At 10:00 AM sharp, the bronze bell of the Sky-Crown City Drum Tower rang ten times across the outer market district.
While Second Prince Qian Ye was still fifty yards up the northern entrance of Black-Market Stone Gambling Alley. Sniffing the mysterious soup steam on the breeze, Gu Changsheng strolled right up to the front of Stall #44 from the southern side lane.
He held nine-year-old Gu Nian’s left hand and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s right hand. Behind them, the [Rank 3 Spring-Shock Luxury Caravan] sat parked at the alley corner with its brass kitchen window propped open. Auntie Qin was tending a bubbling clay pot of white winter radish and pork-rib broth.
Stall #44 was the shabbiest corner in the entire stone-gambling market. Unlike the neighboring booths with their red velvet tables and polished oil lamps, Stall #44 was just a frayed hemp tarp stretched over two bamboo poles. Half a dozen rough mountain boulders sat in the dirt.
Behind them, an old man in a patched gray hemp coat—Old Blind Sun—sat on a low wooden stool, rubbing his swollen, arthritic knees and shivering in the autumn draft.
Under Old Blind Sun’s frayed straw sandal rested an ugly, flat-topped block of dull gray stone covered in dried mud. He was using it as a footstool to keep his toes off the cold cobblestones.
There it is, Gu Changsheng thought, his eyes crinkling warmly as he looked at the dirty gray footstool rock. *In the original novel, Second Prince Qian Ye swaggered up at 10:15 AM, tossed ten copper coins at Old Blind Sun’s feet without even saying hello. Walked away with a fist-sized core of Rank 4 Nine-Yang Dragon Marrow.
Too bad for His Highness, it’s 10:00 AM, and my kids are hungry.*
Before Gu Changsheng could greet the blind peddler, a loud, arrogant voice barked from the neighboring jade booth.
“Out of the way, country bumpkins! Don’t block Master Cui’s light!”
A portly middle-aged man in an emerald-green brocade robe swaggered over, slapping a gold-painted folding fan against his palm. Two burly thugs from the Black-Market Merchant Association flanked him with brass knuckles on their belts.
This was Master Cui, the chief stone appraiser of the Golden Toad Gambling House across the street. He looked down his oiled nose at Old Blind Sun and kicked the biggest mossy boulder at the front of the tarp.
“Old Blind Sun, your three-month stall lease expires at noon today,” Master Cui sneered, holding up five copper coins between two plump fingers. “Your eyes are dead as boiled fish, and you still owe the market bailiff two silvers for street sweeping. Hand over these six green-skin jadeite boulders from Yunnan for five coppers, and I’ll let you keep your bamboo poles.”
Old Blind Sun’s weathered hands tightened on his cane. His milky-white eyes stared blankly toward the sound of Master Cui’s fan. “Master Cui, my dead son carried those six Yunnan boulders down from the southern border on his own back before he passed!
Even uncut, the raw stone weight is worth thirty silver taels! Five coppers won’t even buy a sack of coarse bran for the winter!”
“Thirty silver taels?” Master Cui laughed loudly, drawing a crowd of twenty curious stone gamblers around the stall. “Listen to this blind beggar!
Who pays thirty silvers for unpolished river rock from a blind man’s tarp?
Take the five coppers before my guards throw your boulders into the canal!”
One of Master Cui’s thugs stepped forward and raised his heavy boot to kick Old Blind Sun’s bamboo cane out from under his elbow.
CLACK!
A long, black-seasoned [Iron Wok Spatula] reached out from the side and tapped the underside of the thug’s ankle before his boot could touch the cane.
It looked like a light kitchen tap. Yet a crisp surge of Rank 3 Peak internal qi hopped straight into the thug’s calf muscle. Making his leg cramp so hard he yelped like a stepped-on dog and hopped backward into a basket of gravel.
“Watch your feet, buddy,” Gu Changsheng said mildly, tucking his spatula back into his belt loop. “The alley is narrow enough without grown men kicking an old man’s walking stick.”
Master Cui’s piggy eyes narrowed as he turned on Gu Changsheng. He scanned Gu Changsheng’s simple dark-blue cotton coat, then looked down at nine-year-old Gu Nian in his yellow bunny apron and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan holding her pink watering can.
“And who the devil are you?” Master Cui barked, waving his fan in Gu Changsheng’s face. “Some dirt-poor cook from the outer prefectures bringing his brats to gawk at the stone market?
Mind your own business, or I’ll have the market bailiff fine you ten silvers for interfering with an official appraisal!”
“Official appraisal?” Nine-year-old Gu Nian looked up with a deadpan expression that matched his father’s. “Grandpa Fu taught me that offering five coppers for thirty silvers of goods isn’t an appraisal.
It’s highway robbery with a fan.”
“And your breath smells like sour wine,” seven-year-old Su Nuannuan added helpfully, pinching her little nose with two fingers. “Auntie Qin says uncles who drink sour wine in the morning get liver fire and lose all their hair by forty!”
Several stone gamblers in the crowd snorted with laughter. Master Cui’s bald spot under his silk cap turned beet-red.
“You little—!” Master Cui raised his folding fan to swat at Gu Nian’s head.
Gu Changsheng didn’t even raise his hand. He simply took half a step forward, letting a tiny thread of his Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster aura brush against Master Cui’s chest.
It felt like a ten-ton iron stove door slamming shut an inch from Master Cui’s nose. The fat appraiser choked on his own spit, his knees buckling as he stumbled two steps back into his second guard’s arms, his face turning white as lard.
“We’re civilized shoppers,” Gu Changsheng said pleasantly, turning his back on the sputtering appraiser and crouching down in front of Old Blind Sun’s stool. “Grandpa Sun, right? My family’s apothecary wagon is parked right at the corner.
I noticed you rubbing your knees.”
Gu Changsheng reached into the insulated bamboo basket hanging from his elbow and pulled out a steaming earthenware bowl of dark-red herbal broth cooked by Auntie Qin. Along with a hot, golden-brown sweet potato roasted over Earth-Fire charcoal.
“Drink this bowl while it’s hot,” Gu Changsheng said, placing the warm earthenware bowl directly into Old Blind Sun’s calloused hands. “It’s boiled with three-year wild ginger, cinnamon bark, and mutton marrow. It clears winter dampness right out of old knee joints.”
Old Blind Sun flinched at first, used to being shoved and cursed at in the black market. Then the rich, soothing scent of medicinal ginger and mutton marrow drifted into his nose. His trembling fingers wrapped around the warm clay bowl, and he took a hesitant sip.
The moment the Rank 3 Mid physician’s broth slid down his throat, a wave of gentle heat spread straight down to his swollen kneecaps. The needle-like pain that had kept him awake every rainy night for ten years dissolved into a comfortable, tingling warmth.
Two tears rolled down Old Blind Sun’s wrinkled cheeks. He gulped down the rest of the broth and let out a long, shaky breath, stamping his right foot twice against the cobblestones without a single wince.
“Merciful Buddha...” Old Blind Sun whispered, bowing his head toward Gu Changsheng. “Young master, your family’s medicine is better than the Imperial Hospital’s!
My knees haven’t felt this warm since my boy was alive!
Take one of my Yunnan boulders—I don’t want a single copper from a kind heart like yours!”
“Keep your six Yunnan boulders, Grandpa Sun,” Gu Changsheng said, taking ten silver taels from his sleeve and dropping them with a heavy clink into the old man’s lap. “Sell those to an honest merchant on East Street this afternoon—they really do have green ice-jade inside, worth at least forty silvers.”
Master Cui’s eyes bulged as he heard Gu Changsheng casually spoil the exact jade grade of the six boulders he had been trying to steal. “You—how can you tell there’s ice-jade inside without a cutting wheel?!”
Gu Changsheng ignored Master Cui completely and tapped his finger lightly against the dirty, flat gray stone sitting under Old Blind Sun’s left straw sandal.
“What I actually want,” Gu Changsheng said with a grin, “is this ugly gray footstool rock under your shoe. My kids need a heavy stepping stone to reach the washbasin in our wagon.”
Old Blind Sun blinked his milky eyes in surprise. “My footstool rock? Young master, I picked that piece of dead river granite out of a dry ditch outside the South Gate three years ago!
It has no jade window, no spirit pulse, and dulls every chisel that touches it! I only put a ten-copper price tag on it as a joke so people wouldn’t trip over it!”
Master Cui burst into a booming, obnoxious cackle, wiping tears of mirth from his fat cheeks as he pointed his folding fan at Gu Changsheng.
“Hahaha! Did everyone hear that?!” Master Cui jeered to the thirty gathered stone gamblers.
“This country bumpkin gave away ten silver taels of charity, and now he wants to buy Blind Sun’s granite footstool!
I appraised that dead rock myself last month—it’s three hundred percent worthless ditch-stone! Even if you boiled it for a hundred years, you wouldn’t get a drop of oil out of it!”
“Good thing I like ditch-stone,” Gu Changsheng said seriously, looking at Old Blind Sun. “Ten coppers is a bit steep for a dirty rock, though. How about I haggle you down?
I’ll give you three copper coins and this charcoal-roasted sweet potato.”
Gu Changsheng peeled back a corner of the oiled paper wrapping the sweet potato. Golden, caramelized honey-syrup oozed from the steaming orange flesh, smelling so sweet that Gu Nian and Su Nuannuan both swallowed hard.
Old Blind Sun chuckled warmly, shaking his head as he took the hot sweet potato and the three copper coins. “Three coppers and a hot sweet potato for a ditch rock! Done!
Take it, young master, and may your children grow tall and strong!”
“Pleasure doing business with you, Grandpa Sun,” Gu Changsheng said.
He picked up the thirty-pound gray granite footstool rock with two fingers as easily as picking up a loaf of bread. Instead of putting it under a washbasin, he walked five paces back to the open kitchen window of the [Rank 3 Spring-Shock Luxury Caravan]. The large clay pot of white radish and pork-rib soup was bubbling away.
Master Cui folded his arms, still smirking in front of the crowd. “Go on, bumpkin! Take your three-copper granite brick home!
Wait until your wife sees you traded silver for a piece of road gravel—”
Gu Changsheng didn’t use a stone-cutting wheel. He didn’t even draw a sword.
He simply pulled his black [Iron Wok Spatula] from his belt, channeled a pinpoint needle of Rank 3 Peak internal qi into the edge. Gave the exact center fault-line of the gray footstool rock one crisp, sideways tap.
TINK—CRACK!
All three inches of dead gray granite crust—along with five thin inner layers of natural meteoric iron shell that had blocked every mortal appraiser’s spiritual sense—split cleanly into two halves. Fell away onto the cutting board like cracked walnut shells!
HUMMMMMM!
A blinding pillar of pure, molten-gold light erupted from the center of the split rock, shooting ten feet into the air above the caravan roof!
Inside the stone shell rested a fist-sized, translucent golden crystal that looked like liquid honey mixed with miniature solar flames. As soon as it touched the air, a phantom roar of an ancient Nine-Yang Fire Dragon echoed faintly across the alley. The temperature within thirty paces jumped twenty degrees, turning the autumn chill into warm spring sunshine and filling the street with an intoxicating, life-giving fragrance of pure spiritual marrow!
“A... a golden core halo?!” an old stone merchant in the front row screamed, his magnifying loupe dropping from his eye and shattering on the ground.
“That’s not jade! That’s a Rank 4 Heaven-and-Earth Treasure—[Nine-Yang Dragon Marrow]!” another appraiser shrieked, grabbing his own hair with both hands.
“A single gram of Rank 4 Dragon Marrow sells at the Royal Auction for thirty thousand silver taels!
And there’s a whole pound of it in that footstool!”
Master Cui’s folding fan snapped in half in his fat fist. His jaw dropped so low his double chin touched his collar, his eyes bloodshot and bulging like a strangled frog’s.
“Nine-Yang Dragon Marrow?!” Master Cui choked out, his voice a strangled squeak as his knees hit the cobblestones with a wet thud. “In Old Blind Sun’s footstool?!
I kicked that rock four times last month!
Thirty thousand silver taels... bought for three copper coins and a roasted sweet potato?!”
While the entire crowd of stone gamblers lost their minds, Gu Changsheng didn’t even pause to admire the priceless golden crystal.
“Nian’er, hold the pot lid open,” Gu Changsheng said casually.
“Open, Dad!” Gu Nian lifted the clay lid with both hands.
In front of thirty horrified, screaming stone appraisers. Gu Changsheng scooped the entire thirty-thousand-tael chunk of [Rank 4 Nine-Yang Dragon Marrow] off the cutting board with his iron spatula. Plopped it—SPLASH!—straight into the boiling pot of white winter radish and pork-rib soup!
“NOOOOOO!” Master Cui howled, clawing at his own cheeks on his knees. “You lunatic!
That’s a Rank 4 Immortal foundation catalyst!
You’re boiling it with white turnips and pig ribs?!”
“They’re white winter radishes, not turnips,” Gu Changsheng corrected him mildly. Stirring the pot three times as the golden Dragon Marrow dissolved instantly into the broth, turning the entire pot of soup into a bubbling, fragrant sea of liquid gold. “Dragon Marrow is too dry on its own.
If you don’t balance the Nine-Yang fire with sweet winter radish and pork collagen, the kids will get a nosebleed.”
[System Notification: Major Original Script Opportunity Intercepted 15 Minutes Early!]
[Target ‘Second Prince Qian Ye’ Missed His #1 Early-Stage Rank 4 Catalyst!]
[Gu Nian Darkening: 6% -> 4% | Su Nuannuan Darkening: 5% -> 4%]
[Daily Income: +600,000 -> +680,000 DP/day!]
Just as Gu Changsheng clapped the clay lid back onto the pot to let the golden marrow simmer for five minutes, the crowd at the northern end of Stall #44 parted.
A tall youth in a heavy black silk cloak stepped out of the shadows behind Master Cui. His hand already reaching into his sleeve for ten copper coins—and his cold, aristocratic face freezing stiff. He smelled his priceless Nine-Yang Dragon Marrow boiling with garlic and pork ribs!