At half past ten on the eighth night of the twelfth winter month. A freezing sleet began to tap against the cracked oiled-paper window of a run-down boarding house at the back of Mud-Ditch Alley in the western slums of Frost-Pine Town.
Inside the damp, unheated second-floor room, a single tallow candle guttered in the cold draft. Casting long, jagged shadows across the peeling plaster walls and a warped pine table littered with empty wine jars and moldy flatbread crusts.
Sitting at the table in a mud-splattered gray cloak. Eighteen-year-old Lin Fan slammed his bruised fist down onto the pine boards so hard that a cracked teacup bounced into the air and shattered on the floor!
“Old man! Come out here right this second and explain yourself!” Lin Fan hissed, his bloodshot eyes bulging with venomous fury.
He shoved the tarnished black-iron ring on his left thumb straight into the candle flame.
“You call yourself the great Master Yao Chen—a Rank 6 Golden Core Pill Sovereign who once refined elixirs for Immortal Sects in the Central Plains! Yet over the past eight days in this backwater frontier town, what have you done for me?!”
Lin Fan leaped up from his stool, kicking a wooden bucket across the room as he listed his grievances through clenched teeth:.
“First, you failed to notice that Gu Changsheng had already cured himself of the Seven-Leaf Ice Lotus poison, costing me my entire plot to seize the Gu Clan’s iron mines! Second, you couldn’t even tell that Auntie Qin had purified the Seven-Step Heart-Rot Powder in my tea, getting me thrown out of Peace Pharmacy in front of two hundred townsfolk! Third, at the Black-Sand Underground Market two days ago.
You told me that painted porcelain chamber pot had ‘Ancient Pill-Fire’ on it—tricking me into signing a ten-thousand-silver high-interest loan with the Black-Sand Pavilion for a worthless toilet bucket. Gu Changsheng bought the Ten-Thousand-Poison Body girl for fifty taels! And tonight, when I poisoned the West-End Orphanage’s well to distract the town guards and rob the charity vault.
Gu Changsheng’s six-year-old adopted brat purified the entire well with a pink watering can in ten breaths!”
Lin Fan jabbed his dirty fingernail against the black-iron ring and snarled:.
“Are you a Rank 6 Pill Sovereign or a senile old fraud?! Tonight, you are going to give me the forbidden recipe for the [Three-Corpse Soul-Slaughter Poison] so I can wipe out every man, woman. Child in the Gu Mansion while they sleep—or I swear on my bloodline, I will walk out to the alley latrine right now and drop your ring into the deepest.
Most foul-smelling manure pit in Frost-Pine Town and bury you there for the next five hundred years!”
Inside the cramped, pitch-dark interior space of the tarnished black-iron ring, a translucent. White-bearded old man wearing the tattered phantom robes of an ancient alchemy grandmaster trembled from head to toe with suffocating rage, humiliation, and bitter regret.
It was Master Yao Chen.
Three hundred years ago, in the prosperous alchemy capitals of the Central Plains, the name of Pill Sovereign Yao Chen had commanded the reverence of kings and sect patriarchs alike.
Unlike the ruthless demonic alchemists who refined human blood or the greedy sect elders who hoarded healing pills behind mountains of gold. Yao Chen had been a hot-tempered, fiercely righteous old scholar who loved children more than his own life.
Having lost his own wife and young grandson to a plague during his mortal youth, Yao Chen had spent his entire two-hundred-year Golden Core lifespan opening free charity apothecaries after every war. Refining sweet-coated fever pills for poor village toddlers, and swearing a solemn Heaven-Dao Alchemist Oath:.
My cauldron fire warms the weak and mends the broken; never shall a single grain of Yao Chen’s medicine harm an innocent child or an honest doctor!
When he was ambushed three centuries ago by three rival Golden Core elders who coveted his ancestral [Nine-Turn Heaven-Mending Pill Sutra]. Yao Chen had detonated his own Golden Core rather than surrender his recipes. Sealing a weak, fractured wisp of his remnant soul inside a disguised black-iron ring that fell into the mortal frontier of the Great Qian Dynasty.
For two hundred and ninety years, Yao Chen had slumbered in the dark ring, waiting for a compassionate, upright young disciple to awaken him.
Six months ago, near a flooded river outside Frost-Pine Town, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan had picked up the ring from the mud.
Sensing that Lin Fan’s soul was shifty, greedy. Cold, Yao Chen had originally stayed silent inside the ring—until Lin Fan spotted a starving five-year-old beggar boy shivering by the riverbank. Took off his own dry coat to wrap around the child.
Gave the boy his last two steamed buns while weeping over the hardships of the poor!
Moved to tears by what he thought was a poor youth’s noble, self-sacrificing heart. Master Yao Chen had awakened his remnant soul, bound his spiritual contract to Lin Fan’s ring as his alchemy teacher. Taught Lin Fan his foundational breathing arts and herb-identification skills.
Only three weeks later did the horrified old Pill Sovereign discover the stomach-turning truth:.
Lin Fan had only given that beggar boy his coat and steamed buns because he had seen a wealthy merchant’s carriage coming down the road and wanted to be hired. A “righteous guard”—and the very next night, when nobody was looking, Lin Fan had snuck back to the riverbank. Stolen the coat back off the sleeping beggar child in the freezing rain, and kicked the boy into a ditch!
Since that night, every single day trapped inside Lin Fan’s ring had been a living purgatory for Master Yao Chen.
Because a remnant soul bound to a spatial ring could not sever its host contract without an external Rank 3 soul-vessel and a flaw-free shackle-cutting strike—and. Three hundred years of slumber had left Yao Chen’s soul-body cracked, starving. Weak—the proud old Pill Sovereign had been forced to watch in helpless disgust.
Lin Fan lied, stole, poisoned honest doctors like Qin Wan’er, tried to lock a six-year-old girl into a jar of venomous centipedes. Even dumped Corpse-Rot Poison Slag into an orphanage well!
Earlier that afternoon, when Lin Fan had demanded a poison recipe to dump into the West-End Orphanage’s drinking water. Yao Chen had sealed his own ears and refused to speak a single word. Enduring three hours of Lin Fan roasting the black ring over a charcoal brazier until Yao Chen’s translucent white beard was singed and his three-hundred-year-old soul-cracks throbbed like broken glass.
And at the Black-Sand Market two days ago, when Yao Chen had sensed a wisp of genuine, flaw-free Rank 3 Earth-Fire lingering on that painted porcelain chamber pot, it was only. Gu Changsheng had warmed the pot over his [Rank 3 Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok]—yet Lin Fan blamed him for getting outsmarted!
“You unfilial, conscienceless beast!” Master Yao Chen’s hoarse, trembling voice echoed inside Lin Fan’s mind from within the black ring, vibrating with righteous fury despite the agonizing cracks spiderwebbing across his translucent chest. “Yesterday you tried to buy a six-year-old child to torture in a centipede jar!
Today you poisoned the drinking well of thirty helpless orphans!
And tonight you dare ask this Pill Sovereign for the [Three-Corpse Soul-Slaughter Poison] to murder a family of innocent children in their beds?! You can throw this ring into ten thousand manure pits or smash it with a blacksmith’s hammer—Yao Chen. Would rather scatter into soul-ash than brew half a drop of poison for a child-murdering scum like you!”
“Still acting high and mighty when your remnant soul is one breath away from fading?!” Lin Fan sneered viciously. Grabbing a cup of cold, greasy dishwater from the washbasin and dunking his left thumb—and the black ring—straight into the filthy water.
“Fine!
Since a remnant soul needs pure sandalwood incense and spiritual warmth to survive the winter frost, let’s see how long you last soaking in freezing dishwater! By tomorrow morning, when the winter cold freezes your soul-cracks solid, you’ll be begging me on your knees to let you brew that poison!”
Leaving the black ring submerged in the bowl of icy, greasy dishwater by the drafty window, Lin Fan blew out the tallow candle, wrapped himself in the room’s only moldy quilt. Collapsed onto the straw pallet, snoring loudly within three minutes.
Inside the ring at the bottom of the freezing dishwater bowl, seventy-year-old phantom Master Yao Chen curled up on the cold iron floor of his dark space. Wrapping his tattered phantom sleeves around his shivering knees as icy needles of pain stabbed through the three-hundred-year-old fractures in his remnant soul.
Ten years since I first woke briefly in this ring. Six months since I bound myself to this wolf in human skin, the old Pill Sovereign thought bitterly, a single translucent tear freezing on his white mustache. *Not once has he burned even a half-copper stick of cheap pine incense for my soul.
Is this how the great Pill Sovereign Yao Chen ends—freezing to death in a bowl of dirty dishwater inside a child-poisoner’s ring. Without ever passing my Nine-Turn Heaven-Mending Pill Sutra to a worthy, kind-hearted successor?*
At that exact moment, down on the snow-dusted cobblestones of Mud-Ditch Alley directly beneath the second-floor boarding-house window, the quiet creak of oiled wooden wheels echoed gently through the eleven o’clock winter night.
Wearing a thick lambskin coat over his clean blue cotton apron, twenty-eight-year-old Gu Changsheng pushed a custom handcart into the alley. Accompanied by eight-year-old Gu Nian in his warm fleece coat and yellow bunny slippers. Captain Gu Tie carrying a basket of dry charcoal and spice jars.
Sitting atop the handcart was Gu Changsheng’s [Rank 3 Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok], its dark-gold dragon engravings glowing softly in the snow!
Looking up at the cracked second-floor window twenty feet above their heads—where Lin Fan’s loud. Pig-like snores were rattling the loose oiled paper—eight-year-old Gu Nian tilted his head and whispered in a tiny, puzzled voice:.
“Dad, why did we bring the kitchen cart and a plump chicken all the way to this smelly alley at eleven o’clock at night? Are we setting up a midnight snack stall for the night-watch uncles?”
“Better than a snack stall, Nian’er,” Gu Changsheng whispered back with a warm grin, glancing at the glowing blue system prompt floating over the second-floor window frame.
[ DAD’S PLOT-SPOILER NOTEBOOK — LIVE TARGET SCAN ]
* Target : Master Yao Chen (Rank 6 Golden Core Pill Sovereign.
Remnant Soul | Age: 380 | Alignment: Righteous)
* Current Location: Submerged in a bowl of freezing dishwater on.
the windowsill 18 feet above!
* Soul Condition: 68% Cracked & Starving! Freezing in dirty water!
* Current Warmth: 15/100 (Toward Humanity — Deep Regret Over Host!)
* Host Status : Lin Fan (Rank 1 Mid | Luck Halo: 46% | Asleep!)
“Up on that windowsill right now,” Gu Changsheng explained quietly as he set a wooden chopping block beside the cart and arranged three jars of golden honey, mountain-pepper salt. Ten-year spirit ginseng, “there is a three-hundred-year-old grandpa who spent his whole life making sweet medicine for poor children, only to get tricked into living inside a bad guy’s ring.
Right now, because that grandpa refused to help Lin Fan hurt you and Nuannuan, Lin Fan threw him into a bowl of freezing dishwater on an empty stomach.”
Eight-year-old Gu Nian’s dark eyes widened with instant sympathy and indignation.
“He got thrown into freezing water just because he protected me and Nuannuan?!” the eight-year-old boy whispered fiercely. Pulling a clean hand-towel and a small porcelain plate out of the cart basket without waiting to be told.
“Dad!
Let’s cook him the hottest, crispiest roast chicken right now so he warms up!”
“That’s my boy,” Gu Changsheng chuckled, ruffling Gu Nian’s hair and snapping his fingers to ignite a silent, smokeless ring of golden-red Rank 3 Earth-Fire beneath his chef wok. “Watch closely, Nian’er. Tonight Dad is going to teach you Gu Family Kitchen Secret Number Four: how to poach a starving, three-hundred-year-old Pill Sovereign ghost with midnight barbecue!”
[ DING! OPERATION “POACH THE RING-GRANDPA” INITIATED! ]
* Active Target : Master Yao Chen (Warmth: 15/100 | Starving Soul)
* Kids’ Darkening: Gu Nian 10% | Su Nuannuan 15%.
* Daily Income : +18,000 DP/day -> +19,500 DP/day!