At one o’clock the next afternoon, the gilded avenues of Sky-Crown City’s Inner Ward were packed with noble carriages heading toward the Royal Treasure Pavilion.
Inside the [Rank 3 Spring-Shock Luxury Caravan] parked on the shady boulevard across from the pavilion, Gu Changsheng tapped the smudged pages of [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] on the cedar dining table.
Because of the 15% Foreknowledge Decay triggered when Second Prince Qian Ye lost the Nine-Yang Dragon Marrow yesterday. Half the black text describing today’s afternoon auction looked like someone had spilled tea across wet ink.
[DAD’S PLOT-SPOILER NOTEBOOK — ROYAL TREASURE PAVILION]
[Original Script: At 2:30 PM, Second Prince Qian Ye bids 100 silver taels on Lot #19 — an unrecognized ‘Rusty Northern Foot-Warmer’ — and obtains the Rank 4 Hundred-Herb Medicine King Furnace.]
[Foreknowledge Decay (15% Smudged): Target Qian Ye has bribed Deputy Appraiser Zhou to... (ink blurred) ...back-vault... while leaving a...
(ink blurred) ...inside Lot #19!]
“The second half of the sentence is smudged,” Gu Changsheng murmured, resting his chin on his hand. “Unblurring a Rank 3 Peak Regressor’s counter-move costs ten thousand Dad Points, or we can just let Grandpa Yao’s nose do the work for free.”
On the tabletop beside the teacup, Grandpa Yao’s [Rank 3 Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] puffed out its green cotton chest and adjusted a tiny paper chef hat that seven-year-old Su Nuannuan had folded for him.
“Save your points, Brother Gu!” Grandpa Yao boomed proudly from inside the stuffed turtle. “That Hundred-Herb Medicine King Furnace was forged four hundred years ago by my junior martial nephew!
It has thirty-six hidden Earth-Fire vents carved inside the tripod legs and smells faintly of nine-leaf violet ginseng!
Even if that little Regressor hid it inside a lead coffin ten feet underground, my Pill-Saint nose can sniff it out from fifty yards away!”
“Good,” Gu Changsheng said, standing up and picking up a small bamboo gift basket containing three porcelain jars of glossy black herbal paste. “Nian’er, Nuannuan, stay in the caravan with Auntie Qin and Grandpa Fu and peel that sack of raw mountain chestnuts. Dad and Grandpa Yao will be back in twenty minutes with a new chestnut roaster.”
“Make sure it has a big lid, Dad!” nine-year-old Gu Nian called out, carefully slitting the shell of a chestnut with his small wooden knife so it wouldn’t explode when roasted.
“And bring back extra honey glaze!” Su Nuannuan cheered, swinging her legs from the bench.
Gu Changsheng tucked the [Rank 3 Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] onto his left shoulder like a wealthy merchant carrying a spirit-pet. Picked up the gold VIP auction seal Xiao Qing had found in the well last night. Strolled across the marble plaza of the Royal Treasure Pavilion.
Inside the grand lobby, crystal chandeliers lit up red velvet carpets where outer-hall stewards were checking invitations.
At the foot of the main staircase stood Deputy Appraiser Zhou—a thin, weasel-eyed man in a dark purple appraiser’s robe. Ten minutes ago, on Second Prince Qian Ye’s secret orders, Zhou had quietly removed the real rusty bronze furnace from Lot #19’s display crate and locked it inside the third-floor back-vault.
When Gu Changsheng walked past the lobby pillars, Grandpa Yao’s plush turtle nose twitched three times on Gu Changsheng’s shoulder.
Psst! Brother Gu! Grandpa Yao transmitted via a tiny thread of soul-voice into Gu Changsheng’s ear.
*That weasel-faced appraiser by the stairs has three-hundred-year furnace soot under his fingernails!
And the real Medicine King Furnace isn’t in the auction hall—it’s straight up on the third floor inside the north iron vault!*
Gu Changsheng didn’t even slow his stride. He walked right past the main auction hall doors and headed up the mahogany staircase toward the third-floor executive offices.
“Halt!” Deputy Appraiser Zhou stepped in front of the stairs, his weasel eyes narrowing as he looked at Gu Changsheng’s plain blue cotton coat and the bamboo basket in his hand. “The third floor houses the Pavilion Master’s private office and the high-grade reserve vaults!
Even with a gold VIP token, guests must remain in the second-floor viewing boxes!
Are you looking for Lot #19?”
Zhou’s heart beat faster with excitement. Second Prince Qian Ye had promised him a thousand silver taels if he caught the mysterious South Ward thief sniffing around for Lot #19 before the auction started!
Gu Changsheng looked at Zhou’s ink-stained thumbs and smiled mildly. “Lot #19? Never heard of it.
I’m here from the Gu Family Peace Pharmacy to deliver a private medical consultation to Pavilion Master Ge.”
“A medical consultation?” Deputy Appraiser Zhou sneered, blocking the stairs with both arms. “Pavilion Master Ge is a Rank 3 Late martial cultivator in peak health!
He doesn’t see nameless street quacks!
Turn around and go sit in the main hall before I call the guards!”
Peak health, my foot, Gu Changsheng thought dryly. According to the background notes of the novel, Pavilion Master Ge lost every single hair on his head at age thirty-five from practicing an overheated fire-palm manual. He spends ten thousand silvers a year buying fake hair-tonics from every alchemist in Great Qian.
Instead of arguing with Zhou, Gu Changsheng simply flicked the lid off the top porcelain jar in his bamboo basket and fanned a tiny breath of warm internal qi across the opening.
Before leaving Willow-Breeze Courtyard this morning, Gu Changsheng had spent 20,000 DP in the [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box] to fuse [Auntie. Qin’s Black-Sesame & Polygonum Root Paste] + [Warm Spring Well-Water] + [Nine-Yang Marrow Steam] into three jars of [Ten-Minute Black-Sesame Hair-Regrowth Cream].
Instantly, a rich, nutty fragrance of roasted black sesame, wild cliff-honey. Pure follicle-awakening vitality drifted straight up the third-floor stairwell and slipped under the crack of the mahogany office door at the top of the landing.
Inside the top-floor office, fifty-year-old Pavilion Master Ge was sitting at his desk, gloomily rubbing a silk cloth over a head so bald and shiny it reflected the ceiling lanterns like a bronze mirror.
The moment that warm, roasted-sesame medicinal aroma touched his nose, Pavilion Master Ge’s entire scalp gave a violent, electric tingle!
For fifteen years, the hair follicles on his crown had been dead as salted turnips. Yet from one single whiff of the air coming from the hallway, he felt a hundred tiny, warm pinpricks of life itching across his bare temples!
BANG!
The mahogany office door at the top of the stairs flew open so hard the brass handle dented the wall.
Pavilion Master Ge rushed out onto the third-floor landing in his silk slippers, his bald head gleaming in the light as his wide eyes locked onto the open porcelain jar in Gu Changsheng’s hand.
“Who opened that jar?!” Pavilion Master Ge’s voice trembled with desperate hope as he practically vaulted down the stairs, shoving Deputy Appraiser Zhou flat against the banister. “My scalp—my temples are itching!
After all of fifteen years, my pores are breathing!
Young master, what is that black paste in your basket?!”
“Pavilion Master, don’t be fooled!” Deputy Appraiser Zhou scrambled up from the steps, rubbing his bruised elbow. “This man is a suspicious vagrant!
That’s probably just black shoe-polish mixed with sesame oil!”
“Shoe-polish doesn’t carry flaw-free Rank 3 Peak life-essence, you blind idiot!” Pavilion Master Ge barked at Zhou, before turning back to Gu Changsheng and bowing with both hands clasped politely. “Forgive my ignorant subordinate, Master Physician!
I am Ge Hong, master of this pavilion.
May I ask what treasure ointment you are carrying?”
“Gu Changsheng, boss of the Gu Family Peace Pharmacy in the South Ward,” Gu Changsheng said, stepping past a livid Zhou into the spacious third-floor office. He set the bamboo basket on the mahogany desk and handed Pavilion Master Ge a small wooden spatula. “This is our shop’s signature [Ten-Minute Black-Sesame Hair-Regrowth Cream].
It clears fire-poison out of the cranial meridians and wakes up dormant roots in ten minutes flat. Go ahead and rub a dab above your left ear.”
Pavilion Master Ge didn’t hesitate for half a second. Ignoring Zhou’s frantic head-shaking, Ge Hong scooped a generous fingerful of the warm, fragrant black paste and rubbed it across the shiny skin above his left temple.
Fzzzz—tingle!
A cool, soothing herbal breeze sank into his skull, neutralizing the residual fire-palm heat that had scorched his scalp years ago.
One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.
Deputy Appraiser Zhou opened his mouth to laugh—and choked on his own tongue.
Right in front of the bronze wall mirror, a patch of thick, glossy, jet-black hair sprouted straight out of Pavilion Master Ge’s bare left temple. Growing two inches long in ten seconds flat and curling into a handsome, youthful sideburn!
Pavilion Master Ge reached up with a shaking hand and tugged firmly on the black curls.
Ow!
They didn’t pull out! They had real roots anchored deep in his scalp!
“Hair! Real black hair!” Pavilion Master Ge let out a howl of pure, unbridled joy that rattled the teacups on his desk, tears streaming down his cheeks.
He kissed his own reflection in the bronze mirror.
“My wife won’t call me a boiled egg at the Mid-Autumn Banquet anymore! Master Gu, you are a living Medical Immortal! How much silver for all three jars?!
Fifty thousand taels?! A hundred thousand?!”
[System Notification: Pavilion Master Ge Hong’s 15-Year Baldness Trauma Cured!]
[Pavilion Master Ge Warmth: 50/100 -> 88/100 (Devoted Client — +1,000 DP/day!)]
“Keep your silver, Pavilion Master,” Gu Changsheng said casually, glancing toward the heavy iron vault door behind the bookshelf where Grandpa Yao’s plush turtle was pointing its cloth paw. “My pharmacy needs an old bronze pot to roast sugar-chestnuts for my kids outside. I noticed you have a rusted, soot-covered three-legged bronze foot-warmer sitting in your back reserve vault—originally listed as Lot #19 before someone moved it.”
Deputy Appraiser Zhou’s face turned as white as funeral paper. “Pavilion Master, no! That rusty bronze foot-warmer was reserved by—”
“Reserved by whom?!” Pavilion Master Ge whirled on Zhou, his newly half-haired head radiating Rank 3 Late fury. “Lot #19 was appraised at three silver taels as scrap bronze from the northern border!
Why did you lock a three-tael scrap pot in my high-grade vault without my signature, Zhou?!
Were you planning to pocket a customer’s bribe behind my back?!”
“I—I just thought the rust looked antique!” Zhou stammered in terror. Unable to admit in front of the Pavilion Master that he had taken a private kickback from Second Prince Qian Ye’s steward to rig the auction lot.
“Get out of my sight before I dock six months of your wages!” Pavilion Master Ge roared.
Grabbing his master key ring, Pavilion Master Ge personally unlocked the north reserve vault, hauled out the heavy, soot-crusted Rank 4 Hundred-Herb Medicine King Furnace. Loaded it onto a velvet hand-cart for Gu Changsheng with both hands!
“Take this rusty piece of scrap with my deepest gratitude, Brother Gu!” Pavilion Master Ge beamed. Smearing the rest of the first jar evenly across his entire scalp so thick black hair began sprouting across his crown.
“Wait—what about Lot #19 on the auction stage downstairs?
If the auctioneer skips number nineteen, the noble guests will complain about the catalog!”
Pavilion Master Ge glanced around the reserve vault, spotted a gaudy, gold-plated antique porcelain chamber pot that a drunken marquis had pawned last winter, and cheerfully tossed it into Lot #19’s red-silk display box!
“There!” Pavilion Master Ge clapped his hands, tying the red silk ribbon back over the box. “Both are round metal-and-porcelain pots from the north!
Nobody bids on Lot #19 anyway!”
Gu Changsheng looked at the red-silk box going down the service chute toward the auction stage, completely unaware that three hours earlier. Second Prince Qian Ye had secretly instructed Deputy Appraiser Zhou to glue a high-pressure Rank 3 Blood-Tracking. Dye Seal under the lid of Lot #19’s box so it would explode on whoever opened it!
Five minutes later, out on the sunny boulevard in front of the Royal Treasure Pavilion, Gu Changsheng rolled the real Rank 4 Hundred-Herb Medicine King Furnace up to the side of the family caravan.
He tapped the soot-covered bronze tripod and opened the [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box].
[Input 1: Disguised Rank 4 Hundred-Herb Medicine King Furnace]
[Input 2: 50 Pounds of Black Quartz River Sand]
[Input 3: Wild Osmanthus Honey & Fresh Mountain Chestnuts]
[Upgrade Cost: 50,000 DP -> Output: Immortal Sugar-Roasted Chestnut Drum (Rank 4)!]
CLANG-WHIRRRR!
Golden light washed away four hundred years of grime, revealing a gleaming, dragon-carved purple-bronze alchemical furnace fitted with an automatic hand-crank tumbler. As the thirty-six Earth-Fire vents ignited inside the black quartz sand, the hundred-herb medicinal essence baked right into the tumbling chestnuts. Sending a mouth-watering wave of caramelized honey and Rank 4 pill-aroma drifting straight up toward the second-floor VIP windows of the auction house!
[System Notification: Second Major Script Jackpot Sniped!]
[Daily Income: +850,000 -> +960,000 DP/day!]
Up on the second floor of the Royal Treasure Pavilion, Second Prince Qian Ye stepped into VIP Box #1 just. The auctioneer carried the red-silk box for Lot #19—containing Pavilion Master Ge’s swapped chamber pot and Qian Ye’s own primed Blood-Tracking Dye Bomb—onto the center stage!