"Someone is approaching," Bai Ning Bing muttered, noting footsteps coming from outside.
"Relax. It's a Tracker puppet," Fang Yuan said. He had sent it out in order to see what the surrounding area was like, so at least they would have part of their journey mapped out if they tried to come here on foot.
The tracker puppet relayed what the surrounding dangers were. There was a wolf pack nearby. Also, there was a multicolored bird in the sky, which Fang Yuan assumed was a Xuan Yuan Divine Pheasant based on its description. That was not much of an issue. It would not attack them as long as they had the White Form Immortal Snake with them, as it was only a Rank 4 Beast King. However, if they were traveling via a long caravan, it might be a different story altogether.
'Moving really is going to be a massive pain,' Fang Yuan thought to himself. Even if he killed the Xuan Yuan Divine Pheasant right here and now in anticipation of their future journey, it would just eventually be replaced by a different beast king.
"Now that we're done with breakfast," Fang Yuan said, "there's something else I wanted to do here."
Bai Ning Bing snorted. Of course. She had figured that there was another reason for him to stop at this particular place. "And what is that?"
"Well, the grass skirt monkeys have a big group over there, right? You just happened to catch some of the members hanging out at the periphery. What do monkeys happen to make?"
Bai Ning Bing recalled The Legends of Ren Zu. "Monkey wine?"
Fang Yuan nodded. "I run a wine tavern back in Gu Yue Village. However, wine is a bit hard to come by, especially high-quality wine like that now." He intended to advance Fang Zheng's vital Gu, but if he wanted to do that, he would need wine in order to feed it. First-class wine like those made by monkeys was the best for this purpose.
The grass skirt monkey group consisted of just under a thousand monkeys, with 3 of them being Hundred Beast Kings.
Normally, it would be troublesome for someone like Bai Ning Bing to attempt to fight them all off even with her Rank 3 Peak Stage cultivation, but Fang Yuan was at Rank 5 right now. Even if he lacked any Rank 5 Gu worms other than the Blood Guillotine, which he did not want to show here, taking care of this kind of group was easy enough.
His Vermillion Crimson Moonblade shot out forward, easily hacking through over 30 monkeys in one fell swoop. Bai Ning Bing swerved around, striking out at them.
The monkeys were mainly troublesome because, much like humans, they tended to band together in a group, and after seeing that they were under attack, they would all group together and swarm them. However, they still lacked the intelligence of humans. Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing were able to use the surrounding terrain to limit their enemy's movements while picking them off.
Midway through the battle, after Fang Yuan had killed the 3 Hundred Beast Kings, the monkeys seemed to realize that they were done for and scattered out in all directions, even abandoning the monkey wine that they had. 'That's a smart decision on their part,' Fang Yuan thought. He and Bai Ning Bing took the barrels of monkey wine.
Although it was called monkey wine simply because it was made by monkeys, this was more of a general term for all the kinds of wines that monkeys could make. It could still come in various flavors and varied greatly in quality. However, for Fang Yuan to advance Four Flavors Liquor Worm, he needed different kinds of spices, as well as another Four Flavors Liquor Worm, neither of which he had right now.
That was not to say that this wine could not be useful, as he stored it away.
"Should we go out and kill the remaining monkey group?" Bai Ning Bing asked.
"Why? We already have what we came for," Fang Yuan said.
"But when we come back later on with our villages, won't they bear a grudge from all of this? What if a thousand beast king or the like grows among them?"
Fang Yuan thought about it. The issue wasn't killing all of the monkeys. The problem was that it would just take too much time for what he thought was worthwhile.
"We will deal with that problem when it comes," Fang Yuan said, waving his hand. "Even if they bear a grudge, it'll still take some time for another hundred beast king to emerge, let alone another thousand beast king, leaving that even a ten thousand beast king will be a problem once we come back. What's more important is that we deal with this issue as soon as we can. I have work left in the village."
The monkeys had scattered in various directions, which would make it very difficult to go and hunt them down one by one. Not impossible, mind you, but it might take a day or longer if they really wanted to make sure that the grass was pulled out by the roots - time that could be better spent doing something else.
"My primeval essence has recovered a lot," Fang Yuan said. "Let's fly up to the top of the mountain."
He was still at Rank 5 Initial Stage. He had a Purple Crystal Relic Gu in his inventory, but he had not seen cause to use it up until now.
If he happened to get two more, of course, he would use them gladly. But with Bai Ning Bing's help and the Equality Gu, he could nurture his aperture at a rate that would be otherwise impossible, and so he was saving that for a rainy day. Before leaving, Fang Yuan made sure that they hid all traces that they had been there, which took another two hours, and then they flew up.
"Where are you going? The mountain's down there," Bai Ning Bing asked.
"Yes, but I think there's something near the mountain top," Fang Yuan said.
Bai Ning Bing frowned. A primeval spring, if it was present, would more likely than not be present near the core of the mountain rather than at its very top. Even at Qing Mao Mountain, the Gu Yue village was not literally located at the mountaintop, but rather some distance beneath it.
Bei Gu Mountain from a distance looked almost entirely white, shining in the sun's rays and reflecting it like the moon. There were a number of bones which had been deposited upon it, hence its name. Fang Yuan knew that in the future, two children from the Bei Clan would find an inheritance at the top left by a Bone Path Gu master who was known only by his title as 'Flesh Bone Lord.'
There were a number of Bone Path Gu worms that he felt would be quite useful, but among them, the most useful was the Bone Flesh Unity Gu! It was said to be a gu worm that would help in dual cultivation, much like Equality Gu did. He wanted to see if he could use it to advance Fang Zheng's aptitude to Rank 4 with more success than he had using the Equality Gu. While it was useful for his own cultivation, improving Fang Zheng's resulted in far too much of a loss and annoyance to continue being effective.
"Let's land here," Fang Yuan said.
As per the story, the two children had been wandering in some caves when they managed to find a bone spiral which they touched, leading to the inheritance. Fang Yuan could try to use the Hundred Li Earthwolf Spider to burrow into the mountain and maybe chance upon it. However, that might risk destroying the inheritance or damaging it in such a way that he would not have access to its full content. It was a righteous path inheritance, after all. Better to play by the rules.