At twelve o’clock noon, the bronze intermission bell rang across the Grand Prefecture Martial Arena to announce a ninety-minute midday break before the afternoon semifinals. Nothing settles an arena crowd faster than a polite kid who hits like a siege ram, Gu Changsheng thought from the bench.
Immediately, the wealthy martial clans and aristocratic academies from across the twelve counties retreated behind silk-curtained private tents along the edge of the plaza. Posting armed guards outside their flaps while their hired alchemists sold basic Rank 1 bruise-salves to the injured morning contestants at an extortionate price of fifty silver taels per jar!
Meanwhile, out on the sun-baked stone bleachers of the amphitheater, over twenty thousand ordinary prefecture citizens, farmers. Visiting townsfolk fanned themselves under the warm spring sun, parched and hungry as the arena’s greedy concession merchants charged fifty copper coins for a single bowl of lukewarm plain noodles!
Seeing that, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng didn’t lock his family inside a private silk tent.
Instead, right on the wide marble plaza at the main entrance of the Grand Prefecture Arena, Gu Changsheng nodded to Captain One-Ear Scar, Vice-Captain Bull, Poison-Hand Wu. The fifty burly uncles of the [Gu Family Pink-Apron Security Brigade]:.
“Uncles, unfold the canopies and roll out the Earth-Fire Wok! Let’s show Azure-Cloud Prefecture City how Frost-Pine Town caters a school sports day!”
“SIR, YES, SIR!”
Moving with the synchronized precision of a veteran military engineering corps. The fifty scarred Rank 1 and Rank 2 warriors in their spotless bright pink bunny aprons. Raised a sixty-foot blue cotton sun-canopy in three minutes flat, set up forty clean folding pine tables.
Rolled Gu Changsheng’s [Rank 3 Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok] alongside fifty barrels of mountain-spring ice-blocks onto the center of the plaza!
Across the top of the canopy, sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu hung a cheerful red silk banner written in bold gold calligraphy:.
[FROST-PINE TOWN GU FAMILY PEACE PHARMACY & ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CANTEEN]
- [Item 1: Doctor Qin & Grandpa Yao’s Flaw-Free Rank 2 Jade-Dew Healing Gummies — 10 Copper Coins Each (Free for Injured Junior Contestants!)]
- [Item 2: Principal Gu’s Earth-Fire Chilled Peanut-Sesame Chicken Noodles — 5 Copper Coins per Big Bowl!]
“Five copper coins for a big bowl of chilled sesame chicken noodles, and ten copper coins for a genuine Rank 2 healing gummy?!”
Within two minutes, thousands of sweltering, hungry prefecture citizens crowded around the blue canopy in disbelief!
Behind the counter, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng worked his [Rank 3 Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok] with dazzling Rank 2 Peak culinary mastery: with his left hand. He pulled ten-pound skeins of snow-white wheat dough into a thousand springy. Translucent noodles that boiled in rich dragon-marrow chicken broth in three breaths, plunged them into mountain-spring ice-water until they were crystal-chewy.
Tossed them with roasted peanut-sesame sauce, shredded spirit-chicken breast, and crisp cucumber julienne!
Every single five-copper bowl carried a faint wisp of flaw-free Earth-Fire meridian-refreshing essence that swept away the noon heat and left the diner’s stomach humming with comfort!
And at the medical table right next to the noodle counter, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin—assisted by nine-year-old Gu Nian, seven-year-old Su Nuannuan. Three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao sitting on a velvet cushion in his chubby green [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] body with tiny gold spectacles—handed out sparkling emerald-green [Rank 2 Perfection: Jade-Dew Bruise-Mending Gummies]!
In the front row of the lunch line. An elderly prefecture blacksmith who had walked ten miles that morning to watch the tournament paid five. Copper coins for a steaming-yet-chilled bowl of sesame chicken noodles and ten copper coins for a healing gummy.
The moment the old blacksmith slurped down his first mouthful of springy noodles coated in fragrant roasted peanut-sesame sauce—and chewed the sweet emerald gummy—his stooped shoulders straightened with an audible pop. The chronic hammer-ache in his right elbow vanished completely!
“Heavens above!” the old blacksmith shouted, holding up his chopstick bowl so the whole plaza could see. “This five-copper bowl of chilled sesame noodles has real spirit-chicken breast and Earth-Fire broth that cooled the summer heat in my chest in one bite!
And that ten-copper gummy just cured the elbow sprain that the Prefecture Alchemy Guild wanted twenty silver taels to treat!
Folks, the rumors about Patriarch Gu and Doctor Qin of Frost-Pine Town are 100% true—they’re living bodhisattvas!”
“Give me two bowls of chilled sesame noodles and three healing gummies for my mother!”
“Don’t push, everyone! Look at the fifty big brothers in pink bunny aprons holding the yellow crosswalk paddles—if we line up neatly in ten rows. Captain One-Ear Scar says everybody gets a free cup of iced plum tea while we wait!”
Wearing his spotless pink bunny apron and blowing his brass whistle cheerfully, forty-two-year-old Captain One-Ear Scar. At Rank 2 Peak, ladled out cups of chilled honey-plum tea for the elderly grandmothers and children in line. Vice-Captain Bull and Poison-Hand Wu carried heavy trays of four bowls on each arm to the shaded pine tables!
“Step right this way, Grandma! Watch your step on the marble curb!” One-Ear Scar beamed with the pride of a man earning his weekly Little Red Flower.
“Our Frost-Pine Canteen has enough noodles for all twenty thousand citizens today—nobody goes back to the afternoon matches on an empty stomach!”
Just ten minutes into the lunch break, a commotion rippled through the crowd at the front of the plaza.
Four burly servants of the Prefecture City’s Iron-Fist Clan came carrying a wooden stretcher bearing eighteen-year-old Young Master Tie Ba—whose chest was still purple and swollen. Nine-year-old Gu Nian’s single index finger had blasted him fifty feet through Deputy Magistrate Zhou’s mahogany table in Round One!
Walking beside the stretcher with a red, embarrassed face was forty-five-year-old Patriarch Tie , at Rank 2 Late, of the Iron-Fist Clan.
“Doctor Qin... Patriarch Gu,” Patriarch Tie said sheepishly, bowing his broad shoulders in front of the ten-copper pharmacy counter while the crowd hushed to watch. “Just now I took my foolish son to the Prefecture Alchemy Guild tent.
Their alchemist demanded three hundred silver taels for a single Bone-Setting Pill that would still leave him bedridden for a month! Earlier on stage, my son Tie Ba spoke with no manners to Young Master Nian and deserved that finger-tap—does your Peace Pharmacy truly sell Rank 2 bruise gummies to defeated opponents?”
Before Gu Changsheng or Auntie Qin could reply. Nine-year-old Gu Nian stepped out from behind the counter in his yellow bunny apron holding a clean porcelain saucer with two emerald-green [Jade-Dew Healing Gummies] and a cup of warm water.
Bowing politely to Patriarch Tie and the groaning eighteen-year-old on the stretcher, nine-year-old Gu Nian said earnestly:.
“Big Brother Tie, Dad says that once the bell rings at the end of a school match, everyone is classmates again—and our banner says injured tournament contestants get their gummies for free! Also, I brought you a spare pair of woven hemp bootlaces from my schoolbag so your left boot doesn’t come untied next time!”
Lying on the stretcher, six-foot-two eighteen-year-old Tie Ba stared at the four-foot-tall nine-year-old boy who had defeated him with one finger—and who was now handing him two free healing gummies. A pair of spare shoelaces without a single trace of mockery in his clear dark eyes!
Swallowing hard as his ears burned crimson with shame, eighteen-year-old Tie Ba popped the two sweet emerald gummies into his mouth.
HUMMM—WARMTH!
In less than ten seconds flat, right in front of ten thousand watching citizens, the flaw-free [Rank 2 Perfection: Jade-Dew Bruise-Mending Essence] dissolved the purple blood-stasis across Tie Ba’s breastbone. Knitted his hairline rib cracks cleanly together, and restored his breathing to 100%!
Jumping off the stretcher without a trace of pain, eighteen-year-old Tie Ba dropped straight to both knees beside his father in front of Gu Changsheng and nine-year-old Gu Nian:.
“Patriarch Gu! Little Brother Nian! This morning Tie Ba was a frog at the bottom of a well who didn’t know the immensity of heaven and earth!
Not only is Little Brother Nian’s martial cultivation ten times stronger than mine, his heart is a hundred times broader! From today on, our Iron-Fist Clan will be the first in line to guard the Gu Family Peace Pharmacy whenever you open a branch in Prefecture City!”
Right after Young Master Tie Ba stood up and carefully tied his left boot with the new hemp bootlaces Gu Nian had given him. The three seventeen-year-old elite swordsmen of the Wind-Blade Martial School—Feng Liu, Feng Yun. Feng Yu—walked over to the blue canopy tent carrying the three neatly folded small pink blankets that seven-year-old Su Nuannuan had draped over them on Stage #2!
All three seventeen-year-old swordsmen looked ten years younger and more refreshed than they had that morning:. Nuannuan’s [Rank 2 Honey-Slumber Aroma] had cleared away three months of training insomnia and meridian fatigue during their thirty-minute nap on the ring tiles. Their wind-qi was actually circulating twice as smoothly as before!
Bowing deeply with both hands holding out the folded pink blankets to seven-year-old Su Nuannuan, seventeen-year-old Senior Brother Feng Liu blushed and set a pouch of fifty silver taels on the charity donation box:.
“Little Sister Nuannuan, thank you for not melting our swords on Stage Two and thank you for covering us with warm blankets while we slept! That thirty-minute nap cured the meridian-headache I’ve had since winter! Please accept this silver to buy candy for the orphans at your Frost-Pine Elementary School—and give our Wind-Blade School twenty bowls of Principal Gu’s chilled sesame noodles!”
“Thank you for folding the blankets so neatly, Big Brother Feng!” seven-year-old Su Nuannuan beamed. Handing each of the three swordsmen a complimentary strawberry milk drop.
Grandpa Yao nodded approvingly from his velvet cushion on the counter and stamped their tournament cards with a little green turtle seal!
Even fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng , at Rank 3 Mid, walked down incognito from the VIP pavilion with two guards during the lunch hour. Paid five copper coins at Grandpa Fu’s abacus desk for a big bowl of Gu Changsheng’s [Earth-Fire Chilled Peanut-Sesame Chicken Noodles]. Took one bite under the shade of a willow tree.
The Prefecture Lord’s eyes widened in delight as the flaw-free Earth-Fire culinary essence cooled an old martial fire-injury in his lungs:.
“No wonder Magistrate Liu boasted about Frost-Pine Town all morning! Patriarch Gu’s five-copper noodles carry genuine Earth-Fire meridian nourishment, Doctor Qin’s ten-copper gummies outshine the Alchemy Guild’s three-hundred-silver pills. Those fifty security guards in pink bunny aprons are keeping the ten-thousand-person lunch line cleaner and more orderly than my own city garrison!”
Across the plaza, the greedy concession merchants and arrogant Alchemy Guild apprentices who had tried to charge fifty coppers for plain water-noodles. Fifty silver taels for low-grade salve sat behind completely empty stalls with flies buzzing around their jars!
Meanwhile, at the Gu Family Canteen tables, all one hundred and ninety defeated teenage contestants from the twelve counties sat shoulder-to-shoulder with their parents. Eating second helpings of chilled peanut-sesame noodles, trading martial notes with nine-year-old Gu Nian. Lining up to have Grandpa Yao’s green plush turtle stamp a cute turtle-paw mark on their tournament certificates!
“Young Master,” sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu whispered happily as he stacked strings of copper coins and silver donations into neat wooden chests behind the counter. “Not only did we feed ten thousand citizens and heal every bruised fighter in the morning brackets, over eight thousand prefecture residents just crossed sixty-five Warmth in a single lunch hour!”
“And look at the northern corner of the plaza, Brother Changsheng,” twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin said with a warm smile. She wiped her brow with a clean linen cloth and handed a healing gummy to a limping sixteen-year-old spearman from East-River County. “Three county magistrates just came over in person to ask when our Peace Pharmacy can send alchemists to open branch clinics in their county seats!
Even the chief physician of the Prefecture Charity Hall asked if he could study Grandpa Yao’s herb-sorting manual!”
Perched proudly on his velvet tea-cushion beside the gummy counter, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao adjusted his tiny gold spectacles with his green plush flipper and cleared his throat with scholarly dignity:.
“Tell the chief physician that as long as he swears never to charge poor farmers more than ten copper coins for a basic bruise medicine. This old turtle will let him audit our Frost-Pine Elementary School’s third-period alchemy class next Monday!”
Watching the arrogant Iron-Fist Clan and Wind-Blade School won over in ten minutes—and tasting the heavenly five-copper sesame. Noodles—over ten thousand citizens of Azure-Cloud Prefecture City cheered for the Gu Family until the arena banners shook!
[ DING! 10,000 PREFECTURE CITIZENS & IRON-FIST CLAN CONVERTED! ]
* New Allies : Patriarch Tie (Rank 2 Late | Warmth: 78) + Young.
Master Tie Ba [Warmth: 85] + 10,000 Citizens!
* Daily Income : +132,000 DP/day -> +145,000 DP/day!