CRACK!
A heavy leather boot smashed right through the rotting pine planks of the courtyard gate. Splinters and frozen snow sprayed across the cracked flagstones.
“Let go of my coat, you one-eyed old dog!” Scar-Face Liu bellowed from the threshold.
The burly Second Branch lackey shoved his elbow into Grandpa Fu’s chest. Grandpa Fu’s hunched spine hit the stone doorframe with a dull thud. His wooden broom spun into a snowbank, and the old butler slid to one knee, gasping for cold air.
“Third Young Master is resting!” Grandpa Fu wheezed, grabbing Scar-Face Liu’s mud-caked boot with both wrinkled hands. “You can’t go in there without an elder’s writ!
The wind will kill him!”
“Kill him? Good! It’ll save us the firewood!”
Scar-Face Liu kicked Grandpa Fu’s grip loose and stomped into the small yard.
He shook the sleet off his greasy wolf-skin vest and waved a stiff sheet of parchment high in the air. The red ink seal of the Frost-Pine Gu Clan’s Second Branch glared against the white paper.
“Hear that inside, Gu Changsheng?” Scar-Face Liu shouted toward the paper-paned cottage door. “Second Elder Gu Ba says your time is up!
A dying cripple like you won’t survive tonight’s frost anyway.
Press your thumbprint on this property forfeiture deed right now, or I’ll throw your carcass into the street before noon!”
Inside the freezing bedroom, Gu Changsheng doubled over on the hard brick bed and coughed.
A mouthful of thick, black blood splattered against the threadbare cotton quilt. It smelled of rotten iron and bitter frost-poison.
His ribs ached like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his chest. Every breath scraped through his lungs like broken glass.
Gu Changsheng blinked hard, wiping his chin with the back of a pale, shaking sleeve.
Wait a second.
Five minutes ago, he had been sitting in his apartment kitchen after a long restaurant shift, scrolling through a grimdark webnovel on his phone called Record of the Nine Heavens Sword God.
Now a torrent of somebody else’s memories was hammering into his skull.
Gu Changsheng. Age twenty-eight. Head of the ruined Third Branch of the Frost-Pine Gu Clan.
Three years ago, his wife Luo Qingxue vanished in a storm of blood and ice, leaving behind their five-year-old son. Six months later, an “accident” on clan patrol shattered Gu Changsheng’s dantian and left black frost-poison in his lungs. Since then, the original owner had lain on this bed drinking cheap wine.
Meanwhile, Second Elder Gu Ba swallowed every shop and copper coin the Third Branch owned.
Gu Changsheng stared at the black blood on his knuckles. He recalled the opening plot of Record of the Nine Heavens Sword God.
In the third part of the book, on the first day of the twelfth winter month, Second Elder Gu Ba and his nephew-in-law—the novel’s “Chosen One,” Lin Fan—marched into this yard at noon. They “discovered” a stolen Seven-Leaf Ice Lotus buried under the woodshed and beat Gu Changsheng to death.
And worse than his own death was what happened right after.
Gu Changsheng slowly turned his head toward the dark corner beside the cold clay stove.
A tiny figure stood pressed flat against the damp plaster wall.
It was an eight-year-old boy no bigger than a sack of grain. His patched gray jacket was two sizes too small, leaving his frostbitten wrists bare. Dark purple bruises ring-marked his skinny forearm where the Second Branch cousins had twisted it yesterday at the well.
Gu Nian.
His biological son. In the original book, he was the future Chaos Demon King. After watching his father die in the snow, the boy went mad with hatred and awakened his cursed Innate Chaos Demon Bone in a bloodbath.
He grew up to burn three continents to ash before Lin Fan cut his head off in the finale.
Right now, eight-year-old Gu Nian wasn’t crying.
He didn’t make a sound. His thin shoulders were hunched high, and both of his small, chapped hands were hidden behind his back.
In the dim light filtering through the torn window paper, Gu Changsheng caught the dull glint of a heavy, rusted kitchen cleaver gripped white-knuckled behind the boy’s spine.
Gu Nian wasn’t looking at the door where Scar-Face Liu was shouting.
The boy was staring straight at Gu Changsheng. His black-gold eyes were wide, unblinking, and feral, like a starving wolf pup waiting for the butcher’s knife to fall.
Right, Gu Changsheng thought, his stomach tightening. Last month, Second Elder Gu Ba offered the original Gu Changsheng ten silver taels of cough medicine in exchange for selling Gu Nian to the Second Branch mines as a laborer. The original idiot actually thought about it.
No wonder the kid was holding a cleaver behind his back. Gu Nian thought his own father was about to trade him away to Scar-Face Liu so he could live one more week.
The author of this book really needs a slap across the mouth, Gu Changsheng thought dryly. Who writes an eight-year-old kid starving in the dark and calls it a villain origin story?
BAM!
The inner cottage door flew off its top wooden hinge. Freezing snow swirled across the dirt floor as Scar-Face Liu swaggered into the room, tracking mud and slush everywhere.
Outside on the porch, Grandpa Fu stumbled after him, blood trickling from a cut above his single good eye. “Scar-Face Liu! Get out of the Young Master’s bedroom!
If you touch a hair on the boy’s head, I’ll—I’ll report you to the Clan Ancestral Hall!”
“Report me to the ghosts in the graveyard, old cripple!” Scar-Face Liu spat a glob of yellow phlegm onto the floor and slapped the forfeiture deed down onto the rickety bedside stool. He pulled a tin of red ink-paste from his belt and popped the lid off with his thumb.
“Come on, Gu Changsheng,” Liu sneered, leaning over the brick bed. The stench of cheap tavern garlic and stale sweat rolled off his teeth.
“Stop wheezing like a punctured bellows. Put your thumb in the red mud and stamp this paper. Second Elder Gu Ba is feeling generous today.
If you sign the courtyard over before noon. He’ll leave you two bowls of brown gruel—and he’ll even take that little mute bastard in the corner off your hands to haul coal in the smithy.”
In the corner by the stove, Gu Nian’s small frame went rigid.
The rusted kitchen cleaver behind his back shifted half an inch. His bruised fingers tightened around the wooden handle until the skin split and bled. Still, he didn’t look at Liu.
His cold, dark eyes stayed locked on Gu Changsheng’s right hand, waiting to see if his father would reach for the red ink-paste.
Scar-Face Liu noticed the boy’s glare and let out a nasty laugh.
“What are you looking at, you little wolf-cub?” Liu sneered, turning away from the bed and taking two heavy steps toward the stove corner. “You think you can bare your teeth at me?
Come here!
I’ll take you to the Second Branch smithy right now as down payment on the roof tiles!”
Liu reached out a thick, hairy hand to grab Gu Nian by the collar of his torn jacket.
Gu Changsheng didn’t give a speech. He didn’t lecture his son about trust, and he didn’t beg the thug for mercy.
Before Scar-Face Liu’s fingers could come within three feet of the boy, Gu Changsheng threw off the ragged quilt and launched himself off the brick bed.
His bare feet hit the icy dirt floor. His poisoned lungs burned like liquid fire, but he shoved himself squarely between Scar-Face Liu and Gu Nian, knocking Liu’s outstretched arm aside with his forearm.
Gu Nian blinked. The top of the boy’s messy black head barely reached Gu Changsheng’s ribs. For a split second, the eight-year-old froze, staring up at the narrow, trembling back of the father who hadn’t stood up from bed in four months.
“What the hell?” Scar-Face Liu blinked in surprise, then twisted his scarred mouth into a vicious grin. “Oh?
The half-dead dog wants to play hero?
Fine! Sign the paper with your face first!”
Liu balled his left fist to punch Gu Changsheng in the nose.
Gu Changsheng didn’t try to trade martial arts moves with a well-fed thug in a Rank 0 poisoned body. While stepping in front of Gu Nian, his right hand had already dipped under the wooden frame of the bed.
His fingers curled around the cold, curved handle of a heavy cast-iron chamber pot.
Luckily, Grandpa Fu had scrubbed it out with snow water that morning, though a layer of freezing slush still sloshed at the bottom. It weighed a solid twelve pounds.
“Sign this,” Gu Changsheng rasped.
Putting every ounce of his body weight into his shoulder, Gu Changsheng swung the twelve-pound iron chamber pot upward from his hip in a tight, brutal uppercut.
CLANG!
The thick iron rim of the chamber pot smashed straight into Scar-Face Liu’s open mouth.
CRACK-SNAP!
The sound of shattering teeth echoed off the low rafters like dry walnuts under a hammer.
Four yellowed front teeth—roots and all—flew out of Scar-Face Liu’s mouth in a spray of dark red blood and icy chamber-pot slush. Two of them bounced off the forfeiture deed on the stool and clattered into the corner.
“Aargh—! Myf teef!”
Scar-Face Liu shrieked like a stuck pig. His eyes rolled back as the twelve-pound iron pot knocked his two-hundred-pound frame completely off balance. He crashed backward through the half-hinged cottage door, his head slamming into the porch steps outside before he rolled into the snowbank clutching his bleeding jaw.
On the porch, Grandpa Fu froze with his mouth wide open, his wooden broom raised mid-swing.
Inside the doorway, Gu Changsheng didn’t stop.
He braced one hand against the doorframe to keep his shaky legs upright, hefted the dented iron chamber pot in his right hand, and stepped out onto the snowy porch.
“Want to stamp the second page?” Gu Changsheng asked deadpan, raising the iron pot over Scar-Face Liu’s head. “Hold still.
My aim’s a little shaky when I haven’t had breakfast.”
“M-madman! You’re a crazy cripple!” Scar-Face Liu howled through a mouthful of blood and broken gums.
When Gu Changsheng took another half-step down the stairs, Liu didn’t dare reach for the forfeiture deed. Whimpering and spitting red foam, the thug scrambled backward on all fours. He squeezed his fat rear end through the boot-hole in the gate and sprinted down Willow-West Alley screaming for a physician.
The cold winter wind whistled through the hole in the gate.
On the porch steps, Grandpa Fu stared at the four bloody teeth lying in the slush, then looked up at Gu Changsheng with his single eye shining with wet disbelief.
“Third Young Master...” the old butler whispered, his voice cracking. “You...
you stood up!
And you knocked out Scar-Face Liu’s teeth with the night-pot!”
Behind Gu Changsheng, inside the shadow of the doorway, eight-year-old Gu Nian hadn’t moved an inch.
The boy was staring at the back of Gu Changsheng’s thin cotton robe, where a dark red stain was seeping through the shoulder from the sudden exertion. Slowly, very slowly, Gu Nian’s white-knuckled fingers loosened around the handle of the rusted kitchen cleaver behind his back—just a tiny fraction—though he still didn’t put it down.
Right at that moment, a crisp, warm bell chimed inside Gu Changsheng’s head.
[ DING! HOST SHIELDED CHILD #1 FROM HARM & SMASHED PLOT LACKEY! ]
[ SUPER DAD & PLOT-BREAKER SYSTEM — OFFICIALLY BOUND! ]
* Starter Care Package Awarded : +30 Dad Points (DP)
* Protected Household Scan :.
1. Grandpa Fu (Fu Shan | Rank 1 Early Martial | Warmth: 98/100)
-> Generates +10 DP/day!
2. Child #1: Gu Nian (Age 8 | Unawakened Chaos Demon Bone)
-> Current Warmth: 25/100 (Wary) | Darkening Meter: 89% (CRITICAL!)
-> Note: Drop Darkening below 20% to unlock [10x Redeemed Kid Bonus]!
* Current Daily Income : +10 DP/day.
* Current DP Balance : 30 DP.
[ SYSTEM FUNCTIONS UNLOCKED ]
1. [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] (Stage 1 — Local Script Preview)
2. [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box] (3 Input Slots — Flaw-Free Fusion)
3. [Father’s Authority] (Passive/Active Anti-Plot-Armor Protection)
Gu Changsheng let out a slow breath of white steam, setting the iron chamber pot down by the doorpost.
Thirty Starter Dad Points, ten points a day from Grandpa Fu, and an Upgrade Box that fuses three items, he noted quickly. Clean, simple, and no stupid riddles.
Before he could check the Upgrade Box, a leather-bound book materialized in his mind’s eye and flipped its pages open with a sharp rustle.
Blood-red letters burned across the parchment like fresh ink.
[ DAD’S PLOT-SPOILER NOTEBOOK — EMERGENCY ALERT! ]
[COUNTDOWN TO EXECUTION : 01 Hour : 29 Minutes : 58 Seconds]
[ ORIGINAL SCRIPT PREVIEW ]
[Because Scar-Face Liu fled without the courtyard deed, Second]
[Elder Gu Ba (Rank 1 Peak Martial) and his nephew-in-law, Chosen]
[One Lin Fan (Protagonist Luck Halo: 100%), are already gathering]
[twenty armed guards at the Second Branch hall.]
[In 90 minutes (at 12:00 PM sharp), Gu Ba and Lin Fan will storm]
[this yard, dig up a stolen [Seven-Leaf Ice Lotus] that Scar-Face]
[Liu secretly buried under your woodshed before kicking the gate,]
[frame you for stealing clan treasures, and beat you to death in]
[front of Gu Nian!]
The blood-red timer in the corner of his vision ticked down by another second.
01:29:57.
Gu Changsheng’s eyes narrowed as he glanced across the snowy yard toward the small, dilapidated woodshed beside the well. Fresh boot-prints in the snow led straight from the woodshed latch to the broken front gate.
So Scar-Face Liu already planted the Seven-Leaf Ice Lotus under my woodshed before he even kicked the gate, Gu Changsheng thought, a cold, shameless grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. And in ninety minutes, Second Elder Gu Ba and the ‘saintly’ Chosen One Lin Fan are coming to dig it up and execute me.
He turned back toward the cottage doorway.
Eight-year-old Gu Nian immediately stiffened and took half a step back toward the cold stove. His small hand tightened on the hidden cleaver again as his stomach let out a loud, painful growl.
Gu Changsheng looked at his starving, bruised son, then at the 30 DP glowing in his [Care-Package Upgrade Box].
Ninety minutes before the execution squad arrived?
Plenty of time to cook his boy a hot bowl of noodles—and leave Second Elder Gu Ba and Lin Fan a present under the woodshed they would never forget.