Following the blinding 97/100 Golden-Purple Halo on his Lv.2 Provincial Radar, Lin Mo stepped out of his Maybach at the narrow stone mouth of Old Canal Alley alongside Su Wan and Tie Niu.
Three minutes after leaving Pier Nine, they walked down the wet bluestone lane where three-hundred-year-old willow trees leaned over mossy brick eaves. Halfway down the alley, warm white steam poured through the cracked wooden lattice door of a humble storefront bearing a faded cedar signboard: Uncle Luo’s Thirty-Year Hand-Pulled Noodle Shop.
In Lin Mo’s vision, a pillar of golden-purple light blazed straight through the noodle shop’s tiled roof like a miniature sun. Inside his coat pocket, the Cracked Qingcheng Spiritual-Wood Sword Scabbard vibrated with eager recognition.
“Chairman, according to the municipal veteran business registry, this shop has been run by a disabled border-defense veteran named Luo Daming for thirty years,” Su Wan whispered, checking her tablet as she held an umbrella over Lin Mo. “He charges only eight yuan for a large bowl of beef noodles and gives free refills to sanitation workers and poor students.”
“And right now, his kitchen looks like a sword-testing ground,” Lin Mo said, pushing open the steam-fogged wooden door.
A rich, comforting aroma of star anise, simmered beef bones, and hand-pulled wheat noodles washed over them. Six scrubbed pine tables filled the narrow front room, though at twelve-thirty in the morning there were no customers inside.
Instead, kneeling in the center of the wet terracotta floor with a scarred wooden crutch lying beside his pinned-up left trouser leg, was fifty-eight-year-old crippled army veteran Uncle Luo.
[Target: Uncle Luo (Luo Daming) | Goodness Score: 90/100.]
[Status: Crippled border-defense army veteran & honest thirty-year noodle shop owner — Never raised his ¥8 beef noodle price for poor students or elderly neighbors.]
Uncle Luo was staring in tearful despair at a literal mountain of broken porcelain filling six giant plastic wash-tubs and covering the entire back kitchen floor.
Except the bowls weren’t shattered.
Every single one of the 3,000 blue-and-white porcelain noodle bowls had been sliced straight down the center into two mirror-smooth, symmetrical halves! Not a single porcelain chip lay on the tiles. The cut edges gleamed as flat and polished as laser-cut jade.
“Three thousand bowls...” Uncle Luo choked out, picking up two matching half-bowls that slid apart in his calloused hands. “Every single bowl in my shop and my back storeroom... cut clean in half! How am I supposed to open for the morning dock-worker shift without a single whole bowl?!”
Over by the steaming stainless-steel dishwashing sink, a nineteen-year-old young woman stood frozen like a scolded schoolgirl.
She was dressed in a washed-out, patched cyan cotton martial robe with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and a coarse canvas apron tied around her slender waist. Her ink-black hair was coiled up with a plain wooden chopstick, and a dab of white dish-soap suds clung to the tip of her exquisite, frost-pale nose.
In her right hand, she held a wet loofah sponge. In her left hand sat two freshly split halves of a blue-and-white soup bowl.
[Target: Chu Lingxiao | Goodness Score: 97/100 (Incorruptible Sword Heart — Banished Mount Qingcheng Sword Prodigy).]
[Cultivation Realm: Peak Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster (Suppressed to 0.1% while washing dishes).]
[Current Status: Mortified after accidentally leaking 0.1% Sword Qi through a dish sponge; terrified of losing her ¥15/hour night-shift wage.]
Seeing Uncle Luo’s tears, the peerless Sword Fairy who had once made twenty sect elders tremble on Mount Qingcheng bowed stiffly at a ninety-degree angle, her ears burning bright pink.
“Boss Luo, I am deeply sorry!” Chu Lingxiao whispered in a voice as clear and earnest as mountain spring water. “I suppressed ninety-nine point nine percent of my Sword Qi, I swear on my late master’s name! A dried fleck of beef tendon was stuck to the rim, so I scrubbed slightly harder with the sponge... Please don’t deduct my fifteen-yuan hourly wage! The flooded village orphans in Clear-Brook still need winter roof tiles!”
Uncle Luo looked at the soap suds on her nose and let out a helpless, watery sigh. He couldn’t even bring himself to scold her.
“Child, when have I ever docked your pay?” Uncle Luo said, wiping his eyes with his apron. “You work fourteen hours a night scrubbing pots and eating plain noodle scraps just to mail every coin back to those village kids. I’m not crying over the fifteen yuan! I’m crying because the kiln supplier won’t deliver on credit, and the Murong Clan’s loan sharks are coming down this alley tonight to collect their protection fee!”
“Wait until dawn, Boss Luo!” Chu Lingxiao said earnestly, pulling a tiny bottle of hardware-store superglue from her apron pocket. “I can glue all six thousand halves back together before five o’clock! My hands are very steady!”
“Girl, if you pour boiling beef broth into superglued bowls, the dockworkers will end up wearing their breakfast in their laps!” Uncle Luo groaned, covering his face.
Standing by the doorway, Su Wan blinked twice at the mountain of 3,000 mirror-sliced porcelain halves, while Tie Niu rubbed his eyes in martial shock.
“Chairman,” Tie Niu whispered in awe, leaning toward Lin Mo’s ear. “She sliced three thousand ceramic bowls through a wet loofah sponge without cracking the bottom of the plastic wash-tubs! If that sponge touched my neck, my head wouldn’t even know it fell off until Tuesday!”
Using Peak Rank 3 Sword Intent to scrub dried beef tendon off eight-yuan noodle bowls, Lin Mo thought, a laugh rising in his chest. No wonder my radar nearly overloaded. She’s a walking sovereign mint wearing a dishwashing apron.
Lin Mo couldn’t hold it back—he laughed aloud, the warm sound echoing through the steam-filled shop as he stepped up to the counter.
“Slicing three thousand porcelain bowls down the centerline without chipping the glaze is high art, Uncle Luo,” Lin Mo said, pulling out a wooden stool. “If you glued magnets to the rims, you could sell them to modern art museums for ten thousand yuan a pair.”
Uncle Luo and Chu Lingxiao both spun around.
The instant Chu Lingxiao’s starry, frost-clear eyes landed on Lin Mo, her breath caught. Even with her cultivation suppressed, her pure Sword Heart sensed the warm, radiant Half-Step Rank 3 Golden Benevolence Qi circulating gently through Lin Mo’s meridians. It was an aura cleaner and more righteous than anything she had ever felt on Mount Qingcheng.
“Young master, we’re closed for the night,” Uncle Luo said apologetically, reaching for his wooden crutch. “Or rather, as you can see, we don’t have a single unbroken bowl left to serve you.”
“Don’t get up, Uncle Luo,” Lin Mo said, stepping forward to steady the old veteran’s shoulder. “Porcelain is too fragile for a kitchen staffed by a Sword Grandmaster anyway. You need thick, medical-grade 316 stainless-steel bowls—double-walled, drop-proof, and sword-sponge resistant.”
Before Uncle Luo could ask what he meant, Lin Mo pulled out his black-gold Taichu Benevolence Card and tapped it against the portable POS terminal held by Su Wan.
BEEP!
A warm emerald-gold light filled the little noodle shop as the terminal chimed:
`[TRANSACTION APPROVED! RECIPIENTS: VETERAN UNCLE LUO (90/100) & DISH-WASHING PART-TIMER CHU LINGXIAO (97/100)!]`
`[AMOUNT SPENT: ¥10,000,000 RMB — UNBREAKABLE STAINLESS-STEEL BOWL UPGRADE, FULL SHOP RENOVATION, VETERAN PROSTHETIC CARE & WORKER CATERING RETAINER!]`
In the same heartbeat, golden-purple thunder rolled silently through Lin Mo’s mind:
`[DING! 100X PURE-HEART BENEVOLENCE REFUND TRIGGERED!]`
`[SPENT: ¥10,000,000 RMB -> REFUNDED: +¥1,000,000,000 RMB (+¥1.00 BILLION) + 10,000 BENEVOLENCE MERIT POINTS!]`
`[CURRENT PERSONAL LIQUID VAULT BALANCE: ¥459,460,000,000 RMB (¥459.46 BILLION)!]`
`[GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK UPDATED: 11,220 -> 11,222 VERIFIED BENEFICIARIES (+2)!]`
On the counter, Uncle Luo’s old button-phone rang with a bank deposit alert: `[Taichu Benevolence Group: +¥10,000,000.00 RMB Credited — Purpose: Unbreakable Tableware & Five-Year Taichu Dockworker Breakfast Contract]`.
Uncle Luo stared at the seven zeros on his tiny screen, his hand shaking so hard he nearly dropped the phone into a tub of half-bowls.
“Ten... ten million yuan?!” Uncle Luo gasped, tears springing back into his eyes. “Young man, three thousand stainless-steel bowls only cost thirty thousand yuan! Why would you transfer ten million to a crippled old noodle cook?!”
“Two reasons,” Lin Mo said deadpan. “First, my eight hundred shipbuilders at Hongxing Shipyard eat like starved tigers, and you’re now an official Taichu Canteen partner. Second, your part-time dishwasher left something at Old Chen’s highway stall outside the city, and I came to return it.”
Lin Mo reached inside his dark wool coat, drew out the Cracked Qingcheng Spiritual-Wood Sword Scabbard along with the redeemed ¥50,000,000 Clear-Brook Village Flood-Debt IOU receipt from Old Chen’s stall, and held the scabbard out toward Chu Lingxiao.
HUMMM!
The moment the cracked spiritual-wood scabbard came within three feet of Chu Lingxiao, a clear, joyful cry like a returning crane echoed from the ancient wood! The soap suds on Chu Lingxiao’s nose trembled as her eyes flew wide.
“My... my master’s Qingcheng Cloud-Wood Scabbard!” Chu Lingxiao breathed, taking a step forward and wiping her soapy hands frantically on her patched apron before receiving the scabbard with both palms. “I left this with Uncle Chen at the highway tollgate when the loan sharks ambushed the village timber trucks! Sir... you paid Uncle Chen to redeem my collateral?”
“Ten million yuan well spent,” Lin Mo smiled faintly. “Old Chen is building a five-star trucker sanctuary on the highway now. He asked me to tell you that your scabbard was waiting for its owner.”
Chu Lingxiao hugged the cracked wooden scabbard to her chest, her icy, guarded demeanor melting into a wave of pure, stunned gratitude. For ninety days since Mount Qingcheng banished her for saving the flooded mortal village, every rich man she met had tried to exploit her debt. Yet this young man in the dark coat had quietly protected both the highway stall owner and Uncle Luo without asking for a single thing in return.
“Benefactor Lin...” Chu Lingxiao bowed deeply, her voice ringing with solemn conviction. “Chu Lingxiao has no money left today, only three yuan and fifty fen in my pouch. Wait until I finish washing tonight’s pots—I will repay this kindness with my life!”
“No need to risk your life over noodle bowls, Miss Chu,” Lin Mo said, gesturing toward a wooden bench by the stove. “If you really want to thank Uncle Luo and me, boil a pot of hot water first. My bodyguard Tie Niu and I walked all the way down this wet alley in the midnight drizzle, and we haven’t had our second supper yet.”
Uncle Luo beamed through his tears, tapping his wooden crutch against the floor tiles as fresh energy rushed back into his weathered frame. “Right away, Chairman Lin! Even if all three thousand porcelain bowls are split in half, I still have two enamel family basins in the cupboard! Little Chu, slice two portions of spiced shank beef for our benefactors!”
Repay me? Please don’t, Lin Mo thought cheerfully as Chu Lingxiao nodded and wiped the last dab of soap suds off her nose. With a 97/100 Goodness score, every time I spend a yuan on you, the System hands me back a hundred. Your job isn’t to pay me back—your job is to help me spend trillions.
CRASH—BANG!
Before Lin Mo could reply, two heavy iron-clad boots kicked Uncle Luo’s wooden shop doors completely off their brass hinges!
The splintered wooden lattice slammed across the front tables as cold night rain blew into the shop. Flooding through the ruined doorway came twenty burly thugs in black Murong Syndicate windbreakers, brandishing solid steel pipes, crowbars, and spiked iron chains.
Striding in at their head was a hulking, bald brute with a livid knife-scar slicing from his left brow across his cheek—Scarface Biao (`Goodness: 4/100`), chief underground enforcer for Young Master Murong Jie!
In his left hand, Scarface Biao carried a three-foot iron pipe; in his right, he waved a thick, blood-red usury contract stamped with the Murong Construction Syndicate’s seal.
“Stop scrubbing bowls, little Sword Fairy!” Scarface Biao barked, spitting his toothpick onto the sliced porcelain halves and leering at Chu Lingxiao. “Young Master Murong Jie bought your fifty-million-yuan Clear-Brook Village flood-relief timber contract from the rural credit union! With our underground ten-percent daily compound penalty, your fifty-million debt just hit one hundred and fifty million yuan tonight! Either cough up a hundred and fifty million in cash right now, or put on these iron shackles and let my boys drag you into Young Master Murong’s underground death-cage!”