Bai Ning Bing's thoughts were reeling as she followed Fang Yuan into the corridor. Up until now, she had thought that his talk about there being this pair of eloped lovers from the Bai and Gu Yue clans was just a story he had made up.
However, he had seemed to know that this inheritance was here, which is why he had been searching near the top of the mountain rather than for a primeval spring somewhere else.
Of course, Bai Ning Bing still thought that Fang Yuan was lying, simply because it was Fang Yuan.
However, at the same time, it appeared that there was some grain of truth to whatever he had been saying. Perhaps there had been a Bai or Gu Yue clansman who had visited this area and left behind an inheritance. It would explain how Fang Yuan happened to know about it.
The corridor that they walked into was filled with bone spikes and was quite narrow. Bai Ning Bing was prepared to break them, but Fang Yuan waved his hand and then gripped a particular bone spike and pulled it. The bone spikes surrounding them then retreated into the walls, leaving the hallway open while the door behind them closed.
"Do you think that we were followed?" Fang Yuan asked. His investigative gu worms revealed nothing.
"I doubt it. How could they come to this part of the mountain so quickly?" Bai Ning Bing asked as they walked forward.
The hallway opened up into a massive cavern, where there was a vat in the middle of it. There was liquid pouring out, but it wasn't water. It was thick and white. Basically, this was a milk spring. The liquid was much like milk, and it could be very nutritious for both infants and adults. 'I knew that I would happen upon this from my memories of what the inheritance had, so the tale released by the Bei clan was not nonsense,' Fang Yuan thought to himself.
"Are there gu worms inside this?" Bai Ning Bing said, surprised as she walked near the vat of liquid.
"Why don't you check what's inside?" Fang Yuan asked. He was pretty sure that it was safe to put his hands inside, but if it was dangerous, why not make Bai Ning Bing do it instead?
Bai Ning Bing put her hand inside and then pulled out a handful of Gu worms. An entire handful. They were all Rank 1, looking like bony fingers, which were Bone Spear Gu.
"There must be thousands of them in here," Bai Ning Bing said, eyes widening. Even if they were only Rank 1 Gu worms, the fact that they were so numerous in quantity and had a ready food source right next to them would make them quite valuable.
"Yes, without a doubt," Fang Yuan said. "This would be a good resource point for our clans." Since Bei Gu Mountain was made up mainly of bones and had very little soil, it might be hard for them to continue to harvest moon orchids. However, that didn't mean that the Gu Yue clan couldn't pivot towards making something else. As a matter of fact, there had been talks of changing their surname - they could change it from 'Gu Yue' to 'Bei Gu' if this sort of development advanced enough and they really wanted a new identity for themselves.
The Bei Gu clan, for that matter, had actually specialized nearly entirely in the bone path after they had obtained this inheritance, and it would often sell the milk as a refinement material and food source.
"That's not all that's in there, though," Bai Ning Bing said. "There are Rank 2 Gu worms as well. Look," she said, pulling them out. These were Spiral Bone Spear Gu. Just like the Rank 1 Gu worms, they were extremely huge in number and also quite valuable. Bai Ning Bing figured that if they sold this entire vat full of gu worms, they could easily net one million primal stones if they could find a buyer who had that much and had such a demand forgu worms. The issue was, of course, taking them out, refining them, and keeping them fed.
Her eyes widened once more as Fang Yuan put his hand inside and began removing scoopfuls of gu worms, refining them instantly using the Spring Autumn Cicada. He had Rank 5 primeval essence, so merely a thin wisp of it was more than enough to refine a large number of them. Bai Ning Bing watched as he refined thousands upon thousands of Gu worms instantly, a feat that would have taken her months at the very least.
'Just what kind of secret is he hiding?' Bai Ning Bing wondered. Up until now, she had been wary of Fang Yuan. After all, he had managed to get to Rank 5 somehow before her and seemed to be quite knowledgeable when it came to matters he should have no business knowing. However, he also seemed to know secrets that no one else seemed to know, as well as this odd refinement ability of his.
"Can you actually feed all of them?" Bai Ning Bing asked.
"I can feed them all long enough," Fang Yuan said. "We can take this milk spring with us." The milk spring was made by an underground water source, which was powered by the nutrients made from decaying bone matter, which resulted in the milk spring that rose up towards this vat. They might need it to feed all these gu worms, so while the vat itself had very little water comparatively speaking, it was the massive underground spring which was needed to feed so many of them. But Fang Yuan did not want to leave them for the Bei clan in on the off chance that they had been followed. "Whatever we can't take, let's destroy it," Fang Yuan said.
Bai Ning Bing hesitated. These gu worms were extremely precious. She knew that as a genius of the Bai clan, she had often been favored and given whatever gu worms that she wanted by the clan heads. However, she had matured somewhat after her aptitude had fallen and began understanding the troubles endured by the common Bai Clan Villager. She was well aware that for ordinary Gu Masters, Rank 1 and Rank 2 worms were hard to come by. Many of them only had two or three at most which they still struggled to feed.
"In case the Bei clan gets here, let's not give them weapons to fight us if they turn into our enemies," Fang Yuan said.
Bai Ning Bing sighed. Fang Yuan's paranoia was far too high, she felt. After all, how could anyone possibly have gotten here? Didn't he have his own investigative methods? And yet, Fang Yuan's firm stance told her that he would not budge, and that if she would not destroy the Gu worms, then he would. She sighed, destroying them, turning something that was worth at least a hundred thousand primal stones in total into nothing but mush on the ground.
They walked further down the hall to a room with three pillars into each was carved a human hand. There were gu worms in the palm of each one.
"Three, choose one, satisfied at heart. Bei Gu Inheritance, left for future descendants." - this was inscribed into the pillars.
"Remember," Fang Yuan said. "This is a righteous path inheritance. The lines tell us to take only one gu worm, and that's what we should do." It wasn't as if they would be punished for taking any of the taking too much, at least not directly, not like they would with a demonic path inheritance.
Instead, what would happen was that they would be unable to get the true treasure and future rewards would be diminished.
Of the three Gu worms present there, none of them were of particular interest to Fang Yuan, who was Rank 5, and neither to Bai Ning Bing. However, they took one and continued on the path.