Down in the snow-dusted quiet of Mud-Ditch Alley, the silent golden-red flames beneath Gu Changsheng’s [Rank 3 Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok] cast a cozy. Amber glow across the cobblestones without making a single crackle loud enough to wake the snoring Lin Fan upstairs.
Standing beside the handcart, eight-year-old Gu Nian stood on tiptoe to peer into the deep dark-gold wok and whispered curiously:.
“Dad, if that grandpa upstairs is a ghost living inside a ring, how can he eat a real farm chicken? Grandpa Fu told me ghosts can only smell incense smoke and essence!”
“Grandpa Fu is half right,” Gu Changsheng whispered back with a knowing smile. Picking up the plump, freshly plucked five-pound farm chicken, a thick root of [10-Year Changbai Spirit Ginseng] from Auntie Qin’s pharmacy cabinet. A bundle of [Top-Grade Soul-Calming Sandalwood Incense] from the cart basket.
“An ordinary cook’s roast chicken can only feed a living stomach. However, when your dad cooks with Earth-Fire and our family’s special upgrade box, every wisp of aroma rising from the skin carries pure. Flaw-free spiritual and soul-mending essence that a starving spirit can absorb straight into his soul-body!”
With a casual wave of his hand that looked to Captain Gu Tie and Gu Nian like he was reaching into the covered seasoning box on the lower shelf of the cart. Gu Changsheng dropped the three ingredients into [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box] and selected the 2,000-DP culinary soul-fusion option:.
“System, spend 2,000 Dad Points! Fuse [A Plump 5-Pound Farm Chicken] + [10-Year Spirit Ginseng] + [Top-Grade Soul-Calming Sandalwood Incense] inside the [Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok]!”
HUMMM—SIZZLE!
[ DING! 2,000 DAD POINTS DEDUCTED — RANK 3 CULINARY FUSION! ]
* Remaining DP : 73,210 DP.
* Output Item : [Rank 3 Perfection: Soul-Mending Golden Roast.
Chicken (Flaw-Free Spiritual & Soul Delicacy)]!
* Item Effect :.
1. Roasts to a crispy golden-amber perfection in 3 breaths!
2. The rising golden smoke and meat essence contain 100% Flaw-.
Free Rank 3 Soul-Mending Balm — instantly repairing ancient.
soul-cracks, dispelling winter frost, and nourishing remnant.
spirits 50x better than top-grade temple incense!
3. Selective Targeting: Only souls with righteous karma can.
smell and absorb the golden soul-smoke; wicked hosts remain.
fast asleep!
Within three breaths inside the covered Earth-Fire Wok, the plump five-pound chicken turned a mouthwatering, translucent honey-gold!
When Gu Changsheng lifted the heavy bronze lid by a single inch, a rich, heavenly fragrance of crispy honey-glazed poultry skin, warm ten-year mountain ginseng. Ancient temple sandalwood wafted out in a shimmering ribbon of pale golden steam.
Just catching a tiny whiff of the aroma by the cart made Captain Gu Tie’s tired eyes brighten as a week of night-watch fatigue vanished from his shoulders. Eight-year-old Gu Nian swallowed hard and patted his tummy.
“Don’t worry, Nian’er, Dad tucked the two chicken wings and the tender breast meat into a warm ceramic crock inside the cart for you. Nuannuan to eat with your midnight milk when we get home,” Gu Changsheng chuckled softly. Using a pair of long bamboo chopsticks to lift the sizzling golden roast chicken onto a warm white porcelain platter and slicing off the two plumpest, crispiest drumsticks.
“Right now, let’s send the first course up to our new neighbor.”
Standing beside the cart in his heavy winter armor, thirty-five-year-old Captain Gu Tie stared at the glistening golden roast chicken on the porcelain platter and whispered in awe:.
“Patriarch, this subordinate has guarded grain caravans from here to Azure-Cloud Prefecture City and smelled the banquets of the Prefecture Lord’s mansion. I have never smelled a roast chicken that makes a martial artist’s spiritual sea feel like it is soaking in warm spring sunlight! Are we truly leaving two whole drumsticks of this treasure out in this dirty alley?”
“A good meal is only a treasure when it reaches the person who needs it most, Gu Tie,” Gu Changsheng replied quietly. He brushed a golden coat of wild-flower honey and crushed mountain-pepper salt across the crispy skin of both drumsticks. “Think about it: if an upright old scholar spent two hundred years of his life healing poor village children for free.
Then spent three hundred years locked in a cold dark box without a single warm meal or a single word of thanks, how cold must his heart feel tonight?”
Eight-year-old Gu Nian listened intently, his small brows knitting together as he imagined being locked inside a dark ring in a bowl of dirty dishwater.
“When I used to have bad dreams before Dad woke up,” Gu Nian whispered. Reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a small. Neatly folded square of clean white writing paper and a tiny piece of charcoal pencil that Grandpa Fu had given him for arithmetic practice.
“The dark always felt ten times colder when nobody was talking to me. Dad, can I write a little note to put under the edge of the plate so the grandpa knows the chicken is for him and not a trap?”
Gu Changsheng’s eyes softened with genuine pride as he watched his eight-year-old son—the boy whom the original novel had condemned to become. A cold-blooded Chaos Demon Sovereign—rest the square of paper on the corner of the chopping block and write in careful, earnest child’s handwriting:.
*Dear Cold Grandpa Upstairs: My dad made this honey roast chicken with warm ginseng so your tummy won’t hurt in the cold water. Please eat both drumsticks while they are hot! We already washed our hands and the plate is super clean.
— Little Nian (8 years old).*
“Look, Dad! I drew a little smiling drumstick at the bottom too!” Gu Nian whispered proudly, holding up the note.
“If a three-hundred-year-old Pill Sovereign can resist my Earth-Fire roast chicken, he definitely won’t be able to resist Little Nian’s note,” Gu Changsheng smiled. Tucking the corner of the note neatly beneath the rim of the warm white porcelain platter.
Picking up a woven palm-leaf fan in his right hand. Gu Changsheng tilted the lid of the [Rank 3 Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok] toward the second-floor window eighteen feet above and gave three gentle, rhythmic surges of his wrist.
Whoosh... whoosh... whoosh...
Guided by Gu Changsheng’s Rank 2 Early Iron-Bone wrist control and the wok’s built-in culinary array. The shimmering ribbon of golden [Rank 3 Soul-Mending Roast Chicken] smoke didn’t scatter into the winter wind at all.
Instead, it rose straight up the brick wall like a silent golden serpent, slipped effortlessly through the narrow crack in the oiled-paper window of the second-floor room. Drifted right into the bowl of freezing, greasy dishwater sitting on the sill!
Inside the tarnished black-iron ring at the bottom of that icy dishwater bowl, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Master Yao Chen was shivering so violently that his translucent white beard was crusted with spiritual rime.
Every crack across his Golden Core remnant soul felt as if it were being pried open with rusty iron chisels.
If this frost continues until midnight, at least five percent of my remaining soul-origin will shatter permanently, the old Pill Sovereign thought despairingly, closing his blurry eyes.
Then—.
Sniff.
Master Yao Chen’s nose twitched once.
A single wisp of warm, golden-amber smoke—carrying the unimaginably rich, savory aroma of honey-roasted farm chicken, ten-year mountain ginseng. Flaw-free, three-hundred-year soul-calming sandalwood—drifted straight through the iron wall of the ring and wrapped around his freezing spirit body like a sun-warmed cashmere blanket!
“Wh-what is this fragrance?!”
Master Yao Chen’s eyes flew wide open inside the dark ring!
The moment he inhaled that single mouthful of golden smoke into his translucent lungs, a warm, soothing tide of [Rank 3 Perfection: Flaw-Free Soul-Mending Essence] surged through his spiritual meridians!
Crack-heal... hum!
The icy spiritual rime coating his white beard melted away in half a heartbeat!
Even more miraculously, three of the jagged, centuries-old soul-cracks across his left shoulder—wounds left by the detonation of his Golden Core three hundred years ago. Which normally required rare Rank 4 Soul-Lotus Pills to mend—knitted themselves together smoothly with a warm golden glow, erasing centuries of tearing phantom agony!
“Flaw-free... one hundred percent flaw-free Rank 3 Soul-Mending medicinal smoke?!” Master Yao Chen gasped in utter, world-shaking disbelief.
Leaping to his feet inside the ring and clutching his warm chest as tears of shock sprang to his ancient eyes.
“And it isn’t even a bitter alchemy pill—someone refined a ten-year spirit ginseng. Top-grade sandalwood into a roast chicken using a Rank 3 Earth-Fire vessel with culinary fire-control that rivals my own peak Golden Core days?!”
Wait—who in this tiny frontier town of Frost-Pine could possibly possess Rank 3 Earth-Fire culinary mastery and refine a soul-mending delicacy right outside this filthy alley at eleven o’clock at night?!
Driven by overwhelming curiosity—and the ravenous, three-hundred-year hunger of a remnant soul that hadn’t tasted a single drop of pure spiritual nourishment since waking—Master Yao Chen formed a silent stealth hand-seal.
Checking that Lin Fan was still snoring like a dead pig under his moldy quilt six feet away, the white-bearded old Pill Sovereign drifted out of the black-iron ring. An invisible, translucent wisp of silver mist, slipped out through the crack in the second-floor window, and peered cautiously down into Mud-Ditch Alley!
Down on the snow-swept cobblestones below, the handcart was already being wheeled quietly toward the corner of the lane.
Before turning the corner, however, the tall, handsome young father in the lambskin coat—whom Master Yao Chen recognized instantly from the Black-Sand Market and Peace Pharmacy. Gu Clan Patriarch Gu Changsheng—stopped beside the low brick courtyard wall across from the boarding house.
With unhurried, respectful movements, Gu Changsheng brushed the snow off the top of the brick wall, laid down a clean folded linen napkin. Set a warm white porcelain plate holding two huge, sizzling, honey-glazed [Rank 3 Soul-Mending Golden Roast Chicken Drumsticks] right on the wall!
Beside the porcelain plate, eight-year-old Gu Nian stood on tiptoe in his yellow bunny slippers. Carefully planted three lit sticks of [Top-Grade Soul-Calming Sandalwood Incense] into a small brass censer, bowing politely to the empty night air.
“Dad, will the cold grandpa really see the drumsticks if we leave them on this wall?” eight-year-old Gu Nian asked in a clear, earnest voice that carried cleanly up to the second-floor eaves.
“He’ll see them, Nian’er,” Gu Changsheng said warmly, patting his son’s head as he turned the cart around the corner of the alley so the proud old spirit wouldn’t feel embarrassed about being watched. “Remember our Gu Family House Rule Number Five: whenever a hardworking, righteous elder is wandering out in the winter cold without a warm supper. We always leave a hot plate and three sticks of clean incense on the wall—no questions asked, and no strings attached.
Come on, let’s go home before Nuannuan wakes up looking for us.”
Up under the dark eaves of the second-floor window, translucent Master Yao Chen froze in midair, his white beard quivering. He stared down at the two steaming, golden-brown drumsticks and the three sticks of fragrant sandalwood incense glowing warmly on the snowy brick wall.
Even from eighteen feet above the alley, his sharp Golden Core spiritual vision could clearly read every single word—and the chubby little smiling. Drumstick drawing—that eight-year-old Gu Nian had written in charcoal pencil on the square of white paper tucked beneath the rim of the porcelain plate!
Floating down beside the snow-dusted brick wall, the old Pill Sovereign reached out with trembling. Translucent spirit-fingers to trace the crooked charcoal letters of “Dear Cold Grandpa Upstairs” and the chubby little smiling drumstick sketched at the bottom. Three hundred years of bitter loneliness cracked open inside his chest as he read how the eight-year-old boy had washed his hands and asked him to eat both ginseng drumsticks.
They were hot so his stomach wouldn’t hurt in the cold dishwater.
For a long, breathless moment, the three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Pill Sovereign who had once stood unbowed before the sect masters of the Central Plains couldn’t speak a single word.
Inside the room behind him, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan rolled over on his straw pallet, smacked his greasy lips in his sleep. Mumbled a vicious curse about how he was going to starve the old ghost in the dishwater bowl until he handed over the child-killing poison recipe.
And down on the snowy courtyard wall below. A mortal father and his eight-year-old son had wheeled a stove through the freezing winter night just to leave two steaming Rank 3 ginseng drumsticks, three sticks of top-grade soul-calming incense. A child’s handwritten note for an unseen elder shivering in the dark!
[ DING! TARGET SPIRIT HAS SPOTTED THE MIDNIGHT BAIT! ]
* Target : Master Yao Chen (Rank 6 Pill Sovereign Remnant)
* Soul Recovery : 32% -> 45% (Ancient Soul-Cracks Mending!)
* Warmth Index : 15/100 -> 34/100 (Shocked & Deeply Touched!)
* Kids’ Darkening: Gu Nian 10% | Su Nuannuan 15% -> 14%.
* Daily Income : +19,500 DP/day -> +21,000 DP/day!