The Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus was an invention of Genesis Lotus Immortal Venerable. It was a portable primeval spring, and once placed within one's aperture, it would generate primeval stones which could either be sold or used by the Gu Master in question for either combat or cultivation.
Its value could not be understated to either a mortal or immortal Gu Master. To a mortal, it would allow them to essentially never run out of primeval essence during combat and also to generate primeval stones which could be exchanged as a medium of currency. To a demonic cultivator it had all kinds of benefits.
If advanced to an Immortal Gu, it would become even more valuable as it would produce not primeval stones, but Immortal Essence instead! Immortal Essence Stones were far more valuable than primeval stones - not even a million primeval stones could compare to a single Immortal Essence Stone. There was a reason that it was also considered one of the Top Ten Immortal Gu, alongside the Spring Autumn Cicada.
The downside to refining it, of course, was that one needed a spirit spring in order to do so.
The Flower Wine Monk had managed to find the recipe for the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus. However, in order to refine it, he needed a primeval spring. Being a demonic Gu Master, one who wandered the world on his lonesome and lacked resources, he did not have the access needed to refine this gu.
Come to think of it, even if he had been a righteous path Gu Master, there was no way that he could be allowed to use a clan's own primeval spring in order to refine a gu worm for himself like this. To a clan, a primeval spring was far more valuable than a single Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus.
The Flower Wine Monk had evidently chosen Gu Yue Village as a target for this. He had been betrayed by the fourth generation clan head, but had managed to escape and then slowly made his way to this location to try and refine it.
However, while going towards the spirit spring, he had likely run into first gen Gu Yue. After running into first gen Gu Yue, he had been killed in that encounter, not from the encounter with the fourth generation clan head, as everyone had assumed.
He had then left his inheritance here to see if anyone could get revenge for him on his behalf.
After all, if someone refined the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus, it would mean the consumption of the clan's primeval spring, and the destruction of the clan.
Fang Yuan extended his hand towards the crystal wall, finding that he could move through it as if it were made of air. The crystal wall existed as a means to visualize the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus, as it was said to be ephemeral and oscillated between the astral and physical worlds until refined. It was only through this crystal wall that one could see it.
Fang Yuan did not touch the water itself - he could not pollute his own clan's primeval spring, after all. He instead tossed a primeval stone through the barrier, with the gu worm greedily taking it in.
Fang Yuan did not know the recipe for this gu worm, but he had heard rumors on how it could be refined.
It was said that it needed to be kept in a fresh primeval spring for nine days and nine nights, and when it bloomed with nine leaves, only then it could be moved else all of one's efforts were for naught.
Fang Yuan saw that it had eight and a quarter leaves on it - it had been sitting here for centuries, and had bloomed fully some time ago. However, the primeval spring slowly lost its vitality over time, and the lotus began nurturing the spring instead.
If anything things must've gotten worse recently after Bai Ning Bing's detonation had damaged the primeval spring, meaning that this process of reverse nourishment was accelerated.
Fang Yuan looked at the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus for some time, weighing his options.
If it had been him from before, he would have undoubtedly wanted to refine this gu.
However, it was only Rank 3 currently, so it offered limited help to him right now. Now that he was at Rank 4 Peak Stage, its primeval essence regenerating ability was but a drop in a massive lake.
Disregarding that, the main problem was that he needed a primeval spring in order to refine it.
The primeval spring in question had to be a healthy and fresh one, not one which was dying or had been damaged. Bai Ning Bing's detonation had caused damage to all three primeval springs on Qing Mao mountain, used by each of the three clans. This had become evident over time as the harvest of primeval stones had decreased somewhat.
The clansmen naturally hoped that the primeval springs would recover with time, and as far as Fang Yuan knew, the possibility of this was quite high. However, that meant that they were not the ideal candidates to be used for refining this gu.
Fang Yuan knew several locations of primeval springs which would be discovered in the future, one of them being rather close by, near an inheritance he also intended to collect.
However, he could not just leave the clan like this.
There was also the matter of attempting to advance it any further. You needed multiple spirit springs to do so. To get it to Rank 4 where it would be useful to him, he would need seven primeval springs. To get it to Rank 5, a realm where he was at the cusp of, he would need eleven.
'I can't refine this right now,' Fang Yuan concluded.
However, when he announced the location of this place to the village, he would need to first think of a way to hide this place from the rest of the village. Either that or translocate this gu worm without damaging it.
Such was not impossible, but he had not brought the required gu worms needed for that kind of endeavor.
He got on the Hundred Li Earthwolf Spider and burrowed further.
Much as he had expected, the tunnel merged into a location that was near the clan's underground cavern before ultimately opening up in the same area where he had found the Thousand Li Earthwolf Spider.
This opened up into the Blood River Graveyard eventually.
The mystery had been solved, and all of Fang Yuan's questions had been answered.
He had made significant gains, it could be said, though there had been nothing which would improve his own strength by a large measure.
Despite being a Rank 5 inheritance, most of the Flower Wine Monk's Rank 5 gu worms had been killed or died out after so long. As such, to the current Gu Yue Fang Yuan, there was little of value that he could use for himself.
He spent some time investigating the Blood River Graveyard further, wondering if there were any clues that would now show up that he had uncovered the full extent of the Flower Wine Monk's true inheritance. If he could uncover the secret behind the Ancient Moon Desolate Yin Physique, it would make all his gains from earlier seen inconsequential. The entire trip might've actually been worth it to him in that case.
Nothing else seemed to have changed, however, and he could only make his way back to the underground cavern, whereupon he placed several of the gu worms that he had found in the clan's storage before returning those he had borrowed.
He estimated that he would need about sixty thousand primeval stones in order to nurture the Heavenly Essence Treasure Lotus completely. In lean times like this, even someone like Fang Yuan would have difficulty ponying up that kind of amount. Before that, he needed to find a suitable primeval spring to use in order to refine it.
Once he successfully moved it, though, he would be able to announce his discovery to the rest of he clan.