Outside the Gu Clan Mansion wall, Lin Fan’s frantic words ignited the last desperate greed in Poison-Hand Wu’s chest.
“You’re right!” Poison-Hand Wu spat the taste of bone-whistle dust out of his mouth, his sunken eyes locking onto six-year-old Su Nuannuan standing on the porch inside. “An Innate Ten-Thousand-Poison Body that can swallow twenty drums of Grade-Two poison smoke in a single breath is a once-in-a-millennium treasure!
Even if she’s immune to poison gas, she’s still a six-year-old child of flesh and bone—she can’t block eighty steel sabers!”
Poison-Hand Wu leaped down from the woodshed roof into the street, drew his heavy, green-edged Rank 2 steel broadsaber from its sheath. Kicked the front courtyard gates of the Gu Clan Mansion wide open with a booming CRASH!
“Brothers of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang, charge in with me!” Poison-Hand Wu roared at the top of his lungs. “Cut down the men, loot the vault, and grab the six-year-old girl in the pink rabbit dress alive!
Whoever grabs her first gets five hundred silver taels!”
“KILL!”
Eighty ferocious Five-Venom Scorpion Gang killers abandoned their empty leather bellows in the street, drew eighty gleaming steel sabers coated in dark-blue paralytic venom. Surged through the open courtyard gate in a fan-shaped assault formation!
Standing along the side verandas of the courtyard. Rank 2 Early Captain Gu Tie and the fifty mansion guards immediately raised their iron spears to intercept the charge—only for Gu Changsheng on the main porch to raise one calm hand.
“Captain Gu Tie, let your brothers rest their arms tonight,” Gu Changsheng called out pleasantly from the top of the porch steps. “My son and daughter haven’t finished their post-supper exercise yet.”
On the veranda porch, eight-year-old Gu Nian stepped forward in front of his six-year-old little sister, planting his [Rank 1 Iron-Defense Yellow Bunny Slippers] squarely at the head of the stone stairs.
“You heard Dad, Nuannuan,” Gu Nian said seriously over his shoulder. “When bad guys bring sharp knives into our yard at midnight, Big Brother punches the two in front, and you take care of the knives!”
“Okay, Big Brother Nian!” six-year-old Su Nuannuan nodded obediently in her fluffy pink rabbit dress.
At the front of the charging Scorpion Gang pack, two burly Rank 1 Late vanguard killers leaped up the stone steps waving their venom-coated sabers with cruel grins:.
“Out of the way, you little bunny-slipper brat! Or we’ll chop your—”
“Touch my little sister and I’ll send you over the roof!”
Eight-year-old Gu Nian didn’t retreat half an inch.
With five glowing [Little Red Flower Stickers] boosting his cultivation speed. Twelve hundred pounds of Rank 1 Peak base strength stacked with three hundred pounds of awakened Innate Chaos Demon Bone might. The eight-year-old boy sank his small waist and threw two textbook, straight-line punches with both small fists!
BOOM—CRACK!
Two visible rings of golden-black Chaos-Bone shockwaves exploded from Gu Nian’s small knuckles!
Before the two Rank 1 Late vanguard killers’ sabers could come within three feet of the boy’s yellow bunny ears. Fifteen hundred pounds of unstoppable force slammed squarely into the center of their iron breastplates!
“Aaaargh!”
Both two-hundred-pound killers folded backward like dry shrimp, flew forty feet in reverse over the heads of their own charging comrades. Sailed clean over the fifteen-foot outer courtyard wall to land headfirst in the street snowbank outside!
GASP!
The remaining seventy-eight Scorpion Gang killers and Poison-Hand Wu skidded to a halt in the middle of the courtyard flagstones, their eyeballs nearly popping out of their skulls!
“An eight-year-old boy in yellow bunny slippers just punched two Rank 1 Late fighters clean over the compound wall?!”
“Don’t panic! There are still seventy-eight of us and Hall Master Wu is Rank 2 Mid!” the Scorpion Gang vice-captain shouted, raising his steel saber high.
“Use the Eighty-Scorpion Steel-Blade Net!
Surround them!”
Seventy-eight steel sabers and Poison-Hand Wu’s heavy broadsaber rose into the moonlight at once, forming a glittering forest of cold steel ten paces from the porch.
At that exact moment, a tiny speck of black night-pepper that had blown off the Scorpion Gang’s poison-bellows drifted across the porch. Landed right on the tip of six-year-old Su Nuannuan’s tiny button nose!
Nuannuan’s rosy cheeks scrunched up.
Her small mouth opened, her eyes squeezed shut, and her tiny shoulders rose three times as she tried to hold back a tickle:.
“Ah... ah... Big Brother Nian, my nose tickles...
AH-CHOOOOO!”
Puff!
Six-year-old Su Nuannuan sneezed straight toward the center of the courtyard!
Out of her tiny nose and mouth puffed a fist-sized. Shimmering cloud of pale purple-black mist that smelled faintly of sweet black-licorice candy—the active defense mode of her [Rank 2 Perfection: Sweet Honey-Candy & Healing Aroma Empress Body]!
Remembering the system description—Only when Nuannuan sneezes at an enemy does her breath turn into [Weapon-Melting Black-Licorice Gas]. Which dissolves steel weapons and armor into sticky black taffy in two seconds without hurting skin!—Gu Changsheng grinned and folded his arms on the porch.
Propelled by Nuannuan’s newly awakened Rank 1 Mid breath. That little cloud of black-licorice mist expanded in midair into a thirty-yard translucent ring that washed gently across Poison-Hand Wu and all seventy-eight Scorpion Gang killers!
“Haha! The little brat sneezed at us!” one of the killers laughed, swinging his steel saber forward.
“Does she think a sneeze can block refined steel—”
Sizzle... drip... plop!
Before the killer could finish his sentence, every single piece of refined pig-iron, tempered steel, and bronze metal across the entire courtyard met the [Weapon-Melting Black-Licorice Gas]!
It didn’t rust or shatter—it melted!
In less than two seconds flat, right in front from Captain Gu Tie’s, Grandpa Fu’right s, Auntie Qin’s. Outside the gate Lin Fan’s completely petrified eyes, all seventy-eight venom-coated steel sabers, Poison-Hand Wu’s prized Rank 2 broadsaber, every iron breastplate, every chainmail vest. Every single brass belt buckle worn by the eighty Scorpion Gang killers softened like warm candle wax and dripped onto the flagstones as puddles of sticky, sweet-smelling black-licorice taffy!
Better yet, because the system upgrade was 100% selective and non-lethal, not a single hair or thread of cloth on the killers’ skin was burned—only their metal weapons, armor, and belt buckles were dissolved!
*Clatter... flop! Flop!
Flop!*
Without their brass belt buckles, seventy-nine pairs of dark-green Scorpion Gang trousers dropped straight down around the killers’ ankles in the middle of the courtyard. The sticky black-licorice taffy on the flagstones glued their boot soles fast to the ground!
Dead, suffocating silence fell over the Gu Clan courtyard.
In the front rank, Rank 2 Mid Poison-Hand Wu stood frozen in his floral red winter underpants with his trousers around his ankles. Staring down in utter, brain-melting terror at the empty wooden hilt in his right hand where his three-hundred-silver steel broadsaber had been two seconds ago!
“My... my Rank 2 steel broadsaber?!” Poison-Hand Wu’s voice squeaked three octaves higher than normal as his legs shook violently.
“One sneeze from a six-year-old girl melted eighty steel sabers and our belt buckles into black taffy in two seconds?!”
Up on the porch, six-year-old Su Nuannuan rubbed her button nose with her tiny finger. Looked at the eighty men standing in their underpants with empty wooden handles in their hands, and blinked innocently up at her dad:.
“Oops... Dad, Nuannuan sneezed on their sharp toys.”
“Good sneeze, Nuannuan. You followed Family Safety Rule Number One: no sharp metal toys near the children,” Gu Changsheng said with a warm, proud smile, patting the top of her pink hair-buns.
Beside Nuannuan on the porch, eight-year-old Gu Nian looked down at his own two small fists—which had just punched two grown Rank 1 Late killers. Clean over the fifteen-foot compound wall—and then looked at the eighty puddles of sweet-smelling black-licorice taffy gluing the Scorpion Gang killers’ boots to the flagstones.
“Nuannuan, your sneeze is super strong!” Gu Nian said in genuine admiration, giving his six-year-old sister a proud nod as his yellow bunny slippers squeaked on the porch. “Yesterday morning I only tripped three mice with marbles in the Ancestral Hall, and tonight you glued seventy-nine bad guys at the same time AND melted their knives!
Tomorrow morning when Dad hands out Little Red Flowers, you’re definitely getting one!”
Nuannuan’s rosy cheeks dimpled happily as she held onto her big brother’s yellow sleeve.
“Nuannuan only wanted to keep the sharp knives away from Big Brother Nian and Dad,” the six-year-old girl whispered shyly, before peeking down the steps at the trembling killers standing in their red-and-white underpants. “Dad, why are those uncles wearing flower pants under their green coats? Aren’t their legs cold?”
Along the side verandas of the courtyard, Captain Gu Tie and the fifty mansion guards couldn’t hold back a single second longer—all fifty-one guards burst into thunderous. Belly-shaking laughter that echoed across the midnight roofs of Frost-Pine Town!
“Bwahaha! Look at Poison-Hand Wu of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang! He’s wearing bright red peony underpants under his black scorpion robe!”
“And look at their vice-captain—his underpants have little yellow ducks stitched on the knees! No wonder they wore long robes in the winter!”
“Little Miss Nuannuan didn’t even lift a finger—one sneeze and the entire Five-Venom Scorpion Gang lost their blades, their armor, and their pants!”
Down in the center of the courtyard, Rank 2 Mid Poison-Hand Wu’s face burned so hot his ears smoked.
He tried desperately to channel his Rank 2 Mid Meridian-Clearing qi into his legs to pull his boots out of the melted iron taffy on the. Flagstones—only to discover that the [Weapon-Melting Black-Licorice Gas] had fused the dissolved Rank 2 steel of his own broadsaber with the stone tiles into an unbreakable. Elastic sugar-iron weld that held his ankles tighter than a dungeon shackle!
Worse still, every time one of the seventy-nine Scorpion Gang killers tried to bend down to pull up his green trousers with one hand. Holding his empty wooden saber handle with the other, the sweet. Soothing fragrance of Nuannuan’s [Sweet Honey-Candy & Healing Aroma] hanging in the courtyard air relaxed their tense shoulder muscles so thoroughly that their knees buckled.
They sat right down in the warm licorice taffy with a loud squelch!
“Stop struggling, brothers! Our bottoms are glued to the tiles now too!” the duck-underpants vice-captain wailed in despair, trying and failing to lift his rear end off the sticky stone floor.
“What kind of terrifying ancient sect is the Frost-Pine Gu Clan?!
Their eight-year-old boy punches like a wild flood-dragon, and their six-year-old girl melts eighty steel blades with a single sneeze!”
Standing behind Gu Changsheng on the veranda, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin covered her mouth with her sleeve to hide her giggles. Sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu calmly opened his leather ledger and began counting the seventy-nine glued killers with the tip of his brush pen.
“Eighty sets of melted steel weapons, eighty pairs of boots welded to our newly swept flagstones. One cracked roof tile where those first two thugs landed,” Grandpa Fu murmured cheerfully, his single bright eye twinkling like a brass coin under the porch lanterns. “Young Master, at our standard Gu Clan property-damage rate, these eighty gentlemen have just signed themselves up for a very long winter of honest farm labor!”
“I can’t pull my boots out!” Poison-Hand Wu shrieked in panic. He tugged with both hands on his knees, nearly ripping his own kneecaps out of their sockets without moving his soles a fraction of an inch.
“What kind of demonic alchemy is this?!
Why did our own steel sabers turn into unbreakable taffy glue?!”
From the doorway of the main hall, twenty-four-year-old Rank 2 Alchemist Qin Wan’er shook her head with a cool, diagnostic smile:.
“You spent thirty years soaking your steel sabers in sticky corpse-venom and scorpion resin, Poison-Hand Wu. When our Nuannuan’s honey-empress breath neutralized the toxicity of your venom, the metallic structure collapsed and combined with your own scorpion resin into high-tenacity sugar-iron cement! Unless someone washes your boots with warm vinegar water, not even a Rank 2 Peak fighter could pull a foot out of that puddle!”
Then Gu Changsheng turned his gaze toward Poison-Hand Wu and the seventy-nine glued Scorpion Gang killers in the yard.
Slowly, deliberately, Rank 2 Early Gu Changsheng unbuckled the heavy leather [Seven-Wolves Disciplinary Belt] from his waist. Folded it in half with a crisp SNAP that echoed across the silent courtyard like a thunderclap, and walked down the stone porch steps!
“Coming into my yard after midnight with poison bellows and steel knives to wake up my six-year-old daughter?” Gu Changsheng smiled coldly. His five-thousand-pound [Father’s Authority + Rank 2 Iron-Bone] aura locked the entire courtyard down like an iron mountain.
“Since my daughter already helped you take your belts off—palms out, backsides ready!”
[ DING! ONE SNEEZE DISARMS EIGHTY POISON KILLERS! ]
* Achievement : Child #2 (Su Nuannuan) melted 80 steel sabers &.
armor sets in 2 seconds with 1 sneeze!
* Nuannuan Stats: Warmth/Happiness: 93 -> 96/100!
Darkening Meter : 22% -> 20% (-2% DROP! At the.
exact doorstep of the <20% Jackpot Threshold!)
* Daily Income : +12,500 DP/day -> +14,000 DP/day!