Two street blocks east of Mud-Ditch Alley, in the quiet, snow-drifted back lane behind the [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy]. A warm wooden doghouse lined with thick lambskin blankets sat tucked beneath the sheltered eaves of the pharmacy’s herb-drying porch.
Pinned above the miniature wooden doorway of the doghouse was a colorful wooden nameplate that eight-year-old Gu Nian had carved with his pocketknife and six-year-old Su Nuannuan had painted with berry juice:.
[LITTLE SNOWBALL — OFFICIAL PHARMACY DOOR GUARD (PLEASE DO NOT FEED BONES THAT SPLINTER)]
Inside the warm doghouse, a chubby, six-month-old white furball of a puppy—wearing a tiny red woolen scarf that Auntie Qin had knitted for him—was. Sleeping soundly with his round little belly turned up toward the ceiling after eating a full bowl of Gu Changsheng’s warm marrow-broth rice at supper.
Suddenly, a pair of muddy boots crunched softly through the snow at the dark mouth of the back lane.
Hiding his blistered, eyebrowless face and frizzy bird’s-nest hair beneath a torn black hood, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan crept up to the back fence of Peace Pharmacy like a starving jackal!
Over the past six hours since five o’clock that afternoon. The twelve blood-red chains of the [Forbidden Blood-Slave Ring-Shackle Array] wrapped around the tarnished black-iron ring on. His left thumb had forcibly drained a full 20% of Master Yao Chen’s condensed Golden Core soul-origin!
Although ninety percent of that high-level spiritual energy was wasted by Lin Fan’s crude mortal meridians. The sheer amount of stolen Golden Core soul-power had forcefully inflated Lin Fan’s cultivation from Rank 1 Mid all the way to Rank 1 Peak Martial , at Half-Step Iron-Bone. Causing dark red veins to bulge across his temples and giving his fists nearly one thousand pounds of erratic, blood-fueled brute force!
Every breath Lin Fan exhaled into the winter night carried a foul, metallic stench of scorched blood and sulfur. His bloodshot eyes darted wildly from shadow to shadow with the unhinged paranoia of a gambler who had lost everything at the table. Was betting his own life on one last dirty knife-thrust in the dark.
Two weeks ago, everything in this miserable town was supposed to belong to me! Lin Fan seethed inwardly. He pressed his soot-stained chest against the cold wooden pickets of the pharmacy fence, his fingernails digging into the frosted pine boards until they bled.
*The Gu Clan’s three iron mines were supposed to be mine!
That pretty Rank 2 alchemist Qin Wan’er was supposed to weep in my arms and hand over her clinic! That six-year-old Ten-Thousand-Poison Body girl was supposed to be my living poison-jar! And this senile Golden Core old ghost in my ring was supposed to refine me all the way to the Immortal Sects!*
Instead, ever since that dead man Gu Changsheng climbed out of his sickbed in his blue kitchen apron, every single treasure that belonged to me has been snatched away. My ten thousand silver taels were scammed for a painted toilet bucket, my eyebrows were blown off by croton powder. Even the old ghost in my ring tried to defect for a plate of midnight roast chicken!
Peering over the low wooden fence at the sleeping white puppy in the doghouse. Lin Fan pulled the blood-stained [Forbidden Blood-Slave Scroll] from his vest with his left hand and drew the nine-inch iron butcher cleaver from his belt with his right.
“Hehe... look at that fat white mutt wearing a red woolen scarf and sleeping under a nameplate painted by Gu Changsheng’s two little brats,” Lin Fan whispered. A crazed, venomous grin stretching across his soot-blackened lips.
Drool dripped from the corner of his mouth. “There isn’t a single creature in Frost-Pine Town more cherished by pure-hearted children than this puppy! Once I chop off its head and smear three drops of its warm heart-blood across this ring, the Blood-Slave Array will shatter your righteous Dao-heart in one breath, old man!”
Inside the sealed black-iron ring on Lin Fan’s thumb, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Master Yao Chen was bound to a red-hot pillar of blood runes by twelve searing chains that pierced through his translucent collarbones and wrists.
His white beard was stained with golden soul-blood from six hours of continuous draining, and his soul-origin had dropped from 85% down to 65%.
Yet when Master Yao Chen looked out through the ring. Saw Lin Fan pull a piece of cold spiced beef jerky from his pocket to lure the sleeping white. Puppy out of its warm doghouse—the same little puppy that wagged its fluffy tail around Gu Nian’s yellow bunny slippers.
Licked Su Nuannuan’s rosy cheeks every morning—the old Pill Sovereign let out a roar of heartbreak and incandescent fury that shook the entire interior of the ring!
“LIN FAN! YOU BEAST IN HUMAN SKIN!” Master Yao Chen thundered, his ancient eyes weeping tears of golden fire.
He stopped protecting his own soul-origin and began violently burning his remaining three-hundred-year Golden Core soul-source to clash head-on against the twelve demonic blood-chains!
“That little puppy hasn’t even grown its adult teeth, and those two children knitted its winter scarf with their own hands! If you dare touch that puppy with your cleaver, this old man will burn my soul-origin to zero right now and blow your right arm off at the shoulder!”
CLANG-CRACK-SIZZLE!
Inside the ring, Master Yao Chen’s burning Golden Core soul-fire slammed so violently against the twelve [Forbidden Blood-Slave Shackles] that cracks spiderwebbed across his own translucent chest. Sending a scorching jolt of spiritual backlash straight into Lin Fan’s left thumb!
“Argh! Still trying to fight back when you’re chained like a dog?!” Lin Fan hissed in pain.
Slamming his left thumb against the wooden fence post to suppress the ring’s trembling before tossing the piece of spiced beef jerky onto the snow three feet outside the doghouse.
“Burn your soul all you want, old fool—you’re still ten breaths too slow to stop my cleaver!”
Inside the doghouse, Little Snowball’s pink nose twitched at the smell of beef jerky.
Blinking his round black button-eyes sleepily, the chubby white puppy trotted out onto the snow in his little red woolen scarf, wagged his tail innocently. Leaned his soft white head down to sniff the jerky—.
“DIE, YOU LITTLE MUTT!”
Laughing maniacally, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan vaulted silently over the low wooden fence, raised the nine-inch iron butcher cleaver with all one thousand pounds of his stolen Rank 1 Peak brute force. Slashed the heavy blade straight down toward Little Snowball’s fluffy white neck!
“NOOOOO!”
Inside the ring, Master Yao Chen closed his eyes in agonizing despair, preparing to detonate his very last spark of Golden Core soul-origin—.
WHOOSH—CLANG-CRACK!
Less than half an inch above Little Snowball’s red woolen scarf, a dark-gold flash of kitchen iron streaked out of the falling snow faster than a bolt of summer lightning!
Swung by a hand carrying 4,500 pounds of Rank 2 Mid Meridian-Clearing base strength—and boosted by the blazing golden halo. Of [Father’s Authority]—Gu Changsheng’s [Rank 3 Shackle-Cutting Iron Kitchen Spatula] slammed edge-first into the side of Lin Fan’s descending butcher cleaver!
It sounded like a temple bell smashing into a dry clay pot!
In one hundredth of a blink, the nine-inch iron butcher cleaver snapped cleanly in half like a dry winter twig!
The broken top half of the blade spun harmlessly into the snowbank. The flat face of the heavy iron kitchen spatula kept moving forward and smacked Lin Fan squarely across the knuckles of his right hand!
CRACK!
“AAAAAGH! MY HAND!”
With three finger bones fractured on the spot, Lin Fan shrieked like a scalded pig and stumbled six paces backward into the snowdrift, clutching his swollen right wrist in utter shock!
At the same instant, a small figure in a warm fleece coat and yellow bunny slippers darted past Gu Changsheng’s leg like a little golden leopard!
Eight-year-old Gu Nian scooped Little Snowball safely up into his left arm, checked that not a single white hair on the puppy’s neck was harmed. Then pivoted on his right heel with full Rank 1 Peak Innate Chaos Bone force to deliver a crisp, textbook front-kick straight into Lin Fan’s left shinbone!
THUD-CRACK!
“OWWWW! MY SHIN!”
Lin Fan’s left leg buckled under him as he dropped to one knee in the slush. Staring up in horror at the tall, calm young father standing under the warm amber glow of the pharmacy back-porch lantern!
Safe in eight-year-old Gu Nian’s warm arms, Little Snowball seemed to realize that the scary eyebrowless man in the snow had just tried to hurt him.
Turning his fluffy white head around in Gu Nian’s elbow, the chubby six-month-old puppy bared his tiny milk-teeth at the kneeling Lin Fan, let out a fierce, squeaky “Ruff! Ruff! Grrrr-arf!”, and then kicked one hind paw to fling a clump of slushy snow straight onto Lin Fan’s soot-blackened nose!
“Good boy, Little Snowball! You didn’t eat the stranger’s dirty jerky!” eight-year-old Gu Nian praised, gently rubbing the puppy’s soft white ears before glaring down at Lin Fan with his small jaw set exactly like his father’s.
“Dad taught us that only a spineless coward sneaks into someone’s backyard at night to bully a baby puppy that isn’t even a foot tall!
Even the stray dogs in Mud-Ditch Alley have better manners than you!”
Beside her big brother, six-year-old Su Nuannuan hugged the two-foot-tall emerald-green [Rank 3 Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] tightly against her pink coat and wrinkled her button nose at Lin Fan:.
“You’re the bad man who wanted to put Nuannuan in a bug jar at the market, and now you tried to hurt Little Snowball and Grandpa Chalk! Nuannuan won’t even sneeze on you because you smell like burnt croton poop!”
At the north and south mouths of the narrow back lane, the heavy clank-thud of ten iron-shod spear shafts striking the flagstones echoed in unison. Captain Gu Tie and his ten elite mansion guards locked their shields across every possible escape route, their cold eyes glaring at the kneeling culprit under the flickering red lanterns.
And right in the center of the lane, twenty-eight-year-old Gu Changsheng stood unhurriedly in his lambskin coat and blue cotton apron.
In his left hand, twenty-eight-year-old Gu Changsheng held a steaming white porcelain platter of [Rank 3 Five-Spice Honey Roast Chicken] without spilling a single drop of golden gravy. In his right hand, he held the gleaming [Rank 3 Shackle-Cutting Iron Kitchen Spatula].
And right behind him stood eight-year-old Gu Nian hugging the tail-wagging white puppy, six-year-old Su Nuannuan hugging the chubby two-foot-tall [Rank 3 Jade-Turtle Plush Doll], Auntie Qin holding a lantern. Captain Gu Tie with ten steel-speared guards sealing both ends of the lane!
“Sneaking behind my pharmacy at midnight with a butcher cleaver to bully my kids’ six-month-old puppy. Locking a three-hundred-year-old elder inside a dirty ring to steal his soul?” Gu Changsheng looked down at the eyebrowless, soot-faced Lin Fan with icy calm and raised his iron kitchen spatula.
“Lin Fan, hold out your left thumb.
That elder doesn’t live in your ring anymore—he’s moving in with my family tonight!”
Standing beside Gu Changsheng under the warm porch lantern. Twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin looked down at the broken nine-inch butcher cleaver lying in the snow only half a step from Little Snowball’s red woolen scarf. Her usually gentle voice turned as cold as winter frost:.
“Eight days ago you walked into my Peace Pharmacy pretending to be a righteous young hero while dropping Seven-Step Heart-Rot Powder into my teacup. Two days ago you poisoned the drinking well of thirty helpless orphans. And tonight you crept behind my clinic with a butcher knife to slaughter a six-month-old puppy that our children raised from a palm-sized pup!
Lin Fan, even the venomous scorpions that Brother Wu used to raise in the mountains have more conscience than you do!”
At the north end of the lane, thirty-five-year-old Captain Gu Tie lowered the steel tip of his long spear until it rested three inches from Lin Fan’s throat, his scarred face dark with disgust:.
“Patriarch! Give the word and this subordinate will nail this puppy-chopping rat to the town stocks until the county magistrate locks him in the iron quarry!”
“First things first, Gu Tie,” Gu Changsheng said evenly, stepping forward until the shadow of his kitchen apron fell directly across the trembling Lin Fan. “Before we deal with the landlord, we have an honored elder to help move out of a very cramped basement.”
[ DING! LITTLE SNOWBALL RESCUED & LIN FAN CORNERED! ]
* Grandpa Yao : Warmth 59/100 -> 78/100 (“He saved the puppy!”)
* Kids’ Darkening: Gu Nian 10% | Su Nuannuan 13% -> 12%.
* Daily Income : +32,000 DP/day -> +35,000 DP/day!