The ball of light began shining brightly. He had failed last time he had tried this, but this time he added the blood of the Crimsonhoof Deer. He had messed up last time he had tried to refine this Gu worm because he had changed his mind on what he was going to advance it to before harvesting the blood of the Crimsonhoof Deer.
Refinement depended on various factors. He wasn't sure if going back in time would change the odds if he had failed due to luck. He could only continue tossing in primal stones until the ball of light shrunk, and a new Gu worm fell into his palm. It looked just like the Blood Moon Gu, except it was larger, and the blood was a darker, deeper, richer color. Vermilion Blood Moon Gu! It had been successfully refined!
Fang Yuan had been successful on his first try. This was good because otherwise, he would have to switch up his plan on how to deal with the Lightning Lycan King.
After this, Fang Yuan fell asleep, exhausted.
The meeting of the elders was devoid of the usual pomp and circumstance that it might have had in other times. With the wolf tide going around, no one had time for excessive formalities or pageantry. That wasn't to say that there wasn't anything important going on.
After all, the topic of discussion right now was the fact that the village had a new Rank Four Gu Master, Fang Yuan.
Fang Yuan had paid little attention to the inner politics going on at this time, simply because it had not been worth his notice, and he had been occupied with other things at the time during the previous timeline. The only thing he had strived for was to avoid conflict and he had been able to avoid such without much issue thanks to an old clan legend.
Now, though, he wanted to encourage action and that would require action on his part.
The village currently had 22 Elders. One of them was standing guard at the wall in case there was an emergency that needed someone to stall for some time while the rest of them headed out.
Another one was injured so severely that he couldn't come to this meeting.
That made the total number of people there 20, including the clan head. 'In the coming days, though,' Fang Yuan thought, 'Some of these faces would no longer be here. Two of them had been killed by being ambushed by the Lightning Lycan King, and two more had died afterwards in unrelated incidents.' During this kind of crazy wolf tide, no one was safe.
The village's two major factions, the Mo faction and the Chi faction, were present. The faction which supported the clan head was smaller, though now that they had Fang Yuan, it could be said that they were the strongest faction.
Other than this, there were a few smaller factions consisting of the Medicine Hall Elder, and a neutral faction, which together could maybe rival these other groups.
Fang Yuan glanced towards Mo Chen, the leader of the Mo faction. He had a pensive face, but he was glancing towards Fang Yuan as well as the clan head. Fang Yuan didn't know this, but inwardly, the man was cursing the fact that he hadn't been a bit more aggressive in having his daughter court Fang Yuan.
If only they had been successful in doing so, then the Mo faction would have had a Rank Four Gu Master among their ranks and would have been the domineering force within Gu Yue Village. Against his rival, the Chi clan, this would be both check and mate! But there was no use in dwelling over such matters- it was just that Mo Chen had not anticipated that Fang Yuan would rise to power this quickly. Fast yes, but not blazing through the ranks like he had done so right now.
His only real chance had been when Fang Yuan was still a student, but they had dropped the ball on that.
Fang Yuan then turned his gaze towards Chi Lian. He did have some potential leverage over the Chi faction simply because he knew their secret. The incident in which Chi Cheng's aptitude had actually been revealed had not occurred yet.
For that matter, if things continued as they were, the village would be destroyed before it could happen.
However, Fang Yuan no longer needed to resort to such things in order to get their cooperation. His sheer strength was more than enough.
Lastly, there was the Medicine Hall faction, as well as the neutral faction. Naturally, the Medicine Hall had seen its influence increased during the time of the wolf tide. The neutral faction could not be ignored either, as even one or two more elders could shift the tide of a battle.
The meeting began with a report of casualties. The mortals had died in such numbers, and no one particularly cared for them, so their deaths were not even worth of being reported upon.
What was more important was the loss of Gu Masters. 45 Rank One Gu Masters had been killed in the last two months. 20 more had been incapacitated to the point where they could no longer fight. 30 Rank Twos had died, and five were incapacitated.
In addition, there were about 15 Gu Masters who claimed that they could not bring out their full strength either because of a lack of Gu worms, injuries, old age, or a combination of the above and had requested to be retired from the front lines.
"Bah! These are all excuses!" Mo Chen said. "What do these Gu Masters think, that they can stand by behind the backs of other people risking their necks for them? We should issue a decree demanding that they commit themselves to the field."
He had made the same demand last time. Fang Yuan remembered some of the people who had been forced to the front line because of this had ended up dying when they had encountered the Lightning Lycan King.
Mo Chen had shown no remorse for such during the time period afterwards. 'So what if they had died in a way that actually freed up resources for other people? This was another way of calling out those who are useless.' That must've been his thought process.
It was a bit of a shame that those Gu Masters had died basically without contributing anything, however, Fang Yuan felt. While they were a bit of a burden on the clan (Gu Yue Ye was in this camp), even if they were doing nothing, to send them blindly to their deaths was also a mistake, though now, only Fang Yuan knew this in advance.
Mo Chen's suggestion, however, passed without any resistance. Even his rival, Chi Lian, could not think of a reason to oppose this sort of thinking. When even elders's lives were at risk, how could the rank and file think to hide?
With that matter settled, now came the reports on the wolf numbers. It was this opportunity that Fang Yuan had been waiting for before he was going to pounce on it this time around.