Kneeling in the slushy snow of Peace Pharmacy Lane with his right wrist fractured and his left shinbone throbbing from eight-year-old Gu Nian’s kick. The eyebrowless, soot-faced Lin Fan stared up at Gu Changsheng in sheer, cornered disbelief.
“Move in with your family?! How could a mortal bumpkin like you possibly know that Master Yao Chen is inside my ring—or that I locked him with the Blood-Slave Shackle Array?!” Lin Fan shrieked.
Instinctively curling his left thumb into his palm to hide the tarnished black-iron ring.
“Even a Rank 4 Spirit-Severing Sword Master couldn’t cut a Blood-Fiend Soul-Shackle without shattering the spirit inside! This old ghost’s soul is bound to my blood—he’ll die in this ring before I ever let you have him!”
Inside the sealed black-iron ring, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Master Yao Chen was staring out at the snow-lit alley with tears of overwhelming relief and gratitude streaming down his white beard!
Not only had Gu Changsheng arrived at the exact split-second to smash Lin Fan’s butcher cleaver in half with a kitchen spatula. Holding a steaming plate of roast chicken in his other hand, eight-year-old Gu Nian was gently wrapping Little Snowball in his warm scarf. Six-year-old Su Nuannuan was holding up a chubby, two-foot-tall emerald-green plush turtle doll that radiated the purest.
Most inviting [Rank 3 Perfection: Five-Hundred-Year Warm-Soul Nephrite] aura that Yao Chen had ever sensed in his life!
“Grandpa Chalk! Look!” six-year-old Su Nuannuan called out in her sweet, bell-like voice, patting the plush turtle’s soft velvet belly and adjusting the tiny gold-rimmed spectacles on its stubby green nose.
“Dad, Auntie Qin, Big Brother Nian, and Nuannuan sewed this warm turtle house just for you from Nuannuan’s crayon picture!
Its shell is warm like a stove, and it has a pocket on the front for all your notes! Come out of that bad man’s stinky ring and move into our house!”
“And Dad brought your favorite five-spice honey roast chicken, Grandpa Chalk! It’s still hot!” eight-year-old Gu Nian called out earnestly as Little Snowball let out an encouraging “Arf!” from his arms.
Hearing the two children call him “Grandpa Chalk” and seeing the warm, flaw-free Rank 3 soul-vessel they had handmade from a child’s crayon drawing just to rescue him. The last trace of stubborn tsundere pride in Master Yao Chen’s ancient heart melted away completely!
“Good children... what good, filial children!” Master Yao Chen roared with laughter inside the ring as his Warmth Index toward Gu Changsheng’s family blasted straight past the 60 threshold to 82/100!
“Patriarch Gu!
Don’t worry about hurting this old man’s soul—swing that kitchen spatula of yours as hard as you please!”
“You heard the elder, Lin Fan—time to break the lease,” Gu Changsheng smiled coldly.
Before Lin Fan could even scramble backward in the snow, Gu Changsheng took a single half-step forward at Rank 2 Mid Meridian-Clearing speed, caught Lin Fan’s left wrist in an iron vise-grip. Brought the gleaming edge of his [Rank 3 Shackle-Cutting Iron Kitchen Spatula] down squarely onto the blood-red runes coiled around the tarnished black-iron ring!
TING—CRAAAACK-SHATTER!
Powered by the [Upgrade Box]’s flaw-free shackle-severing law, the kitchen spatula didn’t touch a single skin cell on Lin Fan’s thumb or a single wisp of Master Yao Chen’s remnant soul—instead. Its golden edge sliced straight through the twelve [Forbidden Blood-Slave Shackles] and the underlying six-month host contract like a hot cleaver slicing through rotten bean-curd!
All twelve demonic blood-chains exploded into harmless sparks of golden-white light!
Inside the ring, suddenly freed from both the agonizing blood-chains and the disgusting host contract that had bound him for half a year. Three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Pill Sovereign Yao Chen threw back his head and laughed like rolling spring thunder:.
“BWAHAHAHA! Free at last! Lin Fan, you unfilial, orphan-poisoning, widow-robbing, dog-boiling rat—this Pill Sovereign is officially moving out of your pigsty tonight!
And before I leave, since every single herb, pill bottle, alchemy manual. Silver tael inside this spatial ring was earned by this old man’s alchemy arts or refined with my spiritual guidance, I am taking ALL the furniture with me!”
“W-what?! NO! Stop!
Those are MY herbs and MY silver!” Lin Fan screamed in blood-curdling terror as he felt his mental connection to the ring’s interior storage space severed completely!
Inside the three-cubic-yard spatial storage of the ring, translucent Master Yao Chen didn’t leave Lin Fan so much as a single dry blade of crabgrass!
With a grand, sweeping wave of his phantom sleeve, the old Pill Sovereign bundled up:.
- 42 boxes of rare 50-year to 100-year spiritual herbs that Lin Fan had hoarded over the past six months;.
- 18 jade slips of foundational & Rank 2–3 alchemy and martial arts that Yao Chen had transcribed for him;.
- Three spare bronze cauldrons, twelve jade pill-bottles. Every last copper coin and silver ingot (worth 850 taels) tucked in the corners of the ring—leaving behind only a single dirty sock that belonged to Lin Fan!
WHOOSH—CLATTER!
All forty-two herb boxes, eighteen jade slips, three bronze cauldrons. The pouch of silver ingots flew out of the ring in a shimmering stream and landed neatly in the snow beside Captain Gu Tie’s feet!
“By the ancestors!” thirty-five-year-old Captain Gu Tie gasped. He caught a carved sandalwood box labeled [80-Year Purple-Gold Blood Ginseng] in one hand and a heavy leather pouch of fifty-tael silver ingots in the other.
His ten mansion guards stared wide-eyed at the mountain of alchemy treasures piled on the clean snow.
“Patriarch, there are forty-two boxes of aged spirit herbs, three bronze cauldrons, and nearly a thousand taels of silver here! Even a county magistrate’s treasury doesn’t have this many rare herbs!”
Standing beside the back-porch lantern, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin picked up one of the eighteen glowing white jade slips that had landed atop the herb boxes. Pressed it gently against her forehead for a single breath.
Her gentle almond eyes widened in sheer alchemical veneration:.
“Brother Changsheng! These eighteen jade slips aren’t ordinary frontier pill recipes—they are the foundational fire-control charts, herb-purification hand-seals. Meridian-acupuncture diagrams personally annotated by the legendary Pill Sovereign Yao Chen of the Central Plains three hundred years ago!
Just one of these jade slips would cause every alchemy guild in Azure-Cloud Prefecture to fight a war, and the Midnight Chalk Grandpa just gave all eighteen of them to our family!”
Down on his knees in the slush, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan watched the forty-two herb boxes, the eighteen priceless jade slips. His very last eight hundred and fifty taels of emergency silver—every single copper coin he had scraped together by robbing merchants. Selling pills over the past half-year—piled neatly at the feet of the Gu Clan guards!
“Give them back! Those are MY herbs! My silver!
My jade slips!” Lin Fan howled as tears of blood and snot ran down his blistered, eyebrowless cheeks, his crippled right hand clawing futilely at the snow until his fingernails broke. “Old man!
When I picked your ring out of the river mud six months ago, you swore to teach me alchemy!
How dare you empty my storage ring and hand my life savings to my mortal enemy?!”
Hovering above the cracked iron band on Lin Fan’s thumb, the radiant silver-gold figure of three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Pill Sovereign Yao Chen looked down at the weeping, soot-stained youth without a single shred of pity:.
“Your life savings?! Every stalk of spirit ginseng in those forty-two boxes was located by this old man’s spiritual sense while you were sleeping in taverns! Every single silver ingot in that pouch was refined by my fire-control!
And how did you repay your master?! You lied to my face with a staged beggar trick by the river, you used my healing salves to fund poison plots against widows and orphans. You soaked my ring in freezing dishwater when I refused to murder children.
Tonight you chained my soul with a Blood-Fiend array and tried to slaughter a six-month-old puppy to devour my memory palace!”
Master Yao Chen spat fiercely onto the tarnished iron band on Lin Fan’s thumb:.
“Leaving you that one unwashed sock on the snow is already more than a treacherous dog like you deserves! As for this black-iron ring that housed my soul for three hundred years—even scrap iron would be ashamed to stay on your finger!”
Then, with one final stomp of his translucent boot inside the empty space, Master Yao Chen shattered the tarnished black-iron ring on Lin Fan’s thumb into three pieces of worthless, non-magical scrap iron!
Rising out of the shattered ring as a radiant. Silver-gold pillar of Golden Core spiritual light—with Gu Nian’s and Su Nuannuan’s folded crayon drawings still tucked safely inside his phantom robe pocket!—Master Yao Chen bowed deeply in midair to Gu Changsheng. Then dove straight into the chubby, two-foot-tall [Rank 3 Soul-Nourishing Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] held in six-year-old Su Nuannuan’s arms!
HUMMM—GLOW!
The instant Master Yao Chen’s remnant soul settled into the [Five-Hundred-Year Warm-Soul Nephrite Core] inside the plush turtle’s shell, a warm emerald-gold halo rippled across the soft green velvet fabric!
Not only did the draining of his soul stop immediately, the flaw-free Rank 3 plush vessel instantly restored his lost soul-origin from 65% back to 80%. A flood of golden system notifications chimed inside Gu Changsheng’s mind!
[ DING! STAGE 5 MAJOR POACHING MILESTONE COMPLETE! ]
* Poached Ally : Master Yao Chen (“Grandpa Yao” — Rank 6 Golden.
Core Pill Sovereign Remnant Soul!)
* Current Vessel: [Rank 3 Perfection: Soul-Nourishing Jade-Turtle.
Plush Doll] (Active Combat & Alchemy Cap:.
Rank 3 Peak Martial / Alchemy Grandmaster!)
* Confiscated Loot: 42 Rare Herb Boxes + 18 Jade Slips + 850.
Silver Taels emptied from Lin Fan’s ring!
* Grandpa Yao Warmth: 78/100 -> 90/100 (Family Grandpa Tier!)
[ GRAND POACHING REWARDS UNLOCKED! ]
* Vessel-Capped Daily Bonus : +1,000 DP/day (Rank 3 Peak Cap)!
* One-Time Poaching Jackpot : +10,000 DP Instant Reward!
* Current DP Balance : 68,210 + 10,000 = 78,210 DP!
* New Total Daily DP Income : +35,000 -> +38,000 DP/day!
Down in the slushy snow of the alley. Eighteen-year-old Lin Fan stared at the three broken pieces of scrap iron on his thumb—and the single dirty sock lying in the snow beside him—as his eyes turned completely white with madness!
For six full months, that tarnished black-iron ring had been the secret foundation of every single dream of grandeur in Lin Fan’s twisted mind.
Whenever the town guards looked down on him, whenever a wealthy merchant refused to give him credit, or whenever Gu Changsheng humiliated him in front of Frost-Pine Town. Lin Fan had always comforted himself with the smug certainty that he possessed a Rank 6 Golden Core Pill Sovereign trapped. Inside his thumb ring—an immortal golden finger that would inevitably carry him above every mortal clan in the Great Qian Dynasty!
Yet now, in less than ten breaths under the back-porch lantern of Peace Pharmacy, Gu Changsheng had casually tapped his thumb with a cast-iron kitchen spatula. Sliced his five-hundred-silver Blood-Fiend Soul-Shackle Array in half like wet paper. Invited the Golden Core Pill Sovereign to move straight into a two-foot-tall green plush turtle doll held by a six-year-old girl!
Worse still, Master Yao Chen hadn’t just defected—he had swept the spatial ring cleaner than a licked dog bowl!
Not a single stalk of fifty-year blood-ginseng, not a single copper coin of his eight hundred and fifty taels of emergency funds. Not a single pill bottle or foundational breathing manual remained in Lin Fan’s pockets—only a single crusty, unwashed gray wool sock sitting on top of the snowbank!
“My... my Golden Core Ring-Grandpa... my forty-two boxes of spirit herbs...
my eighteen secret manuals...” Lin Fan’s lips trembled convulsively as cold sweat mixed with the black croton soot on his eyebrowless forehead. “Gone?!
All of it emptied out in one breath and handed to Gu Changsheng?!”
Meanwhile, beside Captain Gu Tie’s boots, two mansion guards quickly brought over a clean wicker carrying-hamper from the pharmacy porch and carefully loaded all forty-two sandalwood herb boxes. The three spare bronze cauldrons, the eighteen glowing white jade slips. The heavy leather pouch of silver ingots inside.
Eight-year-old Gu Nian used the tip of his small iron-wood broom to flick Lin Fan’s single dirty sock three feet further away from Little Snowball’s doghouse so the puppy wouldn’t sniff it.
“Dad,” eight-year-old Gu Nian reported seriously, holding Little Snowball against his shoulder. The white puppy licked his ear, “Grandpa Yao didn’t drop a single herb box on the dirty part of the alley—everything landed right on the clean snow by Uncle Gu Tie’s feet!”
“That’s what we call Golden Core spatial precision, Nian’er,” Gu Changsheng chuckled. Holding the steaming porcelain platter of honey roast chicken steady as the emerald-gold light around the plush turtle in Su Nuannuan’s arms finished settling.