*CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
CRACK!*
For the next three minutes, the midnight air above North Pine Avenue echoed with the rhythmic, crisp snapping of the [Seven-Wolves Disciplinary Belt] and the high-pitched howling of eighty grown poison-cultivators!
Outside the open gate, purple-pumpkin-headed Lin Fan didn’t even dare watch past the third lash.
Seeing Rank 2 Mid Poison-Hand Wu—a ruthless outer-hall master who had terrorized three counties—get bent over a stone decorative rock and spanked with a leather belt. He bawled like a three-year-old boy who stole a melon, Lin Fan turned pale beneath his hornet bumps, abandoned the Scorpion Gang without a word, and bolted back into the dark alleys!
Inside the courtyard, every lash of Gu Changsheng’s belt carried +100% True Disciplinary Damage.
Instead of breaking their bones or crippling their ability to work, the belt bypassed their martial defenses completely and delivered pure. Soul-shaking paternal discipline straight to their backsides—while simultaneously knocking loose the dark, vicious qi-knots in their meridians!
By the time Gu Changsheng buckled the leather belt neatly back around his waist. All eighty-one members of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang—including Poison-Hand Wu. The two vanguard killers whom Captain Gu Tie had dragged back in from the street snowbank—were kneeling in eight neat rows on the flagstones.
Weeping and rubbing their swollen rears with both hands.
“Mercy, Patriarch Gu! Mercy, Little Fairy!” Poison-Hand Wu sobbed, knocking his forehead against the warm slate tiles.
“We were blinded by lard and tricked by that purple-headed liar Lin Fan!
We’ll never step within ten miles of Frost-Pine Town again!”
“Leave without paying the bill?”
Sixty-two-year-old Rank 2 Early Butler Grandpa Fu stepped down from the veranda porch, gave his heavy black-iron abacus a sharp shake—clack-clack-clack!—and read out the itemized midnight invoice in a booming voice:.
“Item One: Pumping twenty drums of foul green smoke into our courtyard without a permit—ten thousand silver taels for midnight air pollution! Item Two: Kicking open the Gu Clan front gate and frightening Little Miss Nuannuan before bedtime—twenty thousand silver taels for emotional distress! Item Three: Leaving eighty puddles of melted iron taffy on our newly heated flagstones—twenty thousand silver taels for masonry cleaning!
Total fine: fifty thousand silver taels!”
Poison-Hand Wu nearly fainted on the spot. “Fifty thousand silver taels?! Butler Fu, even if you sold all eighty-one of us by the pound, our outer hall doesn’t have fifty thousand silver!”
“No cash? No problem,” Gu Changsheng said warmly, tapping open [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box] in his mind. Spending 100 DP [17,310 -> 17,210 DP balance] to fuse eighty-one [Rank 2 Pink “Good Citizen” Gardening Aprons] stitched with smiling pink watering cans and honeybees across the chest!
“Our Gu Family Peace Pharmacy just acquired fifty acres of warm-spring farmland outside the south gate to grow medicinal herbs for Auntie Qin,” Gu Changsheng announced. Tossing the eighty-one frilly pink aprons down onto the kneeling killers’ heads. “Put on your uniform aprons, pick up eighty-one hoes from the tool shed, and start tilling the fifty acres of herb fields at dawn!
At a daily wage credit of one silver tael per man, you’ll have your fifty-thousand-silver fine worked off in less than two years!”
At dawn the next morning, the townsfolk of Frost-Pine Town were treated to the most unforgettable sight of the winter.
Out on the fifty-acre warm-spring terraces south of the town wall, eighty-one scarred. Ferocious former killers of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang—led by Rank 2 Mid Poison-Hand Wu himself—were lined up in neat rows wearing bright pink frilly aprons with honeybees on their pockets. Diligently digging irrigation trenches and planting spirit-dandelion seedlings under Captain Gu Tie’s watchful eye!
At first, Poison-Hand Wu and several hardened killers gritted their teeth while digging, secretly wondering how they could pry off the pink aprons once their dantians recovered.
Then came afternoon snack time on the first day.
Anyone who had ever practiced the dark poison arts of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang carried a lifelong, excruciating curse: because they soaked their hands in scorpion, toad. Centipede venom every day to practice poison palms, the meridians in their ten fingers rotted from the inside out.
Every winter afternoon when the cold wind blew across the fields, all eighty-one killers’ blackened fingertips would throb with such bone-chewing agony that grown men had to bite wooden sticks to keep from screaming.
As four o’clock struck and the eighty-one pink-aproned killers knelt in the dirt clutching their aching, black-stained fingers in silent misery, a small carriage pulled up beside the herb field path.
Out hopped eight-year-old Gu Nian in his yellow bunny slippers and six-year-old Su Nuannuan in her fluffy pink rabbit dress, carrying a basket of warm steamed buns from Auntie Qin’s canteen!
Looking at the eighty-one big uncles in pink aprons groaning and holding their black, swollen hands in the dirt, little Nuannuan blinked her big black-grape eyes and tugged Gu Changsheng’s sleeve:.
“Dad, why are the pink-apron uncles crying at their hands? Do their fingers have the same bad poison-ache that Nuannuan used to have in the cave?”
“They practiced bad martial arts that hurt their own hands, Nuannuan,” Gu Changsheng said gently. “Now that they’re working hard planting herbs for Auntie Qin, want to give each uncle a pat on the head so they can dig faster?”
“Okay!”
Six-year-old Su Nuannuan trotted down the first row of the herb field in her pink rabbit dress, stopped in front of the kneeling, groaning Poison-Hand Wu. Reached out with her tiny, warm, caramel-scented hand to pat the top of the skeletal old killer’s head twice!
Pat, pat.
“Pink-apron uncle, don’t cry,” six-year-old Nuannuan said sweetly through her missing front tooth, handing him a warm steamed bun with her other hand. “Dad says if you plant the flowers neatly and don’t be a bad guy anymore, your fingers won’t hurt.”
HUMMM—WARM!
The instant six-year-old Su Nuannuan’s tiny hand patted Poison-Hand Wu’s head, a pure. Soothing stream of her [Rank 2 Perfection: Sweet Honey-Candy & Healing Aroma] flowed straight down from his crown through his arm meridians into his ten blackened, rotting fingertips!
For thirty long years, Poison-Hand Wu hadn’t slept a single night without his ten fingers burning like they were dipped in boiling oil. His own Sect Master had told him that the only cure was to amputate both hands at age fifty!
Yet under one gentle pat from this six-year-old little girl in a pink rabbit dress, thirty years of agonizing. Calcified scorpion-venom backlash in his finger joints dissolved into warm, fragrant honey-qi in three breaths flat!
The black rot beneath his fingernails receded, healthy pink blood flowed back into his palms, and the bone-chewing pain vanished completely!
Poison-Hand Wu stared at his warm, painless hands holding the steamed bun.
For three seconds, the forty-five-year-old Rank 2 Mid killer didn’t move. Then his tough, scarred face crumpled completely, and he burst into loud, wracking sobs right in the middle of the cabbage patch!
“Little Fairy! Little Fairy Boss!” Poison-Hand Wu wept, bowing his forehead to the soil in front of Nuannuan’s small pink shoes as his Warmth Index shot from 35/100 straight to 88/100!
“In the Five-Venom Sect, our master treated us like disposable poison-dogs and left our hands to rot!
Today Little Fairy Boss cured thirty years of rot in my fingers with one pat and gave me a hot bun! Even if you take this pink apron off me tomorrow, Poison-Hand Wu will dig herb fields for Little Fairy Boss for the rest of my life!”
“Me too! Little Fairy Boss, pat my head too! I just dug three extra rows!”
“Line up, brothers! Wash your faces before you let Little Fairy Boss pat your head!”
Watching eighty scarred, burly former poison-cultivators scramble over to the irrigation ditch to scrub the mud off their faces and comb their hair with their fingers. Lining up on their knees like eager schoolboys waiting for a six-year-old girl in a pink rabbit dress to pat their heads. Captain Gu Tie and Grandpa Fu stood by the field cart in amazed silence.
“Butler Fu,” Captain Gu Tie murmured, scratching his beard. He watched a two-hundred-pound Scorpion Gang enforcer break into a goofy, tearful grin the moment little Nuannuan patted his bald head and handed him a steamed bun, “two days ago. If someone told me the entire outer hall of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang would be crying over.
Who gets to weed the dandelion patch for a six-year-old girl, I would’ve told them they were dreaming.”
“That is the difference between ruling by poison and ruling by family warmth, Captain Gu Tie,” sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu said wisely, clicking his black-iron abacus as he recorded the day’s herb-planting progress. “In the Five-Venom Sect, their master crippled their hands so they could never leave. In our Gu Clan, Young Master and Little Miss Nuannuan healed their hands and gave them hot food and honest work.
Even a wolf knows who pulled the thorn out of its paw!”
Over by the basket cart, eight-year-old Gu Nian stood right beside his little sister in his yellow bunny slippers. Making sure none of the big pink-aproned uncles crowded too close while counting out the steamed buns with strict Big Brother authority:.
“One head-pat and two steamed buns per person! Don’t push in line, Uncle Wu—you already got your head patted at row one! If you want another pat tomorrow afternoon, you have to help carry the compost baskets to Auntie Qin’s greenhouse first!”
“Yes, Little Master Nian! Right away, Little Master Nian!” Rank 2 Mid Poison-Hand Wu saluted at once in his frilly pink honeybee apron.
Hoisting four hundred-pound compost baskets onto his shoulders at the same time and jogging toward the greenhouse with the energy of a twenty-year-old recruit!
Furthermore, because every member of the Five-Venom Scorpion Gang had spent years studying soil toxicity and insect habits to brew poisons. Once Auntie Qin taught them how to apply that exact knowledge in reverse to nurture spiritual herbs and repel winter pests. The eighty-one reformed killers turned out to be the most talented agricultural team in the entire Azure-Cloud Prefecture!
Wherever Poison-Hand Wu and his crew tilled the warm-spring soil and Nuannuan sprinkled a cup of water, winter spirit-dandelions, blood-ginseng, and sweet-dew grass sprouted three times faster than in any ordinary herb garden.
By the third afternoon, Poison-Hand Wu had even organized his eighty pink-aproned brothers into four competing gardening squads—the Honeybee Squad, the Butterfly Squad, the Bunny-Turnip Squad. The Golden-Shovel Squad—with a chalkboard nailed to the greenhouse wall where Grandpa Fu tallied each squad’s daily weeding points!
“Listen up, Butterfly Squad!” Poison-Hand Wu barked proudly as he inspected the straightness of the spirit-dandelion furrows with a taut hemp string, his newly healed fingers flexing without a trace of pain. “Yesterday the Honeybee Squad dug twelve more baskets of sweet-dew roots than you did, so Little Fairy Boss gave them an extra plate of Auntie Qin’s honey-glazed sweet potatoes at supper!
Anyone who leaves a single crabgrass root in Little Fairy Boss’s dandelion bed today gets zero sweet potatoes and has to wash everyone’s gardening boots tonight!”
“Sir, yes, sir! Watch our hoes fly, Brother Wu!” twenty burly ex-killers roared in unison, their pink honeybee aprons fluttering in the crisp winter breeze as they weeded the soil with the surgical precision of master alchemists.
Even Second Elder Gu Ba—who was leading his three reformed Shadow-Rat Assassin apprentices past the herb field with two wheelbarrows. Of composted pig manure from the back courtyard—stopped by the fence to tip his straw hat respectfully to Poison-Hand Wu.
“Old Brother Wu, this batch of spirit-pig compost has been fermented with pine needles for seven full days. Just like Butler Fu instructed,” Second Elder Gu Ba said with the earnest pride of a seasoned farmer. “Spread it along Little Miss Nuannuan’s ginseng rows and those roots will be as thick as a baby’s arm by New Year’s!”
“Much obliged, Elder Gu! Our Honeybee Squad will trade you two baskets of fresh dandelion greens for your prized sows!” Poison-Hand Wu beamed, shaking Gu Ba’s calloused hand warmly over the fence.
Within four days, all eighty-one former Five-Venom Scorpion Gang killers were sobbing with gratitude, fighting over who could dig the straightest herb rows. Calling six-year-old Su Nuannuan “Little Fairy Boss” with 80+ Warmth—pushing Nuannuan’s own Darkening Meter down from 20% to 18%!
[ DING! 81 POISON KILLERS REFORMED & NUANNUAN <20% THRESHOLD! ]
* Recruits : Poison-Hand Wu (Rank 2 Mid | Warmth: 88) + 80.
Pink-Apron Herb Gardeners [Warmth: 80+]!
* Nuannuan Stats: Darkening Meter 20% -> 18% (BELOW 20% THRESHOLD!
Grand Adoption Banquet & 10x Bonus Ready!)
* Daily Income : +14,000 DP/day -> +16,000 DP/day!
On the fourth afternoon, just as Nuannuan was giggling in the herb field, a pale, breathless matron from the West-End Poor Orphanage came running up to the gate holding an urgent letter:.
“Patriarch Gu! Doctor Qin! Come quickly!
Before that fugitive Lin Fan fled town, he dumped a sack of black Corpse-Rot Poison Slag into our orphanage’s only drinking well to create a panic. Steal our winter charity silver—and thirty little orphans are already burning up with poison fever!”