At the top of the shattered Coffin Alley staircase. Sub-Captain Lu—a scar-faced Rank 3 Mid enforcer of the Royal Blood-Surgeon Guild—stood in the pouring rain flanked by thirty elite Blood-Surgeon Executioners in oiled leather armor.
Ten minutes ago, when the two-ton meteoric-iron cellar door had been kicked off its hinges with a sound like a cannon blast. The vibrations had rattled the teacups in the Guild’s outer watchtower three streets away.
“Crossbowmen, aim down the stairwell! Halberdiers, form a three-layer iron wall at the threshold!” Sub-Captain Lu snarled, holding an amber wind-proof spirit torch above the gaping doorway.
“Chief Surgeon Mo activated the Bone-Flaying Blade Array downstairs, so whatever lunatic broke in must already be bleeding from a hundred cuts!
The moment he crawls up the steps, pin him to the bricks!”
Down in the stairwell, steady, unhurried footsteps echoed up from the dark.
Step. Step. Step.
Instead of a bleeding cripple crawling on all fours, a tall man in a gray cotton kitchen apron walked calmly up the wet stone steps into the torchlight.
On his broad back—wrapped snugly inside a thick, warm duck-down coat and tied securely with a wide linen sash in a sturdy piggyback carry—rode ten-year-old Ye Xiao.
The boy’s small chin rested on Gu Changsheng’s right shoulder, his bruised hands tucked inside the warm fleece pockets of the coat while he held his grandfather’s red-cloth-wrapped clay urn against his chest. In Gu Changsheng’s left hand, the black oiled-paper umbrella tilted backward to shelter the boy’s head from the cold autumn downpour.
“Hold on tight to my collar, Xiao’er,” Gu Changsheng murmured over his shoulder as he stepped out into the muddy lane of Coffin Alley. “If you let your left foot droop and drop a shoe in a puddle, you’re doing extra arithmetic worksheets tomorrow.”
Ye Xiao sniffled softly, the sweet taste of the honey-milk candy still lingering on his tongue, and tightened his arms around Gu Changsheng’s neck with a tiny, obedient nod.
Thirty paces away in the rain-swept alley, Sub-Captain Lu stared in disbelief at the unscathed father carrying their fifty-thousand-silver “surgical specimen” like a sleepy schoolboy coming home from night class!
“He—he walked out of the Bone-Flaying Array without a scratch?!” Sub-Captain Lu’s scar twisted purple as he pointed his heavy steel halberd at Gu Changsheng’s face. “Kill the adult!
Don’t damage the brat’s eyes!
CHARGE!!”
“KILL!!”
All thirty Blood-Surgeon Executioners roared and lunged down the narrow brick alley at once, thirty heavy steel halberds and barbed hooks sweeping toward Gu Changsheng in a lethal crescent wall!
On Gu Changsheng’s back, Ye Xiao flinched instinctively—then squeezed his burning, aching eyelids shut because Dad had told him not to peek.
Gu Changsheng didn’t even shift his umbrella hand.
Holding his [Iron Wok Spatula] in his right hand. Gu Changsheng took half a step forward on the slick cobblestones. Swept the flat of the dark iron blade horizontally from left to right—like a janitor clearing wet leaves off a front porch with a wide broom!
WHOOOOOOSH—CRACK-CLANG-THUD!!
A surging crescent wave of golden Rank 3 Peak Warm-Hearth Qi blasted down the narrow brick walls of Coffin Alley!
Sub-Captain Lu and his thirty charging executioners didn’t even get within fifteen feet of Gu Changsheng’s apron.
As the golden spatula-gale hit their chest plates, all thirty-one armed thugs were bowled off their feet like wooden tenpins struck by an iron cannonball! Their steel halberds snapped in half, their helmets popped off into the air. The entire squad went tumbling head-over-heels down the length of Coffin Alley.
Wedging upside-down into the flooded stone drainage gutters on both sides of the street—sixty-two muddy boots sticking straight up in the rain and twitching in unison!
Not a single drop of muddy gutter water splashed onto Gu Changsheng’s trousers or the hem of the down coat.
“Thirty-one strikes. Clean sweep,” Gu Changsheng said mildly, tucking his spatula back into his belt and adjusting Ye Xiao’s weight on his back with a gentle bounce. “Alright, son.
The trash is in the gutter. Let’s go home and meet your brother and sister.”
*
Twenty minutes later, the warm yellow lanterns of Willow-Breeze Courtyard in the South Ward glowed through the autumn drizzle.
The moment Big-Hammer Tie and the dockworker sentries at the front gate saw Gu Changsheng stride down the lane with a ten-year-old child bundled on his back. They cheered and threw open the courtyard doors.
Inside the bright, dry main hall, a charcoal brazier crackled cheerfully in the corner, filling the room with the comforting warmth of roasted sweet-potato peels and pine resin.
As Gu Changsheng knelt by the cushioned wooden sofa and gently lowered Ye Xiao out of the down-feather coat. Auntie Qin hurried out of the kitchen carrying a basin of warm mugwort water, clean cotton bandages. A steaming porcelain bowl of Slow-Simmered Mutton & Angelica Root Soup.
Right behind her came nine-year-old Gu Nian (already dressed in his yellow bunny-ear pajamas). Seven-year-old Su Nuannuan (holding her [Pink Healing Watering Can] in one hand and a plate of warm sesame biscuits in the other).
“Dad! Is this our new Big Brother Xiao?!”
Gu Nian trotted up to the sofa, took one look at Ye Xiao’s gaunt cheeks and split knuckles, and immediately held out his own favorite fluffy white bunny-towel with both hands. “Big Brother Xiao, use my towel to wipe your face! It’s super soft—Xiao Qing the well-spirit washed it three times with jasmine soap today!”
“And don’t be scared of the scratches on your hands, Big Brother!” Seven-year-old Su Nuannuan tiptoed beside the bench, placed her small, warm palms gently over Ye Xiao’s bruised knuckles. Blew a tiny puff of sweet pink Honey-Blossom Healing Mist across his torn skin.
“Look!
Nuannuan’s medicine breath doesn’t sting at all—it smells like strawberries!”
Before Ye Xiao’s eyes, the deep, painful splits across all ten of his knuckles stopped bleeding, scabbed over, and healed into smooth, warm skin in less than five breaths!
Sitting stiffly on the edge of the cushioned sofa, ten-year-old Ye Xiao didn’t know where to put his hands or his feet.
He had lived in broken temples and mud ditches his entire life. Nobody had ever handed him a clean white towel that smelled like jasmine flowers, and nobody had ever called a ragged street orphan “Big Brother” with such bright, unguarded eyes.
“T-Thank you...” Ye Xiao whispered hoarsely, holding Gu Nian’s bunny towel like it was woven from priceless imperial silk.
Yet the moment he tried to look up at Gu Nian and Su Nuannuan under the bright oil lamps of the living room—.
“Ugh—!”
Ye Xiao’s thin body shuddered violently. He dropped the towel into his lap and clapped both hands over his eyes, his teeth grinding together. Cold sweat broke out across his forehead and two thin lines of crimson blood seeped between his fingers!
“Big Brother Xiao!!” Su Nuannuan gasped in alarm.
On the mahogany table beside the tea tray, Grandpa Yao’s [Rank 3 Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] hopped to its plush feet. Its emerald bead-eyes glowing with solemn Rank 5 diagnostic light as it scanned the boy’s forehead.
“Changsheng, look at the spiritual pressure around his brow!” Grandpa Yao’s voice rang urgently out of the stuffed turtle. “This child wasn’t just born with an Innate Sword Heart—he possesses a twin mutation called the Supreme Innate Sword Eyes!
To ordinary mortals, the air in this room is empty.
Wait—to his naked eyes, every single thread of ambient Qi, lamp-light, wind current, and structural stress-line in a hundred-yard radius looks like thousands of blinding, tangled crimson needles stabbing straight into his pupils!”
Grandpa Yao waved a plush green flipper seriously. “Because he starved in the slums for ten years with zero cultivation guidance, his optic meridians have been overloaded day and night by millions of raw Sword-Qi vectors! That’s why he has splitting migraines whenever he opens his eyes in the light!
If we don’t filter and organize those chaotic visual threads soon, his optic nerves will burn out completely and he’ll go permanently blind within a month!”
Hearing the word blind, Ye Xiao’s shoulders trembled beneath his oversized cotton shirt.
“I... I’m fine,” the ten-year-old boy whispered quickly, forcing his hands down from his bleeding eyelids. Trying to sit up straight—terrified that if this warm family found out he was defective and going blind.
They would throw him back into the rain. “I can still work in the dark... I can chop firewood and carry water by touch...
please don’t send me away...”
“Who said anything about sending you away? Sit back down and drink your mutton soup before it gets a skin on top,” Gu Changsheng said calmly, pressing a gentle hand on top of Ye Xiao’s head so the boy couldn’t bow.
Turning to the side table, Gu Changsheng pulled over his [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box], flipped open the brass latch, and called out to Grandpa Fu and Auntie Qin:.
“Grandpa Fu, bring me that pair of uncut Pure Rock-Crystal Lenses we got from the Treasure Pavilion, plus two strips of Soothing Spirit-Jade from Auntie Qin’s medicine cabinet. And Nian’er—hand Dad one sheet of your Square-Grid Calligraphy Practice Paper.”
“Here, Dad!” Gu Nian immediately pulled a clean sheet of black-and-white ruled grid paper from his workbook.
Gu Changsheng placed all three items inside the Upgrade Box and tapped the lid with his knuckle:.
System. Spend 200,000 Dad Points to fuse a pair of medical-grade optical glasses for my eldest son—filter out all chaotic Sword-Qi glare and convert raw visual vectors into calm, readable scholarly geometry lines.
DING—WHIRRRRRR!!
[Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box Activated! Cost: -200,000 DP!]
[Fusing Materials: <Pure Rock-Crystal Lenses> + <Soothing Spirit-Jade Frames> + <Gu Family Square-Grid Calligraphy Paper>!]
[Fusion Complete! Congratulations on obtaining the Growth-Type Soul Artifact: <Clear-Sky Scholarly Glasses (Rank 4 Quality)>!]
[Artifact Effects:]
[1. Soothing Jade Filter: Eliminates 100% of Innate Sword-Eye optical migraines, blood-tears, and glare; continuously nourishes the wearer’s optic meridians with cool spirit-spring Qi!]
[2. Scholar’s Geometry Grid: Automatically organizes all chaotic Qi threads, enemy stances, and formation arrays in the wearer’s vision into neat, black-and-white mathematical grid-lines, angles, and structural flaw coordinates!]
When Gu Changsheng lifted the lid of the box, a pair of lightweight, silver-rimmed [Clear-Sky Scholarly Glasses] rested on the velvet cushion, their crystal lenses gleaming with a cool, tranquil azure sheen.
“Lift your chin, Xiao’er,” Gu Changsheng said softly.
After wiping the blood-tears from the boy’s eyelids with Auntie Qin’s warm mugwort cloth, Gu Changsheng carefully unfolded the silver temples of the glasses and slid them over Ye Xiao’s nose and ears.
“Alright. Open your eyes slowly.”
Holding his breath, ten-year-old Ye Xiao slowly parted his eyelashes.
After all of ten years of his life—there was no stabbing pain.
The millions of jagged, screaming crimson needles that had turned every waking hour of his childhood into a blinding nightmare vanished in a single heartbeat!
Through the cool, soothing rock-crystal lenses of the [Clear-Sky Scholarly Glasses], the entire world clicked into crisp. Peaceful focus: the chaotic ambient Qi in the room organized itself into neat, faint white-and-black Cartesian grid lines. The warm yellow glow of the oil lamp looked soft and gentle.
And right in front of him, he could see every warm crinkle around his new Dad’s eyes, the bright gap-toothed smile on seven-year-old Nuannuan’s face. Nine-year-old Gu Nian giving him two enthusiastic thumbs-up!
“It... it doesn’t hurt...” Ye Xiao breathed, raising a trembling finger to touch the silver frame resting on the bridge of his nose as a single clear tear rolled down his cheek.
“The red needles are gone...
everything is so quiet and neat...”
[System Notification: Eldest Son ‘Gu Ye Xiao’ Optical Curse Permanently Resolved!]
[Target ‘Ye Xiao’ Darkening Meter: 62% -> 46% (-16% Drop!)]
[Daily Income Surge: +2,000,000 -> +2,200,000 DP/day!]
That night at 10:30 PM, after finishing two big bowls of mutton soup and taking a hot herbal bath. Ye Xiao lay in a clean, warm cedar bed between Gu Nian’s and Su Nuannuan’s rooms. Wearing a soft blue flannel nightshirt with his new [Clear-Sky Scholarly Glasses] placed carefully on the nightstand where he could reach them in half a second.
Yet when Gu Changsheng cracked open the bedroom door to check on him after turning down the hall lamps. He saw a small lump under the edge of Ye Xiao’s pillow—where the boy’s right hand was still tightly clutching that two-foot strip of rusted barrel-iron from Coffin Alley in his sleep. Afraid that the Royal Surgeons would come back when the lights went out.
Looking at that rusted iron strip beneath his new son’s pillow, Gu Changsheng’s eyes softened as he quietly closed the door.
“Tomorrow morning,” Gu Changsheng murmured to himself in the hallway, “Dad will make you a proper sword that doesn’t leave rust stains on the bedsheets.”