuan nodded: “There are two ways to solve this problem. One is to modify the Gu recipe and reduce the risk, by further splitting up and simplifying the steps, I can make every step safer, and have a higher chance of success. The second method is to raise my own hairy man tribe, I would not need to purchase them at a high price.”
Hei Lou Lan shook her head: “The first method is too difficult, Gu recipes are usually the result of countless improvements, to diversify the steps on this basis and modify the recipe, it is too difficult! The effort and resources needed to undergo experiments will be a huge sum.”
She did not think well of modifying the Gu recipe.
What she did not know was, Fang Yuan had wisdom Gu, even though he could not activate it, the light of wisdom could give him unlimited inspiration. To Fang Yuan, the difficulty in modifying the recipe was about whether he had enough thoughts in his mind to expend.
Fang Yuan would obviously not say this out loud, he spoke without changing his expression: “The second method is just as hard. I do not have any methods of raising hairy men. The ones sold in the market are usually male hairy men, very few females and children are sold, this is also to prevent other Gu Immortals from raising them.”
Raising hairy men, a variant human, was much more difficult than raising wild beasts and plants.
Countries were hard to manage, that was because the citizens had wisdom. Even though this was on a larger scale, the logic remained the same.
The more wisdom they had, the harder they were to control. The hairy men would know how to rebel, they would find loopholes and create problems on a large scale.
Fang Yuan knew clearly: With his current foundation, he would definitely lose everything he invested if he raised hairy men. His previous life’s memories could not help him here.
He vaguely remembered, from his life back on Earth. He raised goldfish, he did not change the water or give them oxygen, he only knew how to feed them food, in three days, one died, and in half a month, all his goldfish died.
Raising hairy men was obviously harder than goldfish, the nature of hairy men, their living habitats, all these needed to be considered, it was a huge field to study.
Fang Yuan had raised rockmen before, in fact, the rockman tribe in Hu Immortal blessed land was still quite large.
But that was because of guts Gu, it could raise the soul foundation of the rockmen and cause them to rapidly reproduce, providing future generations.
This was clearly a cheat method, if Fang Yuan had to raise these rockmen normally…
Hehe.
In two to three years, no matter how many rockmen he started with, they would go extinct!
Of course, he could buy knowledge in raising hairy men from other Gu Immortals. Back then, when Fang Yuan wanted to grow the star fragment grass, he bought some planting insights.
But the difference in value between the two was immense. To buy the knowledge of raising hairy men, the price to pay would be extremely heavy.
Like on Earth, acquisition of an enterprise in the top one hundred would involve a huge amount of funds. Even if Fang Yuan stored up all of his profits starting from now, with his speed of profit generation, he would need to accumulate them for many years to get enough.
“Right now, I have about twenty to thirty immortal essence stones in my storage. Even though I obtained the dragonfish, regretful spiders, and eerie fire dragon pythons, and I even obtained the method to raise them from Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul, but I need to invest and build the structures. Even if I finish building them, I cannot sell these resources directly into treasure yellow heaven, I need to find other avenues. After all, I cannot stand in the limelight now.” Fang Yuan smiled bitterly inwardly.
All in all, his future prospects were bright, but his current circumstances were in an awkward place.
Fang Yuan shrugged off the random thoughts in his mind, he said to Hei Lou Lan: “Alright, I have already told Little Hu Immortal and made the arrangements, I won’t be sending you off. For the following period of time, you can stay in the stone nest. I have already given orders, right now the three stone nests are refining airsac Gu, do assist them. When the earthly calamity arrives, I will call you if I need your help.”
Hei Lou Lan felt something amiss when she heard that. From Fang Yuan’s tone, he was treating her as a laborer.
Fang Yuan saw her ugly expression and did not react, he pretended not to see it.
If he did not squeeze out all of Hei Lou Lan’s value, would that be his style?
After settling Hei Lou Lan’s matters, Fang Yuan returned to Dang Hun palace.
Opening the hidden door, he entered the secret room. He saw Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul again.
His soul was extremely weak, being sealed here, even though he saw Fang Yuan, he could not move.
Fang Yuan intentionally weakened him, resulting in Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul being very weak. Fang Yuan did not dare to be careless, to an old fox like this, he was very vigilant.
But to search his soul again, he needed to replenish it first.
Thus, Fang Yuan broke some airsac Gu, using guts Gu on Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul.
His soul rapidly recovered, in the blink of an eye, it was half healed.
Fang Yuan stretched out his monstrous claw, grabbing the soul and searching it. Dong Fang Chang Fan did not resist it at all, Fang Yuan had already searched his soul thoroughly, he had no secrets left in front of Fang Yuan.
It was as if he resigned himself to fate, he had lost his heart.
A legendary character, falling into such a state, it was quite pitiful.
Fang Yuan was vigilant regardless, after searching the soul, he inspected all of the Gu worms he set up in this room to prevent any accidents from occurring. Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul did not even have a tiny bit of hope left.
All these movements were observed by Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul, he inwardly felt a freezing chill.
Why did he end up in the hands of such a person? There was no way out, this was a dead end, he had no methods left.
As he despaired, he felt a peculiar sense of admiration.
In Fang Yuan, Dong Fang Chang Fan could almost see himself!
Fang Yuan left the secret room, closing the hidden door, he inspected the door again and ensured that there were no issues before returning to the main hall.
He sat on the bed, star thoughts were moving in his mind as he fell into deep thought.
Dong Fang Chang Fan no longer had any secrets, he was squeezed dry. But Fang Yuan kept him around, it was a possible card for use in a future scheme to obtain Miniscule Mountain.
Right now, Miniscule Mountain was owned by Fairy Li Shan, but because of the Snowy Mountain Alliance, Fang Yuan could not snatch it. But the alliance agreement was not impossible to circumvent, like Fairy Li Shan’s time path killer move that could delay the damage of breaking the agreement.
In addition, the Snowy Mountain Alliance had a time limit.
Dong Fang Chang Fan and Miniscule Mountain had an agreement. From Dong Fang Chang Fan, Fang Yuan learned that the agreement was made with mountain pledge Gu using Miniscule Mountain.
The agreement was not just between Dong Fang Chang Fan and the miniman Gu Immortal, but was made with Dong Fang tribe and the miniman tribe.
Fairy Li Shan was definitely going to raise the miniman tribe, and make use of them. With this, Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul still had some use, it was an effective weapon.
But this effective weapon could not be used at this point, and he might perhaps not get a chance to use it in the future. But Fang Yuan kept this as a secret, it was a casual move, he would rather keep it prepared it just in case.
He was thinking about the white lotus giant silkworm Gu now.
This time, he searched Dong Fang Chang Fan’s soul for information about white lotus giant silkworm Gu.
Cleanse soul Immortal Gu needed the flesh of more than ten thousand white lotus giant silkworm Gu each time it was fed. What Fang Yuan obtained was less than this amount.
He had inspected and confirmed once again that Dong Fang Chang Fan’s white lotus giant silkworm Gu were only an unexpected benefit. That place was a natural cave and was created in a mystical way by nature, it was an environment that was suitable for white lotus giant silkworm Gu to live.
Furthermore, Dong Fang Chang Fan captured all of these Gu worms, he did not leave any behind. A large portion of them were used in the phantom formation, they played a critical role.
The remaining portion that was not used was now in Fang Yuan’s hands.
Right now, Fang Yuan had two choices.
One was to use the limited white lotus giant silkworm Gu and undergo experimentation, reverse refining its recipe or even trying to obtain the method to raise white lotus giant silkworm Gu.
If this method worked, he would have an unceasing source of white lotus giant silkworm Gu. But if this fails, and all of the white lotus giant silkworm Gu were consumed in the experiments, cleanse soul Immortal Gu would die of hunger, there would definitely be not enough white lotus giant silkworm Gu left to feed it.
The other method was to feed it now. To leave aside the experiments or the long term advantages. In this case, the white lotus giant silkworm Gu were still insufficient, but it would allow cleanse soul Immortal Gu to become less hungry, no longer under the threat of dying for now.
Fang Yuan still had some hope that Dong Fang Chang Fan might have a place to obtain white lotus giant silkworm Gu, so that he could get a number of them.
But this soul search ruined his wishful thoughts.
After thinking about it for a while, Fang Yuan opened his eyes, making up his mind.
