Inside the tarnished black-iron ring on Lin Fan’s thumb, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Master Yao Chen looked at the four crayon drawings tucked safely inside his phantom sleeve—where eight-year-old Gu Nian had written in neat. Earnest brush strokes: Grandpa Ghost, please dress warmly in the snow and eat lots of meat!
And then the old Pill Sovereign looked out through the ring at eighteen-year-old Lin Fan, who was grinning like a rabid hyena over the bubbling iron cauldron. Preparing to refine [Blood-Wither Scorpion Grass] into a crippling bone-rot poison aimed at that very same eight-year-old boy!
For six months I tolerated your greed and your stupidity because of a foolish oath, Master Yao Chen thought, his ancient Golden Core eyes narrowing to razor-sharp slits of icy gold. *Today you dare use my alchemy arts to cripple little Nian’er? Fine!
Let this Pill Sovereign teach you a lesson in cauldron chemistry that you won’t forget for the rest of your miserable life!*
Smoothing his voice into a calm, scholarly tone that betrayed not a trace of his boiling rage, Master Yao Chen spoke inside Lin Fan’s mind:.
“Ah... since you only wish to refine a simple [Bone-Rot Fume Pill] to teach your rival a lesson, the formula is quite straightforward. First, toss all six stalks of the Blood-Wither Scorpion Grass into the boiling oil at once and fan the pine fire to maximum heat.”
“Hmph! Now you’re finally acting like a sensible tool!” Lin Fan gloated.
Tossing the six poisonous red stalks into the cheap iron cauldron and pumping the leather bellows with both hands until the flames licked the rim of the pot.
“What next, old man? The red oil is starting to bubble!”
Inside the ring, Master Yao Chen stroked his white beard and pointed toward three jars of leftover purge-herbs sitting on the corner of the table:.
“To make the bone-rot fumes completely colorless and ten times more potent, you must neutralize the red grass-ash at the exact instant the oil turns purple. Pick up that jar of [Nine-Roar Thunder-Fart Croton Powder] on your left, add three heaping iron spoonfuls—no, make it FIVE heaping spoonfuls!—straight into the center of the boiling Scorpion Grass oil. Lean your face right over the cauldron vent to blow three breaths of your own internal qi into the mix!”
Anyone who had attended even three days of Auntie Qin’s introductory herb class knew that volatile [Blood-Wither Scorpion Grass Oil]. High-sulfur [Thunder-Fart Croton Powder] were violent alchemical opposites: mixing even a single grain of croton powder into boiling scorpion-grass. Oil was the equivalent of dropping a lit torch into a barrel of black gunpowder mixed with fermented skunk-gas!
In fact, three hundred years ago in the Central Plains, Master Yao Chen himself had invented that exact combination. A non-lethal alchemical stink-mine to blow the beards off greedy grave-robbers who tried to break into his charity apothecaries at night!
Yet because eighteen-year-old Lin Fan had always relied on Master Yao Chen to spoon-feed him every pill step. Had never bothered to memorize a single basic pharmacology chart on his own, he didn’t hesitate for half a second!
Instead, Lin Fan’s greedy eyes lit up as if he had just been handed an immortal secret formula.
Hehe, once this colorless Bone-Rot Fume Pill is done, Lin Fan thought viciously. He reached for the jar of coarse yellow croton powder with a heavy iron spoon. *I won’t just toss one pill by Gu Nian’s broom—I’ll toss a second pill through the window of that six-year-old poison.
Brat Su Nuannuan’s bedroom so both of Gu Changsheng’s precious little monsters end up crawling on the floor like legless worms!*
Sensing that vile thought rippling through Lin Fan’s mind-link, Master Yao Chen’s white beard bristled like steel needles inside the ring:.
“Wait—five spoonfuls might leave a faint trace of red smoke! Put in SEVEN heaping spoonfuls of the Thunder-Fart Croton Powder, stir it clockwise three times with your iron tongs. Stick your nose right down into the purple bubbles when you blow your internal qi so not a single wisp of essence escapes!”
“Seven heaping spoonfuls of Thunder-Fart Croton Powder, and blow three breaths of internal qi straight into the vent! Got it!”
With greedy excitement shining in his bloodshot eyes, Lin Fan scooped five overflowing iron spoonfuls of coarse yellow croton powder into the seething purple oil. Leaned his head three inches above the mouth of the iron cauldron. Puffed out his cheeks to blow a hard stream of Rank 1 Mid internal qi straight down into the pot!
Inside the ring, Master Yao Chen immediately threw up a triple-layered spiritual soundproof barrier around himself and covered his ears:.
*Three... two... one...
Eat croton thunder, you child-poisoning rat!*
BZZZZT—KAAA-BOOOOOOM!
A deafening, earth-shaking alchemical explosion—sounding like a hundred festival cannon-crackers detonating inside an iron barrel of rotten eggs—ripped through the second-floor room of the Mud-Ditch Alley boarding house!
The cheap cast-iron cauldron shattered into forty flying pieces as a mushroom cloud of sticky, foul-smelling, pitch-black [Scorpion-Croton Thunder-Sludge] blasted straight up into Lin Fan’s face at point-blank range!
“AAAAAGH—MY FACE! MY EYES! MY STOMACH!”
Lin Fan was launched backward off his wooden stool like a ragdoll, smashing headfirst through the room’s rotten wooden partition wall and crashing into a pile of old cabbages in the hallway!
When the thick, eye-watering yellow-black smoke finally billowed out the shattered second-floor window into the snowy alley. Eighteen-year-old Lin Fan lay groaning on the floorboards looking like a plucked crow that had just been struck by lightning:.
Both of his eyebrows and all of his eyelashes had been blasted clean off his forehead; his hair stood straight up in a smoking, frizzy black bird’s nest. His face and mouth were coated in a quarter-inch crust of blistering, foul-smelling croton soot. And because he had inhaled a full lungful of vaporized [Nine-Roar Thunder-Fart Croton Powder] at the moment of detonation, his stomach let out a violent.
Echoing BRRRRRAP-POP-POP! that lasted for ten uninterrupted seconds and nearly knocked the boarding-house landlord unconscious at the bottom of the stairs!
“You... pffft-braaap!... YOU OLD BASTARD!”
Lin Fan shrieked between explosive bouts of croton-gas cramps, clutching his blistered, eyebrowless face as he stared at the black-iron ring on his blackened thumb in homicidal realization.
“There’s no way a Rank 6 Pill Sovereign wouldn’t know that croton powder explodes in scorpion-grass oil! You sabotaged my cauldron on purpose! Why?!
Because of Gu Changsheng’s brat?!”
Suddenly, Lin Fan’s bloodshot eyes darted toward the cracked windowsill—where a tiny, overlooked smudge of golden honey-roast chicken glaze and a single grain of fragrant sandalwood ash sat on the outer brick ledge!
Remembering how the old man in the ring had suddenly stopped complaining about the cold dishwater five nights ago—and how his remnant soul actually looked plumper. Brighter than it had last week—Lin Fan’s twisted mind connected the dots in an instant!
“Someone has been feeding your soul outside my window at night while I was asleep!” Lin Fan roared, his voice cracking with paranoid madness. His remaining [Protagonist Luck Halo: 46%] flickered violently in the dark room, triggering the world-will’s desperate Foreknowledge Decay Pushback!
“It was Gu Changsheng!
You ungrateful old dog—you ate my rival’s food behind my back and blew up my face to protect his son! You want to betray me and defect to the Gu Clan?!”
Inside the black ring, Master Yao Chen stood tall with his white beard streaming and his chin raised in fearless contempt:.
“Betray you?! A righteous alchemist does not serve a cowardly rat who poisons orphans and schemes against eight-year-old children! Today I only blew off your eyebrows—if you dare touch a hair on little Nian’er’s or Nuannuan’s head.
This old man will detonate the last of my remnant soul and drag you down to the Nine Nether Springs with me!”
“Detonate your soul?! Dream on! You belong to ME!”
Driven completely insane by humiliation and the backfiring croton cramps in his gut, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan ripped the [Forbidden Blood-Slave Ring-Shackle Array] scroll out of his scorched vest!
Even without the spirit-beast heart-blood required for the second half of the ritual. Lin Fan bit down savagely on the tip of his own tongue and spat three mouthfuls of dark, venomous essence-blood straight onto the forbidden parchment scroll. Slamming the bloody scroll around the tarnished black-iron ring on his thumb!
SIZZLE—CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!
Twelve glowing, blood-red demonic chains of [Forbidden Blood-Slave Shackles] erupted from the burning parchment and bored straight through the iron walls of the ring. Wrapping tightly around Master Yao Chen’s translucent wrists, ankles, and throat while sealing the ring’s exit completely!
“ARGH!” Master Yao Chen groaned in agony as the blood-red chains burned into his soul-body. Forcibly draining his newly recovered Golden Core soul-origin at a rate of 10% per hour and funneling the stolen spiritual energy straight into Lin Fan’s dantian!
Even as the twelve crimson blood-chains seared into his translucent shoulders like red-hot branding irons, the three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Pill Sovereign gritted his teeth so hard that golden sparks flew from his beard. Wrapping both phantom arms tightly around his inner robe pocket so the corrosive blood-fire wouldn’t burn a single corner of Gu Nian’s and Su Nuannuan’s crayon drawings!
“Drain my soul if you dare, you filthy parasite!” Master Yao Chen roared inside the sealed iron space. Locking his ancient Golden Core memory palace behind nine layers of mental ice so that only raw, unrefined spiritual energy leaked out through the chains.
Every single one of his [Nine-Turn Heaven-Mending Pill Sutra] formulas remained sealed out of Lin Fan’s reach.
“Even if you burn this old man’s remnant spirit down to the last spark. You will never get a single alchemy recipe from Yao Chen’s head—and when Patriarch Gu discovers what you have done, he will slap your dog-head into the mud!”
Outside the ring, feeling the stolen, high-grade Golden Core soul-energy surging through his thumb meridian. Forcefully inflating his cultivation from Rank 1 Mid past Rank 1 Late toward the peak of Rank 1. The eyebrowless, soot-faced Lin Fan laughed like a lunatic in the ruined room!
He kicked aside the shattered pieces of the cast-iron cauldron, wiped the black croton sludge out of his eyes with his torn sleeve. Snatched a sharp nine-inch iron butcher cleaver off the boarding-house chopping block.
“Lock your memory palace all you want, old ghost!” Lin Fan snarled, his bloodshot eyes glowing with an eerie, borrowed crimson light. He read the blood-red instructions glowing on the second half of the [Forbidden Blood-Slave Ring-Shackle Array] scroll.
“Look at what the scroll says: *To shatter a righteous spirit’s Dao-heart and swallow his entire memory palace in one gulp.
Slaughter a living animal cherished by pure-hearted children and smear three drops of its warm heart-blood across the ring!* Hahaha! Do you know what I saw outside Gu Changsheng’s Peace Pharmacy this afternoon when I was spying on his brats?!”
Inside the ring, Master Yao Chen’s heart sank like lead. He remembered the chubby, snow-white little puppy—Little Snowball—that eight-year-old Gu Nian and six-year-old Su Nuannuan always fed warm meat-broth and brushed on a fleece mat beside the pharmacy door every evening!
“No... Lin Fan, if you dare touch that little puppy, Heaven and Earth will strike you down with ten thousand bolts of purple lightning!” Master Yao Chen thundered.
Pulling so hard against the twelve blood-chains that his translucent wrists cracked with golden light.
“Let the heavens try!” the eyebrowless Lin Fan cackled maniacally, leaping out the shattered back window into the dark alley with the butcher cleaver hidden inside his cloak. “This Blood-Slave Shackle locks you inside the ring and drains ten percent of your soul every hour!
Before midnight tonight, I’ll lure that fat white puppy into the back lane, spill its heart-blood onto your ring.
Swallow all three hundred years of your Golden Core memories, and slaughter Gu Changsheng’s whole house!”
[ RED ALERT! FOREKNOWLEDGE DECAY — GRANDPA YAO SHACKLED! ]
* Crisis Event : Lin Fan activated the [Forbidden Blood-Slave.
Shackle Array] on the ring!
* Grandpa Yao : Locked inside ring! Soul draining at 10%/hour!
* Host Realm : Gu Changsheng (Rank 2 Mid | 73,210 DP)
* Daily Income : +26,000 DP/day -> +29,000 DP/day!