The sun had come up two hours earlier and was shining brightly against the bones of Bei Gu Mountain.
"Fang Yuan, we found an inheritance - but not what we were looking for," Bai Ning Bing said. "We came here to find a primeval spring... and we still don't have one." The resultant inheritance wasn't even that remarkable, particularly for a Rank 5 Gu Master.
"Judging by the amount of bone-path beasts that there are, I think it should be over there," Fang Yuan said, pointing seemingly randomly towards the direction where he knew the primeval spring would be.
"How are you going to get past that?" Fang Zheng wondered, seeing the massive amount of bone beasts that stood in their path.
"This is why I got this gu, didn't I?" Fang Yuan said, activating Rainbow Cannon Gu.
A rainbow shot out from his palm. However, it was not simply a mixture of bright lights; wherever it landed it dealt damage, placing massive holes in the bone path beasts as it went from one beast to another like a seamstress's needle. As they walked along the path, Bai Ning Bing still felt that they should look somewhere deeper in the mountain towards the base.
But given all that Fang Yuan had showed her, she was willing to just follow him and see what was going on for now.
Fang Yuan seemingly wandered into a cave at random and said, "Oh, look, we found it."
The two others stumbled into it. It was not a full primeval spring, but rather one of the tiny streams that would unite to form a larger primeval spring. The water was clear and untainted, but carried the faint aura of a spirit spring.
If they followed this deeper, they would happen upon the actual primeval spring.
"Great job, brother," Fang Zheng said, eyes practically sparkling. "With this, we can save our clan."
Bai Ning Bing, meanwhile, was wondering how Fang Yuan knew about all of this.
The inheritance could have actually been something left behind by someone on Qing Mao Mountain, and perhaps the inheritance also mentioned the location of the primeval spring.
But for Fang Yuan to know this with such precise detail... even if he had just been given a vague hint, it would have taken him at least a few more days to find all of this stuff. Moreover, Bai Ning Bing did not know of any such inheritance clues left on Qing Mao Mountain. It could be a Gu Yue Clan specialty, though it looked like Fang Zheng was also surprised. "There's too much randomness for me to make any kind of conclusion," Bai Ning Bing thought to herself.
Following the stream was easier said than done, as it would oftentimes tunnel into passageways too narrow for them to follow. In such a situation they could only use guesswork and alternate paths, but this was far, far, easier than wandering through the mountain blindly.
By noon, they managed to finally follow the small stream into the spirit spring proper.
Clean water flowed from up above into a massive pond, and surrounding it, tens of thousands of bright lights flickered - Hope Gu! Next to the spirit spring, there was another spring filled with whitish liquid: milk, which could be used to nourish many of the Bone Path gu worms that they had. Fang Yuan told Fang Zheng to reach into the milk spring, and he found several hundred more gu worms.
"There's a tiny fortune right here," Fang Zheng said. "We still have one problem, though - the fact that there's no soil." Because of this, growing crops would be difficult. Although the milk could provide a large amount of nutrition and could be modified into various products like cheese and curd, they would need to import a large amount of their food, mainly rice, from elsewhere. Also, they couldn't grow their signature Moon Orchids here.
Fang Yuan shrugged and responded to Fang Zheng, "This is the closest primeval spring that is free, which is near our village. We can't possibly expect for everything to be there in our new home. Perhaps we can think of some way to preserve the Moon Orchid petals, otherwise we may need to switch to cultivating the Bone Path. What's important is that we found this fresh primeval spring full of vitality. It can last for quite a while."
Having marked the location, they now had to deal with preventing the Bei clan from also stumbling upon this resource while they left. To do so, Fang Yuan had them create false trails all the rest of the afternoon around the mountain so it would be hard for them to be followed. Not only that, he had purposefully not exterminated many of the bone beasts so that they would be an obstacle to the Bei clansmen if they chose to follow them.
"Now, if you'll excuse me," Fang Yuan said before they left, "there's something that I wanted to speak to the Bei clan head about."
By this point the Bei clan was in the middle of organizing a large hunting party to see where Fang Yuan had gone. That is, until Fang Yuan happened to show himself right outside their doorstep, asking if the Bei Clan leader was still there and available for a meeting.
"Let him in," the Bei Clan leader said.
She had hoped that he had left, but instead he had returned to the mountain in the middle of the night and was now here to speak with her. What was going on? Fang Yuan walked into her tent and said that he would like to speak with her one-on-one. She dismissed the other elders. Fang Yuan didn't say anything further, but simply handed her an old book.
The Bei Clan head began reading it, and her expression froze. "This is…" The book was written by someone by the name of Flesh Bone Lord. According to it, he had been the eldest child of a Gu Master from the Gu Yue Clan and the Bai Clan who had eloped and found their way to Bei Gu Mountain. After that, it detailed an inheritance that he had left behind in case there were any Gu Yue or Bai Clan Gu Masters who happened to pass by.
"This book… where did you get this?" the Bei clan head asked.
"Oh, I happened to find the inheritance in question. That book is from said inheritance. It looks like the Gu Yue Clan always had a stake on Bei Gu Mountain."
"This can't be real," the Bei clan head finally said. Her first instinct was to tear the book apart. However, if Fang Yuan had handed her a copy, he most certainly had one himself or other evidence. And was it really wise to try to tear up the book before a Rank 5 Gu Master?
Fang Yuan smiled. The truth was that she was right; it was fake. Fang Yuan was quite good at forging documents and the like, and had oftentimes sold fake goods back during his time as a demonic Gu Master.
So it had been child's play for him to alter a few pages to fit his own narrative. The Flesh Bone Lord had not left his name, so he had simply made one up for him - Gu Yue Bai Bo! There was a very emotional section of the book in which he entailed how he had chosen to take both the 'Gu Yue' and 'Bai' clan names as a way of honoring his parents - Fang Yuan had nearly shed a tear while forging it.
He had also either taken or destroyed everything of worth in the inheritance after obtaining Bone-Flesh Unity Gu. Now that there were no further benefits to be achieved, he had no qualms about ransacking the place.
It would not hold up to intense scrutiny, but Fang Yuan did not need it to. So long as he had his strength and this flimsiest of excuses, there was nothing that the Bei Clan could do to stop his plan from taking the mountain. The Bei clan had made many enemies and grudges with the surrounding clans, while the Gu Yue clan was a blank slate to them. A fight with the Gu Yue clan would not go well for them.