บท 9: Yang Gu
"Ahhh, it seems there's nothing we can do..." Zi Heng sighs helplessly, his gaze following Fei Sha's back as he walks away with a wine bottle in hand.
Fei Sha stumbles as he walks, nearly tripping over the narrow street, moderately empty in the late afternoon. He takes swigs from the bottle now and then, drawing strange looks from the few passersby who cross his path.
Seeing this, and noticing the look on his friend's face, Hei Tu fully understands why Zi Heng feels so hopeless. This isn't the first time he's tried to talk to Fei Sha and pull him out of his miserable state. Over the past week, Zi Heng has done this multiple times, often asking Hei Tu to accompany him, but each time, Fei Sha would say a few empty, sad words before dismissing their help and walking away.
Honestly, Zi Heng's persistence in helping Fei Sha has made Hei Tu's opinion of him shift—from seeing him as an undisciplined, carefree drunk to seeing him as an undisciplined, carefree drunk who is genuinely loyal to his friends.
But looking at Zi Heng's expression now, and recalling their brief conversation earlier in the day after they got their first Gu, Hei Tu imagines that he may have finally given up on helping Fei Sha after seeing that he hasn't improved even a bit, despite their week-long attempts to talk sense into him.
"As I suspected, the blow of being a mortal, almost at the bottom of the clan hierarchy, was too harsh for him..." Hei Tu mutters, his brow slightly furrowed. "...especially considering how high his ambitions were before."
For anyone, being a mortal without cultivation ability would be dreadful, and after spending a week in this world, Hei Tu clearly understands why.
But for someone like Fei Sha, who once dreamed of becoming like the first clan leader—a proud Rank 4 Gu Master—the pain of being mortal must feel even greater.
"...my father said that the Heavens act according to what must be, and the fact that his spirit broke to this extent due to failure only shows that he would never have succeeded in the harsh world of cultivation," Zi Heng says, a hint of sadness in his voice.
Hei Tu isn't surprised by these words, as his own father said something similar, though less harshly. Besides, from what he sees now, Zi Heng seems to be beginning to agree with what his father said, just as Hei Tu already has.
"Ah, I really don't envy his situation—except for the part where he spends his days drinking," Zi Heng says as they begin to head to their homes.
After the few minutes they spent talking with Fei Sha, neither of them is willing to waste more time with their first Gu waiting to be refined.
---
Hei Tu enters his room slowly, wearing a calm expression, holding in his right hand a gray cat with small black stripes along its back.
His left hand rests in his pocket, where he gently pets a small, light-brown beetle that moves around non-stop, which he imagines would cause anyone afraid of insects to panic—a thought that makes him sigh in relief that he isn't one of those people, as the cultivation system in this world is entirely based on insects like this.
This beetle is the Hound Strength Gu he chose this morning after considerable thought, taking into account both his parents' advice and his own deductions based on his knowledge of cultivation novels. In the end, he decided not to follow the majority of the students and opted against the clan's main Gu.
When his father asked why, Hei Tu gave a light explanation about the primeval essence consumption, the below-average attack power of the Bamboo Shoot Gu, and several other minor reasons. But beyond these, there was one reason he didn't share—a gut feeling he gets when he looks at a black rock in the corner of his room.
Looking at the rock, which is no longer in the middle of his blanket, he thinks of Long Dong, who mentioned that he could "coincidentally" go to where he found it for some reason and and could get another one for Hei Tu, if he wanted. Hei Tu didn't outright refuse, partly to avoid giving the impression that what he said about he's sister was false, but he also didn't promise to buy it either. He still felt a little uneasy because Long Dong didn't seem to be quite normal minded.
That thought solidified in Hei Tu's mind a few days ago when he and Zi Heng visited Long Dong's bar because of Fei Sha.
At that moment, everyone in the bar was celebrating, apparently because they had taught a lesson to those young man who'd beaten up Long Dong. But Long Dong himself was listening to everything with a complicated expression that was almost sad.
And when Hei Tu spoke to him, Long Dong said something along the lines of, 'They convinced me to start a fight with them again, then managed to corner and beat up those young bastards... they fought, fought, and fought, taking a beating like a bunch of crippled monkeys, but they were more of men than we were!'
Truly, if Hei Tu thought he couldn't be more speechless around Long Dong, he was proven wrong, which made him reluctant to disagree with him too much—especially since he didn't even have a Gu to defend himself with at the time.
Hei Tu shakes his head, pushing these thoughts aside as he approaches the black rock with the striped kitten in hand.
"Well, let's hope you don't die," he says, as he gently places the kitten on the black stone.
The reason for this precaution is that, although he's absolutely certain this stone isn't a cursed artifact capable of harming him—having learned how rock grumbling works and knowing that Long Dong interacted directly with it without issue, just as the original Hei Tu did for hours before he transmigrated—he still wants to take one final precaution.
That's also why he hadn't asked Granny Li to clean this part of his room.
And sure enough, the kitten on the rock looks at him in confusion before quickly walking back over to him, meowing for food, completely unharmed.
"Let's hope it's not something that only affects humans…" he says with a light joke, ignoring the kitten as he quickly picks up the stone, feeling a bit nervous.
The surface of the rock is rough, even though its sides are straight, as if carved by hand, and it's cold, as one would expect from an ordinary rock, making him feel a bit dumb for being so cautious about it.
But he quickly pushes these thoughts aside, as this is a gambling rock, and he's almost certain that not only must there be a Gu inside it, but it's also likely rare or exceptional.
The reason he thinks this isn't because he's a gambling addict who believes he just needs one more try to hit it big and make up for his previous losses. Rather, as someone who's grown accustomed to the clichés of cultivation novels, from the moment he laid eyes on this black rock, one of the possibilities he considered for it was being his golden finger.
He believes this so much that he chose the Hound Strength Gu as his future secondary Gu.
"Well, now that I have it, I'll still need to find a place to open this rock…" he says with a thoughtful look, gently stroking the stone as he ignores the cat scratching his foot. "I could go to a rock gambling shop I saw on the clan's main avenue and ask them to open it, but I'd have to pay a high fee for that. Besides, they'd find out about the Gu ins–!"
Hei Tu is interrupted mid-sentence when, in an instant, the solid, rough black stone in his hand crumbles at a speed his eyes can't even track, leaving only a small pile of gray dust that quickly disintegrates.
In the few moments that follow, as the dust finally disintegrates completely, he sees a small white semi-circle with a black dot inside resting in his palm, radiating a warm and energizing aura.
"It really is a Gu…" Hei Tu says with a complicated look, as the coincidence of the black stone disintegrating just as he picked it up is far too great to be mere chance. "...and it's probably an artificial Gu."
He knows this because, over the past few days at the clan academy, he's begun learning how to identify different Gu, seeing which characteristics belong to which path, as well as specific Gu shapes like the clan's main Gu being a small bamboo stick in shape. One of the things he learned is that, in most cases, all Gu take the forms of insects and worms, with only artificial or rare high-rank Gu deviating from this.
"Should I refine it?" he wonders, as he had this idea from the start. But now, unable to recognize this Gu, he feels a bit hesitant.
This is because, in the past few days, he's learned about the forms of countless rare Gu in a superficial way, to be able to judge whether he should consider this Gu as his primary one since this is a choice he can't go back on.
But this Gu, which takes the form of what he thinks resembles the Yang commonly seen in Taoism—one of the pillars of Chinese culture, as well as in many cultivation novels that use Taoist concepts to create their cultivation systems.
Of course, he could ask his father about this Gu, but as he plans to keep the fact that the black stone indeed contained a Gu a secret for now as a precaution, he decides against it.
"Rock gambling… well, if that's the case, then let's gamble!" he says lightly before setting a determined look on his face.
In the next moment, he quickly controls his primeval essence with the skill he's developed after a week of nonstop practice at the Clan Academy and begins refining the Gu gently to test how strong its will is and how much time and primeval stones he might have to spend to fully refine it.
But he's surprised again when, almost immediately, the Gu in his hand is fully refined without the slightest resistance against him, leaving him somewhat speechless, as both his father and the academy elder had emphasized how the Gu refinement isn't a simple task for Gu Masters refining their first Gu.
"Is it my main Gu now?" he wonders, frowning as he stores the Gu in his aperture, with his next thought being that he should test this Gu's ability.
And so he does, as he controls the Gu, now at the bottom of his primeval sea, as if it were part of his body, feeling remarkably natural despite maintaining some caution in case the Gu's ability was something destructive.
"Nothing seems to have changed…" he frowns, thinking this as, aside from a greater warmth that seems to permeate his body and a quickening sense of eagerness, he doesn't feel any changes.
So he stops using his Gu to halt the primeval essence consumption that had already begun and picks up the cat, which was scratching his foot, placing it on his bed as he thinks quickly.
"Could it be a support Gu? Or is there something about its use that I didn't understand? Maybe it's a healing Gu like my father's, which is why it had no effect… should I cut myself to test it? Better not…" he thinks as he places the cat on the bed and searches his bedside table for one of the notebooks he's been using to take notes these past few days.
He quickly begins writing in the notebook in his native language, which doesn't belong to this world, while thinking deeply. "Either way, I need to give it a name… how about Yang Gu because of its shape?"
After thinking this, he puts the notebook back on the bedside table, giving the cat a light pet as it meows loudly, seeking his attention.
"Now I should refine the Hound Strength Gu as quickly as possible to hopefully get first place…" saying this, he looks toward his wardrobe, which has a hidden compartment containing eight primeval stones inside. "...even though it's pretty unlikely."
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