Outside the high stone walls of the Gu Clan Mansion at five minutes past midnight, the snow-covered street was crawling with dark-green shadows.
Eighty scarred, cold-blooded martial artists of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang had quietly surrounded the northern and eastern perimeter of the main family courtyard.
Every four men carried a six-foot-long iron-nozzled leather bellows connected to a sealed bronze drum filled with the gang’s signature massacre weapon: [Grade-2 Lethal Miasma: Green Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke].
Standing on the roof of an abandoned woodshed across the lane was the outer-hall master of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang. Poison-Hand Wu—a skeletal forty-five-year-old man whose ten fingernails were stained greenish-black from thirty years of cultivating theRank 2 Mid Meridian-Clearing Scorpion Venom Art.
Right beside Poison-Hand Wu crouched Lin Fan [Luck Halo: 46%].
After taking two hundred Iron-Sting Hornet stings to the face and neck in the slave cavern an hour ago, Lin Fan’s head was still swollen. Big and round as a purple winter pumpkin, with two narrow slits for eyes and two giant sausage lips that made him lisp every word he spoke.
Even so, Lin Fan’s slit-eyes gleamed with rabid, homicidal glee as he pointed a swollen finger at the warm yellow lanterns glowing inside the Gu Clan’s main dining courtyard.
“Th-that’th the main courtyard right there, Hall Mathter Wu!” Lin Fan lisped eagerly through his sausage lips. “Gu Changtheng, Qin Wan’er, his one-eyed butler, his eight-year-old brat, and the six-year-old Poithon Girl are all inside eating supper right now!
Pump all twenty drums of Corpth-Rot Poithon Thmoke over the wall at once!”
Poison-Hand Wu curled his black-stained fingernails and let out a raspy, chilling laugh.
“My Five-Venom Scorpion Gang spent three years refining those twenty drums of Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke from a thousand venomous toads and graveyard centipedes,” Poison-Hand Wu sneered, raising a carved bone whistle to his lips. “Once twenty bellows pump that green fog into an enclosed courtyard, even a Rank 2 Iron-Bone martial artist’s lungs will melt into green water within three breaths!
The only person who will survive inside that yard is the six-year-old girl with the Innate Ten-Thousand-Poison Body—and her poison core will be stimulated to peak potency for me to harvest!”
“Kill them all! Melt Gu Changtheng to bones!” Lin Fan hissed, trembling with excitement.
Poison-Hand Wu waved his hand sharply downward:.
“Open the bronze valves! Pump all twenty bellows at full force!”
WHOOSH—HISS—PUMP! PUMP! PUMP!
Down along the outer courtyard wall, eighty Five-Venom Scorpion Gang killers shoved twenty long iron nozzles through the drainage grates and over the top of the brick wall. Working the giant leather bellows with all their martial strength!
Twenty thick, billowing columns of glowing, emerald-green [Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke] poured over the courtyard walls like twenty giant venomous pythons!
The green poison fog was heavier than winter air. Wherever it touched the dry snow on the courtyard flagstones, the snow hissed and turned a foul, bubbling yellowish-green!
Inside the warm main hall, Captain Gu Tie smelled the faint metallic tang outside and immediately rushed to the doorway with his iron spear:.
“Patriarch! It’s the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang! They’re pumping high-grade Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke into the courtyard!
Should I activate the Mansion Heating Array’s updraft to blow it back over the wall?!”
Sitting calmly at the dinner table with his teacup in hand, Rank 2 Early Gu Changsheng glanced at the thick emerald-green fog rolling across the front courtyard toward the porch steps—and smiled.
“Don’t blow it away, Captain Gu Tie,” Gu Changsheng said pleasantly, setting down his teacup. “If you blow away twenty drums of premium poison smoke that Hall Master Wu worked for three years to brew, what is our Nuannuan going to have for her midnight dessert?”
Captain Gu Tie blinked in bewilderment. “M-midnight dessert?!”
At the dinner table, six-year-old Su Nuannuan had just finished her warm bowl of [Earth-Fire Chaos-Bone Egg Custard] and was rubbing her sleepy eyes with the back of her tiny pink sleeve.
Suddenly, her tiny button nose twitched once. Twice.
Through the crack of the front door, a wisp of the emerald-green [Grade-2 Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke] drifted onto the porch!
To any ordinary martial artist, that green smoke was a terrifying, lung-melting nightmare refined from a thousand venomous creatures.
To six-year-old Su Nuannuan—whose [Rank 2 Perfection: Sweet Honey-Candy & Healing Aroma Empress Body] had just been awakened by three thousand Dad Points and Thousand-Year Earth-Heart Milk—high-grade spiritual toxins were literally pure, concentrated sugar-qi!
Nuannuan’s sleepy black-grape eyes lit up like two little stars.
Hopping down from her cushioned wooden stool in her soft pink indoor slippers. The tiny six-year-old girl in the fluffy pink rabbit dress tottered eagerly across the warm slate floor, pushed open the front screen door. Stepped right out onto the center of the veranda porch as twenty rolling surges of emerald-green poison fog converged around her ankles!
Up on the woodshed roof outside the wall. Looking through a spyglass gap in the tiles. Lin Fan and Poison-Hand Wu saw the front door open and a tiny figure walk straight into the thickest part of the green poison cloud!
“Hahaha! Somebody walked right out into the smoke without holding their breath!” Lin Fan cackled through his swollen purple lips.
“Three breaths and they’ll be coughing up their own melted lungs!”
Down on the porch, six-year-old Su Nuannuan looked at the swirling emerald-green cloud around her pink rabbit dress, sniffed the air deeply. Beamed back at Gu Changsheng and Gu Nian through her gap-toothed smile:.
“Ooh, Dad! Big Brother Nian! Come look!
The night wind outside tastes just like sweet green-apple cotton candy!”
Before Poison-Hand Wu outside the wall could figure out why the tiny girl in the pink rabbit dress wasn’t falling over. Six-year-old Su Nuannuan opened her small mouth wide, patted her little round tummy with both hands, and took one giant, happy inhale!
SHUUUUUUUUUUUUCK—WHOOOOOOOSH!
Like a miniature spiritual whale inhaling a tide pool, the [Sweet Honey-Candy & Healing Aroma Empress Body] inside the six-year-old girl’s dantian spun like a golden whirlpool!
In front of Captain Gu Tie’s, Grandpa Fu’s, Auntie Qin’s—and outside the wall, Poison-Hand Wu’s and Lin Fan’s—utterly petrified eyes. All twenty billowing columns of lethal emerald-green Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke covering the entire ten-thousand-square-foot courtyard suddenly reversed direction in midair. Funneling into a single spinning green tornado that poured straight into six-year-old Su Nuannuan’s open mouth!
One second! Two seconds! Three seconds!
Twenty full bronze drums of Grade-Two Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke—enough to wipe out an entire military garrison—vanished down the six-year-old girl’s throat to the very last wisp. Leaving the courtyard air cleaner than a mountain morning!
Inside Nuannuan’s dantian, the honey-candy physique instantly refined all twenty drums of concentrated venom-qi into pure, flaw-free spiritual honey!
Hic—burp!
Six-year-old Su Nuannuan patted her full little tummy, let out a tiny, polite burp that blew a single shimmering pink soap bubble into the air—pop!—and felt her newly nourished meridians hum. She broke straight from Rank 0 mortal past Rank 1 Early and landed cleanly in Rank 1 Mid Martial (800 lbs Base Force + Honey-Empress Aura)!
“Mmm! Green-apple candy is yummy, Dad, thank you for dessert!” Nuannuan giggled.
Licking her pink lips happily as a wave of warm, fragrant wildflower-honey and toasted-caramel mist radiated outward from her pink rabbit dress across the entire courtyard!
Where that sweet honey breeze brushed over Captain Gu Tie and the fifty mansion guards standing by the side verandas. Every single guard felt his lungs turn crystal-clear and his martial stamina increase by twenty percent!
“Good heavens above!” Captain Gu Tie stared at the tiny six-year-old girl on the porch with his jaw hanging open. “That was twenty bronze drums of Grade-Two Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke from the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang—enough poison to melt the stone statues at the town gate!
And Little Miss Nuannuan just slurped the whole cloud down like a bowl of sweet noodle soup and advanced two realms in a single burp?!”
Beside the doorway, twenty-four-year-old Rank 2 Alchemist Qin Wan’er covered her mouth in sheer alchemical amazement, her eyes shining with wonder.
“So that’s how Brother Gu cured her Innate Ten-Thousand-Poison Body in the cave tonight!” Auntie Qin cried softly. “Instead of sealing her poison meridians, he transformed her entire poison core into a honey-refining furnace!
The stronger the poison someone throws at our Nuannuan, the sweeter the candy it turns into inside her tummy!”
Right behind Nuannuan on the porch, eight-year-old Gu Nian walked out in his [Rank 1 Iron-Defense Yellow Bunny Slippers] and gave his little sister a big, approving thumbs-up.
“Good burp, Nuannuan!” Gu Nian praised seriously, patting her small shoulder like an experienced senior brother. “Wait until tomorrow—Dad says if you help defend the courtyard at midnight without waking up the neighbors, you get a Little Red Flower on your dress!”
Nuannuan’s big black-grape eyes lit up with excitement as she looked down at the front of her fluffy pink rabbit dress. Imagining how pretty a bright red flower sticker would look right above her pocket.
“Really, Big Brother Nian?!” Nuannuan clapped her tiny hands together. “Are there more green-apple candy clouds outside the wall?”
“No more smoke clouds,” Gu Changsheng said, stepping out onto the veranda porch with his hands tucked casually into his sleeves. He looked toward the front compound gates, “because the uncles pumping the bellows outside just ran out of air.”
Outside on the woodshed roof, Poison-Hand Wu’s jaw dropped open so violently that he accidentally inhaled his own carved bone whistle straight down his windpipe!
Gulp—ack—cough!
Every time Poison-Hand Wu coughed to try to dislodge the bone whistle from his throat, a high-pitched TWEET-WHEEZE! squeaked out of his mouth!
Down along the outer courtyard wall, the eighty Five-Venom Scorpion Gang killers pumped their twenty leather bellows one last time—clank, hiss—and stared in stupefied silence at their twenty completely empty bronze poison drums.
“H-Hall Master Wu!” the lead bellow-operator whispered up at the roof in terror, tapping the hollow bronze drum with his knuckles. “All twenty drums are bone-dry!
We pumped three years’ worth of Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke over the wall—why isn’t anyone screaming inside, and why does the whole street smell like a caramel candy shop?!”
Beside Poison-Hand Wu on the roof, purple-pumpkin-headed Lin Fan grabbed the roof tiles so hard his fingernails cracked.
“Im-impothible!” Lin Fan shrieked through his sausage lips, his eyes bulging through their swollen slits. He stared down at the completely unharmed six-year-old girl in the pink rabbit dress standing on the Gu Clan porch alongside Gu Changsheng and Gu Nian.
“How did she swallow twenty drums of Grade-Two poison without dying?!”
“She... a six-year-old baby in a pink rabbit dress just... just ATE all twenty drums of my Five-Venom Scorpion Gang’s ultimate Corpse-Rot Poison Smoke like cotton candy?!”
Poison-Hand Wu wheezed, finally coughing the bone whistle out into his palm.
He stared in sheer, world-shattering horror, “AND BURPED OUT A PINK SOAP BUBBLE?!”
Down in the lane below the woodshed roof, the eighty scarred killers of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang looked at their empty bronze drums. Smelled the warm caramel-and-honey breeze drifting over the Gu Clan wall. Looked up at their outer-hall master in utter confusion.
“Hall Master Wu, what kind of monster family is living inside the Frost-Pine Gu Clan?!” the gang’s vice-captain whispered, his hand trembling on the hilt of his venom-coated steel saber. “We’ve wiped out three mountain strongholds with that Corpse-Rot Smoke, and nobody ever lasted more than five breaths!
Yet that six-year-old little girl inside just drank all twenty drums in one gulp and asked her dad if there was any more green-apple candy!”
On the roof, Lin Fan panicked as he saw the Scorpion Gang killers wavering.
If Poison-Hand Wu turned around and retreated right now, Lin Fan would be left alone in the snow with a swollen purple pumpkin-head and zero silver!
“Hall Mathter Wu, don’t let a six-year-old brat bluff you!” Lin Fan hissed desperately, grabbing Poison-Hand Wu’s green sleeve. “That proves she really is the legendary Innate Ten-Thousand-Poithon Body!
She only knows how to swallow gas—she’s still a six-year-old girl who doesn’t know martial arts!
You’re a Rank 2 Mid Meridian-Clearing expert with eighty steel-saber killers! If you kick open the front gate and charge in with cold steel right now, Gu Changtheng can’t block eighty blades at once!”
[ DING! CHILD #2 DEVOURS ENEMY ULTIMATE POISON & BREAKS THROUGH! ]
* Child #2 : Su Nuannuan (Age 6 | Adopted Daughter #1)
* Cultivation : Rank 0 -> Rank 1 Mid Martial (Double-Step Jump!)
* Nuannuan Stats: Warmth/Happiness: 88 -> 93/100!
Darkening Meter : 26% -> 22% (-4% DROP! Just 2%.
away from the <20% 10x Redeemed Kid Threshold!)
* Daily Income : +11,000 DP/day -> +12,500 DP/day!