CRACK—SPLATTER—BOOM!
When Lin Fan’s fist smashed through the outer clay shell of the green brick on the center of the auction stage, the sound was not the crisp chime of ancient jade.
It sounded like an overfilled leather wineskin exploding under a wagon wheel!
Because Gu Changsheng had used [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box] to compress two full gallons of hundred-day fermented skunk-cabbage juice and public latrine night-soil inside that hollow clay brick—and. Lin Fan had positioned his open mouth and wide eyes just eight inches above the crack so he wouldn’t. Miss a single drop of “Thousand-Year Earth-Heart Milk”—the entire pressurized geyser erupted straight upward into his face at point-blank range!
BLAAAARGH—SPLASH!
A thick, bubbling, greenish-brown column of hundred-day fermented skunk-cabbage slurry blasted squarely into Lin Fan’s open mouth, up both nostrils, across his forehead bandage, and all over his scholar’s robe!
Worse still, the explosive blast radius didn’t stop at Lin Fan.
Right at the edge of the stage three feet away. Second Elder Gu Ba was leaning forward with his bandaged cheeks parted in a greedy grin—and took the second wave of fermented skunk-cabbage. Night-soil juice straight across his face, beard, and silk coat!
Even Loan-Shark Boss Shark and Silk Merchant Liu in the front row caught a generous spray across their boots and fur hems!
For two full heartbeats, the entire domed hall of the Frost-Pine Treasure Auction House was so quiet you. Could hear thick greenish-brown droplets dripping off the tip of Lin Fan’s nose onto the red stage carpet.
Then the smell hit.
It wasn’t an ordinary bad smell.
It was one hundred days of rotten winter skunk-cabbage pickled with public latrine sediment, fermented in a closed barrel behind the gardener’s shed, and atomized into a warm mist under the brass chandeliers!
Inside the black iron ring on Lin Fan’s thumb, Master Yao Chen—who had extended his full Golden Core spiritual sense right around Lin Fan’s head half a second. Impact—took the spiritual equivalent of a direct artillery hit to the nose.
“GAAAH! MY SOUL! MY NOSE!”
Inside the ring, the three-hundred-year-old Pill Sovereign gagged so violently that his translucent white beard turned green and his remnant soul nearly coughed up wisps of spirit-smoke!
“You brainless, inbred, manure-eating maggot!” Yao Chen screeched, slamming three layers of soul-shields shut around the inside of the ring while dry-heaving in the dark. *“That’s not Earth-Heart Milk! Somebody scraped a pinch of real rust onto an old chamber pot and filled a clay brick with fermented latrine juice!
You just paid ten thousand silver taels of loan-shark money to drink pickled night-soil on stage!”*
On the center of the stage, Lin Fan stood frozen with his arms held out stiffly at his sides. His hair plastered to his skull with slimy green cabbage leaves, and brown sludge dripping from his chin.
“M-milk...” Lin Fan gurgled weakly, spitting out a shred of hundred-day fermented cabbage leaf before the horrific taste registered on his tongue. “Blargh—pffft!
Why does it taste like the graveyard ditch?!”
And as if the universe decided that wasn’t quite humiliating enough—.
Where the acidic fermented skunk-cabbage juice had splashed across the side of the two-foot “ancient cauldron” on the cart. The thin outer coat of fake red rust and soot dissolved and slid right off the metal in foamy streams!
Exposed beneath the melting paint, gleaming brightly under the stage chandeliers in large, chiseled municipal block letters along the side of the dented iron bucket, were nine unmistakable words:.
[ FROST-PINE TOWN PUBLIC LATRINE BUCKET #4 — DO NOT STEAL ]
In the front row, Silk Merchant Liu stared at those nine chiseled words through his spattered spectacles, looked at Lin Fan spitting cabbage sludge on the stage. Immediately doubled over and vomited his morning breakfast right onto his own velvet boots!
“Blargh! Public Latrine Bucket Number Four?!” Silk Merchant Liu howled between heaves, scrambling backward up the aisle as if fleeing a plague.
“That’s the iron night-soil bucket that was stolen from the public outhouse behind East Market last month!
And that brick was full of pickled skunk-cabbage fertilizer!”
“WHAT?!”
Three hundred wealthy merchants, clan elders, and traders erupted into a pandemonium of gagging, screaming, and hysterical laughter as everyone stampeded backward toward the windows and doors with their sleeves clamped over their noses!
“Ten thousand silver taels! Second Elder Gu Ba and Lin Fan just mortgaged every acre of the Second Branch’s ancestral farmland. To pay ten thousand silver taels for Public Latrine Bucket Number Four and a brick of fermented poop!”
“And look at Lin Fan! He leaned his face right over the brick with his mouth wide open and shouted Reveal the divine marrow milk before blasting himself in the throat!”
“First he pooped his pants on the ancestral mountain, then he drank rat-poison in Doctor Qin’s clinic, and today he paid ten thousand silver to eat a fermented latrine brick on the auction stage! Does Second Elder Gu Ba’s nephew-in-law have a secret martial technique that requires eating filth every single morning?!”
Up on the second-floor mezzanine in VIP Box #1—safely behind the velvet screen. The rising hot air from the charcoal braziers pushed the smell away toward the ground floor—eight-year-old Gu Nian peeked over the railing with a fragrant honey-orange gummy bear held under his nose.
Seeing Lin Fan standing on the stage dripping green cabbage slime from his ears. Second Elder Gu Ba wiped brown sludge out of his eyes, Gu Nian cupped his free hand around his mouth and shouted in a ringing. Crystal-clear child’s voice that echoed across the entire hall:.
“DAD! AUNTIE QIN! LOOK!
UNCLE LIN ATE THE POOP-BRICK AGAIN! AND HE DIDN’T EVEN SHARE HALF WITH HIS RING!”
The whole auction hall roared with laughter so loud the glass panes in the dome rattled!
Up in VIP Box #1, Auntie Qin laughed until tears sparkled on her eyelashes, while Grandpa Fu shook his head and clicked his black-iron abacus with a solemn face.
“Let this old servant calculate the market value for the record,” Grandpa Fu said loudly enough for the second-floor mezzanine boxes to hear. “One dented public outhouse bucket: worth fifteen copper coins as scrap iron. Two gallons of hundred-day fermented skunk-cabbage juice: worth five copper coins as turnip fertilizer.
Total value: twenty copper coins! Yet Second Elder Gu Ba and Young Master Lin paid ten thousand silver taels—fifty thousand times the market price! Truly, the Second Branch’s financial generosity puts the Imperial Treasury to shame!”
“Bwahaha! Hear, hear!”
In VIP Box #2 next door, Quarry Owner Boss Tie slapped the railing and laughed until his belly shook. “Wait until the teahouse storytellers write this into a ballad this afternoon! The Young Hero Who Paid Ten Thousand Silver to Drink Outhouse Soup!
Even three generations from now, nobody in Frost-Pine County will ever forget this auction!”
Down on the stage, Lin Fan tried desperately to wipe the slimy green cabbage leaves out of his. Eyes with his sleeves—only to smear the hundred-day fermented night-soil deeper into his white forehead bandage and hair!
Every breath he took made him gag all over again, and inside his head, Master Yao Chen had completely locked the spirit-channel of the black ring, refusing to speak a single word to him.
“No... it can’t be a latrine bucket!” Lin Fan whimpered, dropping to his knees beside the cart and scraping frantically at the chiseled letters on the iron pot with his fingernails until his nails bled.
“Last night by the warehouse window, there was real Earth-Fire aura!
Gu Changsheng! It was you! You swapped the pot before the auction!”
Up on the balcony of VIP Box #1, Gu Changsheng leaned comfortably on the velvet railing and looked down at him with a look of pure, neighborly innocence.
“Swapped the pot, Nephew Lin?” Gu Changsheng asked mildly, spreading his hands. “Manager Qian and twelve guards watched the vault all night.
You were the one who jumped onto your chair screaming that I was a frog at the bottom of a well who didn’t recognize a treasure.
I tried to bid nine thousand nine hundred silver to save you from eating that brick, and you practically begged to pay ten thousand! How can you blame your caring Uncle Gu when you insisted on opening it with your mouth wide open?”
Even Manager Qian Fugui—who had wisely stepped ten paces back behind his mahogany podium. Lin Fan swung his fist—had to bite the inside of his cheek until it hurt to keep a professional face as he banged his gavel once:.
“Ahem! As stated prior to the gavel, all clearance lot sales are final and non-refundable! Congratulations again to Young Master Lin Fan on acquiring Public Latrine Bucket Number Four!”
Down in the front row, however, there was one man who was not laughing at all.
Loan-Shark Boss Shark stood three feet from the stage, staring down at the foul brown splatter on the hem of his two-hundred-silver black sealskin coat.
Slowly, Boss Shark raised his bald head. The veins on his thick neck bulged like earthworms as his Rank 2 Early Iron-Bone martial aura erupted with murderous fury!
“Second... Elder... Gu...
Ba!”
Boss Shark’s roar drowned out the crowd’s laughter in an instant.
In two heavy strides, the burly loan-shark boss vaulted onto the stage, grabbed the stinking, slime-covered Second Elder Gu Ba by the throat with one iron hand. Slammed his shark-tooth dagger two inches deep into the wooden cart right between Lin Fan’s trembling knees!
“You old dog! Last night you and this filthy brat swore to me on a blood-contract that Lot #88 was a thirty-thousand-silver treasure!” Boss Shark bellowed.
Shaking Second Elder Gu Ba like a rag doll while holding his breath against the stench.
“You borrowed ten thousand silver of my casino’s hard cash to buy a stolen public toilet bucket and a brick of rotten cabbage?!”
“B-Boss Shark! Listen to me! I was tricked!”
Second Elder Gu Ba shrieked through his bandaged, slime-soaked cheeks, pointing a frantic finger at the dazed Lin Fan beside him.
“It was him! My nephew-in-law Lin Fan swore his master sensed an ancient treasure inside that pot! Beat him, not me!”
“I don’t care which one of you likes eating latrine bricks!” Boss Shark spat. Kicking the dented latrine bucket over Lin Fan’s head like a helmet with a deafening CLANG before dragging Second Elder Gu Ba off the stage by his collar.
“Your blood-contract says twelve thousand silver by noon or I confiscate every single copper coin, grain sack, and land deed in the Gu Clan Second Branch vault!
Boys! March into the Gu Clan Mansion right now and empty their treasury clean!”
Twenty scarred Black-Shark Casino enforcers drew their iron cudgels and dragged the howling Second Elder Gu Ba out the front doors toward the Gu Clan estate. Lin Fan stumbled blindly down the stage steps with Public Latrine Bucket #4 stuck fast over his head!
CRASH!
Unable to see through the dented iron bucket, Lin Fan tripped over the front-row chairs, tumbled across the floor like a rolling chamber pot. Fled out the side alley door to the sound of three hundred merchants laughing until tears rolled down their faces!
[ DING! CHOSEN ONE’S FORTUNE & DIGNITY ANNIHILATED! ]
* Target : Lin Fan (Frost-Pine Town Chosen One)
* Catastrophe : Paid 10,000 borrowed silver for [Public Latrine.
Bucket #4] & ate the [Skunk-Juice Brick] live in.
front of 300 elites! Second Branch bankrupted!
* Luck Halo Drop : 78% -> 58% (-20% MASSIVE SHATTER!)
* Plunder Jackpot : +300 DP! (Current Balance: 4,060 DP)
* Daily DP Income : +3,800 DP/day -> +4,300 DP/day!
Up in VIP Box #1, Gu Changsheng stood up from his armchair, brushed a melon-seed shell off his lap, and smiled warmly at Grandpa Fu, Auntie Qin, and Gu Nian.
“Now that Boss Shark is emptying Second Elder Gu Ba’s vault for us,” Gu Changsheng said. Picking up his coat, “what do you say we head home, fire up our new Rank 3 Earth-Fire Wok. Steam a big batch of braised pork buns for the hungry guards at the main clan mansion?”