Fang Yuan turned to the Gu Yue clan elders. "So, remember the story of Profound Earth Origin and Envy Gu. If you let envy consume your heart, then you will end up destroying everything both for yourselves and others. We cannot let ourselves become like the mushroommen who were brainwashed by Envy Gu. Instead, we must be like Profound Earth Origin, who gave his heart towards Gratitude Gu and therefore resisted the influence of Envy Gu. Now, we shouldn't be hoarding our treasures or sowing discord with our neighbors. Let us invite them to be our friends instead."
The elders nodded, bowing respectfully and apologizing profusely for their actions.
Fang Yuan waved his hand.
"It is of no matter. I can understand that in moments of weakness, you may have turned to such thoughts," Fang Yuan said. "Living in a harsh environment, with every day more dangerous than the last can make even the kindest people cruel out of desperation." He placed a hand to his chest, over his heart. "However there is no need for you all to worry. After all, so long as I am here, the Gu Yue clan does not need to worry about anything, do they? I will ensure that we have more than enough resources to survive, and that all threats are deflected away from us. I will continue to work for the betterment of the Gu Clan. You can leave it all to me."
Several of the Gu Yue clan elders were moved to the point of tears by this point. Indeed, some of them were straight-up bawling almost like infants.
"Yes, truly!"
"Supreme Elder is truly magnanimous!"
"Lord Fang Yuan's benevolence knows no bounds!"
"The Gu Yue clan's future is secured for the next ten thousand years!"
"I will leave the details of arranging for this feast to all of you. Thank you all for lending me your ears," Fang Yuan said. "In the meanwhile, I have matters regarding my immortal cultivation to deal with."
Fang Yuan flew out toward the open sky above the mountain and then turned his attention to his immortal aperture. He hoped to perfect a working prototype of the killer move he had been developing by the time the feast started.
What was this killer move Fang Yuan was thinking of?
It was Familial Emotion.
The original Familial Emotion was described within TheLegends of Ren Zu. It was what had allowed Ren Zu, Carefree Wisdom Heart, and Great Strength True Martial to share their emotions with each other while going down the River of Time and traversing over the blocks of Truthful Floating Ice.
Familial Emotion Gu definitely existed based on this description.
Fang Yuan had not managed to deduce its recipe directly.
However, upon rereading that segment of TheLegends of Ren Zu after his Human Path attainment had increased, he had thought of a way to mimic its effect.
There were many killer moves which relied upon the use of multiple gu worms in order to replicate the effect of another gu worm. There was a limit to this, of course; there were some gu worms whose effects could not be easily replicated to Fang Yuan's knowledge, such as the Spring Autumn Cicada.
Fang Yuan wanted to try to make a mortal killer move that did the same first, and if it worked, he might be able to build upon its foundation to create an Immortal killer move later on.
The reason that the Gu Yue clan elders had been so moved by his speech earlier was because he had been using subtle Emotion Path gu worms on them while talking and found that they had great effect.
That paved the foundation for his future plans, but he needed to develop this killer move first.
Familial Emotion consisted of two things - 'family' and 'emotion'.
One could read "family" as being two things - either referring to a Human Path sense of camaraderie or a Blood Path sense of blood ties.
Emotion was easy enough to think about; it referred to an Emotion Path technique. But it was not just emotion in isolation. The 'family' part came first. Fang Yuan's attainment in Emotion Path was at the Great Grandmaster level. At that level, he could easily use Emotion Path to mimic the effects of other paths.
In this case, he was trying to use it to mimic the effect of a Blood Path or Human Path gu worm. The fact that he had a foundation in both made this all the easier.
Of course, he could sit here and think about theoretical aspects until a hundred winters had passed but the only way that he'd know whether or not it really worked was to test out the killer move in question.
And Fang Yuan would soon have the perfect guinea pigs to use for testing - the members of the Bei, Xiu, He, and Ye clans!
Fang Yuan could have used his own Gu Yue clansmen to experiment with this, but since he intended to use the clan members as the basis of using this killer move in the first place, it was best to avoid killing too many of them.
Fang Yuan made good progress until he ran into an obstacle which wasn't easy to circumvent.
The killer move did work. The main issue he was running into was time.
The killer move's effect lasted for a very short while.
Fang Yuan intended to use this killer move in order to help him explore dream realms, and in such a case, he would need to set it up beforehand. In other words, he needed it to be very long-acting.
There were solutions to this issue, it was just that none of them were good ones.
One option was to use an Emotion Path gu worm - the Rank 4 and Rank 5 versions of the Depression Millipede.
The Depression Millipede was a parasitic gu worm.
In the wild, if it happened upon a person, it would burrow into their skull while they were sleeping and wrap itself around the core of their brain stem. After that, it would induce symptoms of depression in its host. It also fed off of a host's depressive thoughts so this induced a feedback loop in which it grew stronger and stronger and the symptoms got worse and worse over time. The host would become so depressed they would give up on wanting to live, ending themselves, after which the Depression Millipede would leave to go find another host.
Gu Masters could also use this on their opponents as a method of assassination that was difficult to detect through ordinary means. A person affected by the Depression Millipede could take months to die - certainly not a time period that allowed it to be used in battle. But because its symptoms started out subtly and because someone dying by their own hand was rarely investigated in detail; it was almost untraceable. Even in case someone thought that they had been poisoned, it was the liver that was usually tested. They would usually not open up their skull and examine the brain looking for this gu worm.
The problem was that the Rank 5 Depression Millipede was a single-use consumable gu if used in this manner. As such, its price in Treasure Yellow Heaven was not insignificant. The way that the killer move worked, it would also end up consuming them in order to prolong its effect, and Fang Yuan would need to continue purchasing them so long as he wanted to use it.
Depression Millipedes were rare enough that they were not always available on Yellow Treasure Heaven to buy in the first place, and this could cost Fang Yuan quite a lot in the long term.
Depression Millipedes grew within fields of Cranium Mushrooms. Cranium Mushrooms were so called because their caps grew big and wrinkled resembling human cerebrums. They were a wisdom path resource that Fang Yuan did not have in his aperture. No one in Yellow Treasure Heaven was selling any as naturally, the cow was far more valuable than the milk - and so long as only a few people had Cranium Mushrooms they could continue raising not just Depression Millipedes but other highly coveted Wisdom Path resources.