Three weeks passed after the Awakening Ceremony.
The academy elder began teaching the students how to use Moonlight Gu.
The lesson was simple. Move Moonlight Gu to the palm, pour in primeval essence, condense the moonlight, aim, and release. The elder also warned them not to waste primeval essence. A moonblade only needed enough strength to achieve its purpose. Using more primeval essence than necessary was not power, but waste.
Fang Ming understood the logic quickly.
But when he used Moonlight Gu himself, he found it harder than expected.
The moonblade was not difficult to release, but controlling it was another matter. The amount of primeval essence affected its speed and sharpness. The angle of his palm changed its path. Even against a stationary grass puppet, his aim was not stable.
His first moonblade struck the puppet's shoulder.
His second struck the chest.
Neither result satisfied him.
A-grade aptitude gave him more chances to practice, but it did not give him skill. Gu usage still needed control, and control came from experience.
Another week passed.
During this week, Fang Ming practiced Moonlight Gu often. He tested different distances, release speeds, charging times, and palm angles. His improvement was steady, but still ordinary.
March was already over, and it was now April. A whole month had passed since the Awakening Ceremony, and Advanced Copy Gu became usable again.
Fang Ming did not choose to copy Fang Yuan's valuable talents.
Right now, he had more urgent problems to worry about. He needed cultivation speed, stronger primeval essence, and a way to make his primeval essence last longer. He also needed a valuable asset to sell to the caravan that would arrive next month, in May.
So this time, Fang Ming chose to copy Fang Yuan's Liquor Worm.
When the copy was completed, a fat white worm appeared in Fang Ming's aperture. Its body was round and soft, giving off a faint wine fragrance. It floated above the jade-green primeval sea, appearing harmless at first glance, but Fang Ming knew very well how useful it was.
Liquor Worm could refine primeval essence by 1 small stage.
Fang Ming was currently Rank 1 initial stage, and his primeval essence was jade-green. After being refined by Liquor Worm, it became Rank 1 middle-stage pale-green primeval essence.
The difference was immediate.
When Fang Ming activated Moonlight Gu again, the moonlight gathered in his palm more smoothly. The same Moonlight Gu, the same hand, and the same motion produced a sharper feeling than before.
He released a moonblade.
The blue crescent flew out faster than before and struck the grass puppet's chest, cutting deeper into the straw body.
Fang Ming's eyes moved slightly.
Again.
He activated Liquor Worm, refined another portion of jade-green primeval essence into pale-green primeval essence, then poured it into Moonlight Gu.
Another moonblade flew out.
This time, the cut landed near the puppet's neck.
The result was still not perfect, but the difference was obvious.
Pale-green primeval essence was far more efficient than jade-green primeval essence. With the same portion of primeval essence, Fang Ming could release nearly twice as many moonblades as before, and those moonblades were also faster and stronger.
For Moonlight Gu training, this was extremely useful.
More moonblades meant more chances to practice.
Fang Ming raised his palm again.
Blue light gathered.
This time, he used less primeval essence than before, but the moonblade still flew out with greater speed. It cut into the grass puppet's neck, leaving a deep mark across the straw.
The head still did not fall.
Fang Ming was not disappointed.
He adjusted his palm angle, controlled his breathing, refined another portion of primeval essence through Liquor Worm, and released again.
The moonblade flew.
Then another.
And another.
Inside the training ground, blue crescents continued flashing one after another. Each moonblade consumed primeval essence, but compared to before, the pressure on his aperture was much lighter. The pale-green primeval essence refined by Liquor Worm was clearly more efficient than his original jade-green essence. The same amount of essence could support more attacks, and each attack was faster and stronger.
This was already useful for combat practice, but as Fang Ming continued testing it, he understood that this was only the surface.
The Liquor Worm's greater value was cultivation.
He was still Rank 1 initial stage. Normally, he could only use jade-green primeval essence to temper his aperture walls, but after Liquor Worm refined it into Rank 1 middle-stage pale-green primeval essence, the effect became much better. Using primeval essence 1 small stage higher than his current cultivation to nourish and temper the aperture was far more efficient than relying on his original essence alone.
This meant his cultivation speed would increase sharply.
The time and primeval stones needed to temper his aperture walls would both be reduced, and his path toward Rank 1 middle stage would become smoother. For Fang Ming, who wanted to reach Rank 2 before graduation, this was the Liquor Worm's true value.
Combat improvement was only the surface.
Cultivation speed was the foundation.
But cultivation alone was not enough.
Fang Ming could use Liquor Worm to advance faster, but the Gu world was not a place where cultivation level alone decided survival. A person with stronger primeval essence could still die from taking the wrong path, drinking the wrong water, stepping into the wrong cave, or misunderstanding the habits of a beast group.
During this period, Fang Ming had been spending a great amount of time in the academy library.
At first, he had thought he could quickly gain a general understanding of Qing Mao Mountain, then move on to broader knowledge about Southern Border, Gu refinement, and Gu fusion.
He had been wrong.
The knowledge related to Qing Mao Mountain alone was far larger than he expected.
The terrain of Qing Mao Mountain, the dangerous areas, the territories of different beast kings, the habits of wild beasts, the experiences left behind by previous Gu Masters, the history of wolf tides, the tricks used during missions, and the methods to survive when chased by different beasts — all of this needed time to absorb.
Different beasts required different responses. If he recognized some beasts early enough, he could still escape by speed, but others could not be outrun at all, and blindly fleeing from them would only waste strength before death arrived. In those cases, survival depended on knowing where to hide, which terrain could delay pursuit, and which nearby beast group or territory could be used to create an opening for escape.
Different seasons also carried different dangers.
In winter, snow could make mountain roads slippery, and hidden holes beneath the snow could break a leg if stepped on carelessly. In spring, many slumbering beasts woke up and became active again. Some water sources were safe to drink from, while others looked clean but could carry poison, parasites, or traces left by Gu insects.
These things sounded small, but in the wild, small mistakes could kill.
Fang Yuan moved through danger with apparent ease, but Fang Ming would not mistake that for simplicity. Fang Yuan had already lived through the early chaos of Qing Mao Mountain once. More than that, he had experienced far worse situations during his 500 years of life. That experience allowed him to act alone, take risks, hide traces, and survive.
Fang Ming did not have that foundation.
Right now, he did not even know how to properly hide his tracks in a forest. He could not reliably find water, caves, or safe resting places in mountains and forests. He did not know enough about which beast territories could be crossed, which should be avoided, and which could be used to shake off pursuers.
So Fang Ming changed his approach.
His current priority was no longer to greedily cram broad Southern Border knowledge into his head. That was meaningless for now. Southern Border was vast, far larger than Earth, and the problem was not only size. The real problem was that this world had too many species, too many strange beasts, too many Gu insects, and too many dangers that were almost impossible for a low-rank Gu Master to survive.
For example, if one was unlucky enough to encounter a horde of wailing specters flying past at night, death was almost certain. They were Rank 5 beasts, extremely aggressive, nearly invisible from afar, and usually moved in groups of hundreds. By the time a low-rank Gu Master saw them clearly, it would already be too late.
There were too many dangers like that.
Knowing about them was useful in theory, but Fang Ming could not act on most of that knowledge right now. What he needed most was knowledge that could keep him alive in the place where he actually stood.
Qing Mao Mountain.
So his first goal was to build an encompassing understanding of Qing Mao Mountain: its terrain, beast groups, danger zones, seasonal changes, mission routes, and survival methods.
After that, he would study nearby caravan routes connected to Qing Mao Mountain.
Then came Gu refinement, Gu fusion, and the clan's previous experience dealing with wolf tides.
Fang Ming knew he was in a race against time.
There was only 1 year before graduation. After that, he would become a Gu Master and begin taking missions outside the village. Many Gu Masters on Qing Mao Mountain had spent years, even decades, doing missions in the wild. Some were already in their 30s or 40s, with far more experience than Fang Ming could currently imagine.
Yet during the wolf tide, even experienced Rank 3 elders would die. Rank 2 Gu Masters with decades of wild mission experience would also fall under the claws and fangs of wolves.
In that kind of disaster, even strength and experience could not guarantee survival.
A-grade aptitude and Advanced Copy Gu were powerful advantages, but at the current stage, they could not replace knowledge, experience, and preparation.
Fang Ming was not afraid of the coming danger.
But he would not be stupid enough to walk into it ignorant.