The purple ink kept spreading.
It crawled across the page of [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] like spilled wine. Thin wisps of purple mist rose off the paper and stung Gu Changsheng’s nose. He held the book closer to the lamp and read the new entry twice.
Behind him, Gu Nian was still standing on a stool by the kitchen wall. He had just pressed his fifth Little Red Flower into place beside the other four. He smoothed the petals flat with his thumb, very carefully, like the wall might take it back.
“Dad,” he said. “Look. Five.”
“I see it,” Gu Changsheng said. “Good work.”
His voice came out flat. Gu Nian heard it. The boy turned around on the stool and looked at his father’s face.
Gu Changsheng didn’t notice. He was too busy reading.
The original book was clear. Tonight, in an underground cavern north of town called the Black-Sand Slave Market, a six-year-old orphan named Su Nuannuan would be sold for twenty silver. She had been born with the Innate Ten-Thousand-Poison Body.
Her skin leaked poison. Animals died near her. Her own village had chased her out with sticks.
The buyer was Lin Fan.
In the script, Lin Fan sealed the little girl inside a clay jar full of venomous centipedes. He kept her there for ten years. He drained her blood to make poison pills.
By the time she climbed out, there was nothing left inside her but pain. The girl grew up, went mad, and dissolved three continents.
Three continents, Gu Changsheng thought. *And the author gave Lin Fan a paragraph about how heavy his heart felt while he did it. Heavy heart.
He kept a six-year-old in a jar.*
There was more. Below the old text, new lines bled through in darker ink.
[Foreknowledge Decay: Plot event moved forward]
[Cause: Lin Fan lost the auction cauldron]
[Lin Fan needs a new source of power. Tonight.]
[New script: He buys the girl and boils her blood at midnight]
[Lin Fan arrival at Black-Sand Market: 1 hour 10 minutes]
In the original book, Lin Fan had waited a month. He had used the girl slowly. Now, because Gu Changsheng had stolen his cauldron and sold him a latrine bucket for ten thousand silver, Lin Fan was broke and desperate.
Desperate men didn’t wait.
So that’s my fault too, Gu Changsheng thought. Fine. Then I’ll fix it.
He shut the notebook and stood up so fast his chair scraped the floor.
“Dad.” Gu Nian hadn’t moved from the stool. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go wash up and get in bed.”
“Your face looks like the day Second Uncle came with the whips.”
Gu Changsheng stopped halfway to the door. Eight years old, and the kid read him like a ledger. He sighed and turned back.
“There’s a little girl,” he said. “Six years old. Some bad people locked her in a cage to sell her.
Lin Fan’s going to buy her tonight and hurt her. I’m going to get her out first.”
Gu Nian jumped off the stool. His bunny slippers hit the heated floor with a soft thump.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“I’m coming.” Gu Nian walked to the door and pulled on his padded coat. His small jaw was set hard.
“The bailiffs used to say they’d put me in an iron cage.
Every time they came. I used to hide behind the woodpile and think about how cold the bars would be.”
He tied his coat belt in a tight knot.
“Nobody came for me back then,” he said. “I’m Rank 1 Peak now. I can help.”
Gu Changsheng looked at his son for a long moment. The boy’s eyes were dark and steady. There was no black-gold Chaos light in them.
There was only stubbornness.
He gets that from his mother, Gu Changsheng thought. Definitely not from me. I’m very reasonable.
“Rules,” he said. “You stay behind me. You hold my sleeve when we’re inside.
If I say run, you run.”
“Okay.”
“And you keep your slippers on. They’re iron-soled.”
“Dad, I’m not going to take my slippers off in a slave market.”
“Good. Just checking.”
Gu Changsheng stuck his head out the kitchen door. “Grandpa Fu!”
The old butler was already coming down the hall with a lantern. He took one look at the Third Young Master’s face and didn’t ask questions.
“Send for Captain Gu Tie,” Gu Changsheng said. “Tell him to bring a coat and nothing shiny. We’re going north.”
“Right away.” Grandpa Fu pressed a heavy cloth pouch into his hand. “Two hundred silver, Third Young Master.
In case someone needs paying.”
“I don’t plan to pay anyone.”
“Old Fu knows,” Grandpa Fu said. “That’s why it’s only two hundred.”
Captain Gu Tie arrived at the back gate four minutes later. He was a wide man with a square head and a beard like a scrub brush. He was still chewing the last of a braised pork bun.
Since eating his first bun from the Earth-Fire Wok, the big guard had broken through to Rank 2 Early, and he walked like the ground owed him money.
“Patriarch.” He swallowed. “Where are we going?”
“Black-Sand Slave Market.”
Gu Tie stopped chewing. “That pit? Nobody goes there unless they want to buy something they shouldn’t.”
“Who runs it?”
“Nobody knows.” Gu Tie wiped his mouth. “Some say a merchant from the Prefecture.
Some say a gang.
The guards at the door wear masks. People who ask too many questions end up in the river.”
“Then we won’t ask questions,” Gu Changsheng said. He strapped the [Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok] across his back like a shield. “We’ll just take things.”
Gu Tie grinned. It was not a nice grin.
They ran.
Frost-Pine Town slept under a thin layer of new snow. The three of them cut through the back alleys and out the north road. Gu Nian kept up without trouble.
His iron-soled slippers left neat little bunny prints in the snow beside his father’s boots.
Past the last farmhouse, the road climbed into black hills. The wind smelled of pine and ice. After twenty minutes, Gu Tie pointed to a dark crack in the rock face.
“There.”
Two lanterns hung at the crack. Two men in black masks stood under them. Each had a short spear.
Gu Changsheng opened the notebook one more time and checked the page.
[Lin Fan arrival at Black-Sand Market: 15 minutes]
Fifteen minutes. Plenty of time. As long as nobody here wants to chat.
The guard on the left stepped forward and lowered his spear. “Entry token.”
“Forgot it at home,” Gu Changsheng said.
“Then it’s five silver each. And the kid stays outside.”
“The kid’s with me.”
The guard laughed. “Then you can both freeze.”
Gu Tie walked past Gu Changsheng. He did not hurry. He took the spear in one hand, snapped the shaft like a chopstick, and slammed his forehead into the guard’s mask.
The man dropped without a sound.
The second guard opened his mouth to shout. Gu Tie’s fist got there first. The second man folded over and sat down in the snow, then lay down.
“Rank 2,” Gu Tie said, rubbing his knuckles. He sounded pleased with himself. “Still getting used to it.”
“Drag them behind the rocks,” Gu Changsheng said. “Nobody needs to see them yet.”
Behind the rock crack was a narrow tunnel that sloped down. After thirty steps, it ended at the edge of a deep, round shaft. A long wooden ladder ran down the side into the dark.
Next to the ladder, a rope-and-pulley basket hung from a beam.
“That’s for the goods,” Gu Tie whispered. “Things too heavy to carry down the ladder.”
Gu Changsheng looked at the basket for a second. He filed it away.
They climbed down. The ladder went on for a long time. Gu Nian climbed below his father, with Gu Changsheng’s boots right above his head the whole way.
At the bottom, the shaft opened into a huge cavern.
The floor was covered in coarse black sand. Torches hung on the rock walls. Rows of cages ran down both sides of the cave, wooden ones in front and iron ones in back.
Men in fur cloaks and silk masks walked between the rows, pointing and talking in low voices. It sounded like a cattle fair.
Inside the cages were children.
Most of them were older than Gu Nian. Some were younger. They sat in straw and didn’t look up.
A few of them were tied together at the ankle with rope. Gu Changsheng counted without meaning to. Ten.
Twenty. More in the back.
Gu Nian’s hand found his father’s sleeve and held on hard.
“Dad,” he whispered. “They’re all...”
“I know.”
“Are we taking them too?”
Gu Changsheng looked down the rows. Forty children, give or take. Forty kids who weren’t in the script at all.
The author hadn’t even bothered to give them a line.
The book never mentions them. Not one of them gets a name.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re taking them too.”
Gu Tie’s face had gone dark red under his beard. He cracked his neck to one side.
“Patriarch,” he said quietly. “Say the word.”
“Not yet. The girl first. Then everything else.”
They walked down the center of the cavern like buyers. Nobody stopped them. A fat man in a fox mask was arguing over the price of a boy with a bad leg.
A woman with rings on every finger was checking a girl’s teeth. Gu Changsheng kept his eyes forward and his hands loose.
The cavern smelled of sweat and old straw. Then, near the back, a new smell cut through. It was sharp and sour, like rotten fruit in vinegar.
It made Gu Changsheng’s eyes water.
At the very back of the cave sat a single iron cage, set apart from the others. The bars were thick and black. The straw around it was gray and dead.
Even the black sand near the cage looked burned.
The buyers gave it a wide berth.
Inside, a tiny girl was curled in a ball.
She wore a sack with holes cut for her arms. Her hair was a tangled mess. Her feet were bare and red from the cold.
She was so thin that Gu Changsheng could count the bones in her wrists from ten feet away.
Purple veins ran across her cheeks and down her neck. They pulsed slowly, like something alive was crawling under her skin. A faint purple mist hung around her body.
Wherever it touched the bars, the iron had gone dull and pitted.
A golden panel opened in front of Gu Changsheng’s eyes.
[Destined Final Boss detected]
[Name: Su Nuannuan | Age: 6]
[Physique: Innate Ten-Thousand-Poison Body]
[Darkening: 82% (Critical)]
[Happiness: 4/100]
[Status: Starving, frostbite, poison backlash]
Four out of a hundred, Gu Changsheng thought. Gu Nian was twelve when I met him, and I thought that was bad.
A big man stood beside the cage. He had a scar that ran from his ear across his mouth to his chin, so his lips twisted when he talked. He wore a leather apron and thick leather gloves up to the elbow.
In his hands was an iron rod about ten feet long.
This had to be the Slave Boss.
“Wake up, poison rat,” he said. He jabbed the rod through the bars. It struck the little girl in the ribs.
“Your buyer’s coming tonight. Rich young master. You’d better look alive when he gets here.”
The girl didn’t cry out. She pulled her knees tighter to her chest. Her lips moved.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Nuannuan’s sorry. Nuannuan’s sorry.”
The Slave Boss laughed and jabbed her again.
Gu Nian’s grip on his father’s sleeve turned to iron. Gu Changsheng felt the boy’s whole arm shaking.
Gu Changsheng took his son’s hand off his sleeve. He put it on Gu Tie’s belt instead.
Then he walked toward the cage.
The Slave Boss heard his boots on the sand and turned around, the iron rod still raised. His scarred lips twisted into a smile.
“Sorry, friend. This one’s already spoken for,” he said. “Unless you’re carrying more silver than the young master.
And I don’t think you are.”