“MY BEHIND! WHO PUT IRON NAILS UNDER MY CHAIR?!”
Howling like a stuck pig as six dark-iron meridian-draining nails stuck out of the seat of his embroidered official robes. Forty-eight-year-old Deputy Magistrate Zhou crashed back down onto his splintered referee platform and rolled around clutching his backside in front of twenty thousand stunned spectators!
And out on the eastern side of Arena Stage #1, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan [Luck Halo: 16%] was in an even worse nightmare!
Because the other six [Dark-Iron Meridian-Draining Nails] had shot up through the stone tiles and pinned the thick leather soles of his boots to the stage floor. The underground draining array that he had paid five hundred silver to rig against Gu Nian was now sucking the unstable. Drug-inflated Rank 2 Peak blood-qi straight out of Lin Fan’s own leg meridians at a terrifying rate!
“No! Why did the Meridian-Draining Nails reverse onto MY boots?!”
Feeling his borrowed Rank 2 Peak cultivation dropping by the second as the twenty thousand spectators in the stands began pointing at the glowing black array lines around his pinned boots and shouting “Look! Those are illegal Meridian-Draining Nails under the stage! Someone rigged the arena!”, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan knew that within ten breaths, the Prefecture Lord’s guards would storm the stage and arrest him!
Down at the ringside family bench, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng sat with his arms folded calmly across his blue cotton apron. Watching the dark-red blood-qi leak out of Lin Fan’s heels into the floorboards like air whistling out of a punctured pig-bladder.
“Look at that,” three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao clicked his tongue in disgust from inside seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s arms, his tiny gold spectacles glinting on his green plush turtle snout. “When this old man was still trapped inside that unfilial rat’s ring last month, I warned him three times that swallowing Blood-Fiend Cult pills turns a martial artist’s blood into magnetic iron-sludge! Now his own Meridian-Draining Nails are treating his dantian like a free buffet!”
“Grandpa Yao, why are that bad brother’s fingernails turning black and smelly?” seven-year-old Su Nuannuan wrinkled her tiny nose, holding her pink rabbit sleeve in front of her face. “He smells even worse than the centipede jar in the Black-Sand market!”
“Don’t breathe that air, Nuannuan—here, smell Auntie Qin’s mint sachet,” twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin said gently, holding a fragrant herbal pouch by the little girl’s nose while her eyes narrowed coldly at the stage. “Even at a public Prefecture Tournament in front of twenty thousand people, Lin Fan still brought a lethal demonic poison art onto the ring against a nine-year-old child!”
Up in the front row of the competitor stands. Eighteen-year-old Young Master Tie Ba of the Iron-Fist Clan and seventeen-year-old Senior Brother Feng Liu of the Wind-Blade School both jumped to their feet and shouted toward the VIP pavilion:.
“Prefecture Lord! Stop the match! That Contestant Lin Fan is burning a forbidden Blood-Burst Pill—and those six nails under Deputy Magistrate Zhou’s broken chair were meant for Little Brother Nian!”
Cornered, humiliated, and watching his entire life crumble into ashes before his eyes, the eighteen-year-old “Chosen One” dropped his hypocritical “righteous young hero” mask completely!
It’s all Gu Changsheng’s fault! Lin Fan howled inside his rotting, feverish mind as his [Protagonist Luck Halo] flickered like a dying candle in a hurricane. *Two months ago, I was supposed to be the rising star of Azure-Cloud Prefecture!
Gu Changsheng was supposed to be dead in the snow, Qin Wan’er was supposed to beg me for pills, Master Yao Chen was supposed to serve me like a dog.
This nine-year-old brat Gu Nian was supposed to be a starving street rat! Why did everything become Gu Changsheng’s?!*
“If I’m going down, I’m taking Gu Changsheng’s son’s eyes with me!”
With a psychotic, vein-bursting shriek, Lin Fan bit through his own lower lip and forcefully detonated the second layer of the forbidden [Blood-Swallowing Devil Pill] inside his dantian!
RIP-SPLATTER!
Using the violent burst of dark-red devil qi to rip his bare feet straight out of his nail-pinned boots. Lin Fan lunged across the forty-foot stage like a skinless blood-fiend—his ten fingernails elongating into three-inch, pitch-black, corrosive claws. He unleashed the Blood-Fiend Cult’s forbidden killing art: [Blood-Swallowing Devil Claws]!
Aiming all ten poisoned black fingernails straight at nine-year-old Gu Nian’s eyes and throat, Lin Fan screamed at the top of his lungs:.
“DIE, YOU LITTLE BRAT! EVEN IF GU CHANGSHENG KILLS ME, I’LL GOUGE YOUR EYES OUT IN FRONT OF HIM FIRST!”
Up in that VIP pavilion, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng roared in fury and leaped to his feet: “Forbidden Blood-Fiend Arts in my Prefecture Arena?! Stop him!”
Yet even a Rank 3 Mid Grandmaster in the high VIP stands was two hundred yards away—and Lin Fan’s poisoned black claws were already less than two feet from nine-year-old Gu Nian’s face!
Splat.
A single drop of foul, corrosive black-red blood-mist flying off Lin Fan’s fingernails landed squarely on the chest of nine-year-old Gu Nian’s. Spotless yellow cotton bunny apron—staining a dirty gray spot right across the white cloth rabbit ear that his father Gu Changsheng had hand-washed. Ironed for him over the warm stove that very morning!
In the center of Arena Stage #1, nine-year-old Gu Nian looked down at the dirty gray blood-stain on his yellow bunny apron.
For the first time since the tournament began, the polite, gentle smile on the nine-year-old Class President’s face vanished completely.
“Dad washed and ironed this bunny apron for me at six o’clock this morning,” nine-year-old Gu Nian said softly, his small voice echoing across the silent stone stage like winter thunder. “And you just got dirty blood on my bunny’s ear.”
BOOOOOOOOM—ROOOOOOOAR!
For one breathtaking, earth-shaking second, as nine-year-old Gu Nian raised his dark eyes to glare at the lunging Lin Fan. The dormant, world-ruling majesty of his purified [Innate Chaos Sovereign Bloodline] erupted behind his four-foot-tall frame!
Powered by his 100/100 Warmth, his five [Little Red Flower Merit Stickers], his new [Gold Star Honor Sticker]. His righteous anger over his father’s hand-washed apron. Gu Nian’s cultivation didn’t stay at Rank 2 Mid—it surged straight into Rank 2 Late Martial (Chaos Golden-Marrow & Organ Perfection — 8,500 lbs Force)!
Behind the nine-year-old boy in the yellow bunny apron, twenty thousand spectators saw the towering, thirty-foot phantom silhouette of an ancient. Golden-eyed Chaos Dragon Sovereign looking down from the heavens like a supreme deity judging a crawling bug!
The mere spiritual pressure of that purified Sovereign bloodline slammed into Lin Fan’s cheap [Blood-Swallowing Devil Claws] in midair!
CRACK-FIZZLE-POP!
Before Lin Fan’s blackened fingernails could get within a foot of Gu Nian’s face. The low-grade Blood-Fiend devil qi was crushed by the higher-order Chaos Sovereign aura like a candle flame hit by a tidal wave—backfiring straight into Lin Fan’s own hand meridians. Snapping all ten of his fingernails backward with a spray of blood!
“A-ancient Sovereign Bloodline?! How can a nine-year-old child possess a Rank 2 Late Sovereign aura?!” Lin Fan shrieked in midair as his ten fingers cramped in agonizing backlash!
Nine-year-old Gu Nian didn’t use a single demonic killing move.
Remembering his father’s strict instruction—“Never get dirty blood on your bare hands when taking out the trash. Use your school supplies”—nine-year-old Gu Nian calmly unclipped his heavy rectangular [Rank 1 Perfection: Fused Cast-Iron Pencil Case] (stitched with a little red flower on the lid. Containing six neatly sharpened charcoal pencils and a wooden ruler) from his belt with his right hand!
Stepping inside Lin Fan’s collapsing guard on his yellow bunny slippers, nine-year-old Gu Nian swung the flat iron side of his pencil case in a textbook horizontal backhand right across eighteen-year-old Lin Fan’s jaw!
“School Rule Number One: NO USING DIRTY DEVIL ARTS ON CAMPUS!”
CLANG—KRA-SMAAAACK!
Backed by 8,500 pounds of Rank 2 Late Chaos-Bone Strength, that rectangular cast-iron pencil case hit Lin Fan’s jaw like a runaway iron locomotive!
Without a single charcoal pencil inside the case snapping its tip. Eighteen-year-old Lin Fan spat a mouthful of blood and three more broken teeth into the sky, spun backward forty feet out of the ring. Six of his ribs cracked like dry firewood.
Crashed headfirst right on top of the groaning Deputy Magistrate Zhou—shattering the corrupt referee’s platform into a pile of kindling. Exposing the fifty-pound [Blood-Magnet Master Stone] and twelve illegal [Dark-Iron Meridian-Draining Nails] in front of the entire city!
Up on Stage #1, nine-year-old Gu Nian opened his cast-iron pencil case. Checked with a relieved nod that all six of his charcoal pencils and his bamboo arithmetic ruler were still unbroken in their velvet slots. Then looked toward the ringside family bench with a slightly worried expression:.
“Auntie Qin, Dad... can honey-soap wash devil-pill blood out of white cotton? I don’t want the bunny ear on my apron to stay gray!”
“Don’t worry, Nian’er—Auntie Qin brought a bottle of Grandpa Yao’s Jade-Dew Stain Remover right here in my medicine basket! Two drops of warm water and your bunny ear will be whiter than fresh snow!” twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin called back warmly.
All twenty thousand spectators in the stadium erupted into a deafening roar that nearly lifted the clouds above Azure-Cloud Prefecture City!
“DID YOU SEE THAT?! Nine-year-old Class President Gu Nian broke through to the Rank 2 Late Iron-Bone & Organ-Refining Stage right in the middle of the ring. That Blood-Fiend rat got a drop of dirt on the bunny apron his dad washed for him!”
“And he didn’t even use a martial weapon—he knocked a Rank 2 Peak devil-pill user forty feet out of the ring with a single backhand swing of his cast-iron school pencil case!”
“Look at the six charcoal pencils inside his pencil box—not a single lead tip broke! What kind of divine blacksmith in Frost-Pine Town forged a primary-schooler’s stationery out of meteoric iron?!”
Down by the ringside balustrade, Captain One-Ear Scar, Vice-Captain Bull. Poison-Hand Wu banged their brass gongs together until their palms turned red, leading all fifty pink-aproned security uncles and ten thousand noodle-loving prefecture citizens in a thunderous chant:.
“NO DIRTY DEVIL ARTS ON CAMPUS! CLASS PRESIDENT NIAN IS INVINCIBLE! ONE PENCIL CASE SWEEPS THE PREFECTURE!”
At the ringside bench, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng stood up and gave his nine-year-old son an approving nod and two thumbs up:.
“Clean footwork, Nian’er. You kept your elbow tucked, protected the charcoal pencils, and sent the trash straight into the recycling pile behind the referee’s desk. Come on down so Auntie Qin can dab that spot off your bunny ear before the finals.”
“Yes, Dad!” nine-year-old Gu Nian beamed, clipping his cast-iron pencil case neatly back onto his school belt as the golden Chaos Dragon Sovereign phantom faded back into his warm, 10%-Darkening nine-year-old frame!
Up in the central VIP pavilion, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng stood beside the white-marble railing with his hands trembling in sheer shock. He stared down at the nine-year-old boy walking calmly down the stage stairs:.
“Magistrate Liu... that thirty-foot golden dragon-sovereign phantom that just flashed behind nine-year-old Gu Nian’s back... even my Rank 3 Mid Internal Qi felt the urge to bow!
And when he swung that rectangular iron pencil box, there wasn’t a single trace of demonic hostility or dark corruption in his meridians—just pure, protective family righteousness!”
“Hahaha! My Lord Prefecture Governor, that is the power of Patriarch Gu’s primary-school education!” sixty-year-old Town Magistrate Liu stroked his beard proudly, refilling the Prefecture Lord’s teacup from his Frost-Pine thermos.
“In Frost-Pine Town, our children learn that martial cultivation is for keeping the streets clean, protecting their siblings, and making sure nobody stains their clean laundry!”
Sitting on Su Nuannuan’s lap at the ringside bench, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao pushed up his tiny gold spectacles with his green plush turtle flipper and nodded in deep satisfaction:.
“A nine-year-old Rank 2 Late Chaos Golden-Bone Sovereign whose Darkening Meter is locked at ten percent because he loves his dad’s hand-washed bunny apron... If the Upper-Realm Script Enforcers ever saw this scene, their eyeballs would pop right out of their sockets!”
[ DING! LIN FAN CRUSHED BY A 9-YEAR-OLD’S IRON PENCIL CASE! ]
* Gu Nian Realm : Advanced to Rank 2 Late Martial (8,500 lbs)!
* Lin Fan State : Defeated in 1 Swing! 6 Broken Ribs! Exposed for.
Practicing Forbidden Blood Arts & Rigging Stage!
* Daily Income : +155,000 DP/day -> +165,000 DP/day!