Lin Fan pulled the red root out of the hollow pine with both hands and held it up to the moonlight.
It was as thick as a baby’s wrist and glowed a deep ruby red. It also smelled a little like chili oil. Lin Fan was far too excited to notice.
His heart pounded. Two hours ago, Second Elder Gu Ba had cursed him out in the main hall. The old man had cut off his monthly silver to help cover Grandpa Fu’s five-hundred-tael gate bill.
No silver meant no pills. No pills meant no Rank 1 Peak before the winter clan meeting. This root was his only way forward.
He glanced down at the black iron ring on his thumb. A soft snore drifted out of it.
Every time I find a good herb, that greedy old ghost takes thirty percent, Lin Fan thought. He says it’s to mend his soul. It’s always to mend his soul.
If I chew slowly, the smell will wake him up. So I won’t chew at all.
A sly smile crept across his face. Once the root reached his stomach, even a Golden Core remnant soul couldn’t make him spit it out.
Twenty feet above him, on a snowy pine branch, Gu Changsheng watched Lin Fan’s face change three times in five seconds.
Greedy, then sneaky, then proud of himself, Gu Changsheng thought. The man’s face is a weather report.
Beside him, Gu Nian peeked between two clumps of pine needles. He chewed his roasted chestnut very slowly, so it wouldn’t make a sound.
Down below, Lin Fan didn’t even brush the grave dirt off.
He opened his mouth as wide as it would go and shoved the whole root inside.
Crunch.
The outside burned his tongue at once. That was the raw chili paint. Under it came the bitter, gritty crunch of thirty crushed croton beans.
Lin Fan’s eyes watered. His throat jerked twice, trying to push the lump back up.
Bitter medicine cures the worst sickness, he told himself. The hotter it burns, the purer the Yang qi.
He pounded his chest with his fist. Then he swallowed so hard that a vein popped out on his forehead.
The half-pound turnip slid down his throat and dropped into his stomach like a stone.
Gu Changsheng leaned close to his son’s ear. “He swallowed it whole,” he whispered. “No chewing.
That’s very bad manners.”
Gu Nian pressed his yellow wool scarf over his mouth. His shoulders shook.
Inside the black iron ring, a wisp of white smoke twitched.
Master Yao Chen had once been a Rank 6 Golden Core Pill Sovereign of the Southern Pill Tower. Three hundred years of making pills had given him the sharpest nose on the continent.
That nose woke him up now. A sharp, cheap smell was drifting into the ring. It was kitchen chili and animal purge beans.
Wait, the old voice said inside Lin Fan’s head. It sounded sleepy at first, then very awake. *What did you just eat, boy?
Why does your stomach smell like red peppers and horse medicine? Spit it out. Now.*
Lin Fan wiped red oil off his chin with his white silk sleeve. He laughed through his nose.
“Too late, Master,” he whispered, patting his belly. “I didn’t want to wake you, so I swallowed the Blood-Jade Ginseng myself.”
“Don’t try to trick me into spitting it up so you can have it,” he added. “I can already feel pure Yang qi rushing through my belly.”
Inside the ring, Master Yao Chen went very still.
He swept his spiritual sense down into Lin Fan’s stomach. A white turnip sat there, melting fast. Its red paint was peeling off.
Out of its core poured croton oil at ten times the normal strength.
Pure Yang qi, my wrinkled foot, Yao Chen roared. His ghostly beard stood straight up. *That’s no ginseng.
It’s a radish! Somebody took the real herb and left you a radish full of croton oil. Seal your lower acupoints before—*
The warning came half a breath too late.
[ DING! UPGRADE BOX PRANK ITEM TRIGGERED! ]
* Item Activated : [Fake Blood-Jade Ginseng (10x Explosive Diarrhea)]
* Target : Lin Fan (Rank 1 Mid Martial | Luck Halo: 100%)
* Effect : Unblockable 10x Belly Purge!
Ignores all Rank 1 Martial muscle locks!
Gurgle.
A deep rumble rolled out of Lin Fan’s belly. It sounded like a mudslide under a mountain.
His smug smile vanished. All the color left his face until it matched the snow around his knees.
In two heartbeats, his stomach swelled up like a pig’s bladder. The silk sash around his waist creaked.
Then the cramp hit. It was ten times worse than any medicine shop purge, and it twisted his insides into knots.
“No,” Lin Fan gasped. “No, no, no.”
He crossed his legs in the snow. He pushed every thread of his Rank 1 Mid Blood Qi down into his lower body and clenched tight.
“I am a martial cultivator,” he hissed through chattering teeth. Sweat ran down his face. “I can lock my pores for half an hour.
A cheap mortal laxative can’t break my iron defense—”
Boom.
System alchemy didn’t care about a Rank 1 cultivator’s pride.
A wet, thunderous blast tore out of the seat of Lin Fan’s white brocade trousers. It blew the brass clasp off his belt. It ripped a long seam down the back of his pants.
Then it sprayed three yards of clean mountain snow a steaming shade of brown.
“Aaargh! My dantian! My meridians are melting!”
Lin Fan fell onto his hands and knees. A second wave hit him, then a third.
He wore those white robes every morning to look like a young immortal in front of the town girls. They were ruined forever.
Inside the ring, Master Yao Chen curled into a ball in the farthest corner. He clamped both ghostly hands over his nose.
Cut the spirit link, he wheezed, flapping his sleeves. *Cut it off! In three hundred years, I have never seen a host soil himself like a sick water buffalo.
Don’t call me Master ever again!*
Up in the pine, Gu Nian stared down at the “righteous young hero.” Lin Fan was rolling in the slush with his pants blown open.
The boy’s shoulders trembled.
He pressed both hands over his mouth. He’d done that for years, whenever Second Branch guards walked past his window. Stay quiet.
Stay hidden. Don’t let them notice you.
Gu Changsheng tapped his son’s nose with one warm finger. His face was perfectly serious.
“Look, Nian’er,” he whispered. “Young Master Lin is working so hard to fertilize our ancestors’ trees.”
Pfft.
Gu Nian lost the fight.
He doubled over against his father’s coat and laughed out loud. It was a bright, clear boy’s laugh. It shook his yellow scarf and squeezed happy tears out of his black-gold eyes.
It was the first time in three years that Gu Nian had laughed without being afraid.
Gu Changsheng felt something warm flow from the boy’s small chest into his own dantian. A golden panel opened in front of his eyes.
[ DING! FATHER-KID TRUST TEST #2 PASSED! ]
* Milestone : Gu Nian laughed out loud after all of.
three years. The shadow of “Chosen One” Lin Fan.
is breaking!
* Gu Nian Stats : Warmth Index 78/100 -> 86/100.
Darkening Meter 28% -> 24% (-4% DROP)
* Immediate DP : +50 DP Milestone Bonus (Balance: 50 DP)
* Daily Income : +80 DP/day -> +100 DP/day.
Worth every croton bean, Gu Changsheng thought.
He tightened his arm around his son so the boy wouldn’t laugh himself right off the branch.
Down in the clearing, Lin Fan’s night was only getting worse.
The stink of his ruined robes drifted across the snow. It mixed with the scent of his own silk handkerchief. An hour ago, Gu Changsheng had tucked that handkerchief into the seam of the iron coffin under the roots.
Thump.
Deep under the hollow pine, something heavy beat once, like an iron heart.
Thump. Thump. Crack.
The rusted chains around the buried coffin snapped. The red ink on the Corpse-Luring Talisman flared bright. It drank in the smell of blood and filth from five feet away.
“W-what’s that sound?”
Lin Fan froze in the middle of a groan. The ground under his knees bulged upward.
Clang.
A six-hundred-pound lid of black tomb iron burst out of the dirt. It spun fifteen feet through the air and crashed into a snowbank.
A figure rose out of the pit. It stood seven feet tall in rotten iron scale armor.
Its skin was dry and purple-black, stretched tight over muscles as hard as iron. Two curved yellow fangs stuck out of its cracked lips. Freezing gray mist rolled out of its throat.
It was the Rank 1 Peak Blood-Corpse.
Lin Fan had planned to lure this monster down the mountain tonight. It was supposed to tear Gu Changsheng and Gu Nian apart.
The Blood-Corpse threw back its head and shrieked. Snow shook loose from every pine on the ridge.
The real ginseng was already safe in Gu Changsheng’s inside pocket. So the half-blind corpse followed the only two things it could sense.
One was the blood-scented handkerchief from its coffin. The other was the hot, terrible stink of the man kneeling right in front of it.
Its cloudy red eyes locked onto Lin Fan’s bare, shaking backside.
“N-no! Wait!” Lin Fan screamed.
His voice cracked.
“I’m the one who woke you up! You’re supposed to kill Gu Changsheng!”
Gu Changsheng is right up here, Gu Changsheng thought, chewing his chestnut. But thank you for saying it out loud, Young Master Lin.
The Blood-Corpse lunged out of the pit on all fours.
Five black claws slashed through the air where Lin Fan’s head had been a moment before. They cut a pine sapling in half. They tore the rest of Lin Fan’s cloak right off his back.
Inside the black ring, Master Yao Chen let out a strangled yelp as cold corpse-wind scraped across the surface of the iron band.
Run, you idiot! Yao Chen barked, though he still kept one ghostly sleeve pinched tight over his nose. *That’s a blood-fed tomb guardian!
Its skin is harder than refined pig iron, and your meridians are half-empty from purging your guts out!
If those black claws catch your spine, not even a Golden Core pill will glue you back together!*
“Then lend me your soul fire, Master!” Lin Fan shrieked, his voice cracking an octave higher as another swipe shaved three hairs off the back of his neck. “Burn it to ash!”
Lend you my soul fire while you’re leaking croton oil down both legs?! Yao Chen snapped back in fury. *My spiritual fire would ignite the methane in your trousers and blow us both over the county wall!
Use your own two feet and run!*
Lin Fan didn’t dare argue, and he didn’t stop to pull up his pants.
“Help! Somebody save me! The corpse wants to eat my rear end!”
He held his ruined trousers up with one hand and waved the other wildly in the dark. Then the “spotless white-robed genius of Frost-Pine Town” bolted down the mountain trail faster than a scalded rabbit.
The Blood-Corpse bounded after him through the snowdrifts. Every time Lin Fan tripped over a frozen stone, its iron jaws snapped two inches behind his bare heels with a sound like a bear trap slamming shut.
Up in the tree, Gu Nian wiped a tear of laughter off his lashes. He tugged his father’s sleeve.
“Dad, that ugly zombie runs really fast,” he said. His voice sounded bright and easy, like a normal kid’s. “Is it going to chase him all the way into town?”
“It would,” Gu Changsheng said, tossing the empty chestnut shell into his palm.
His eyes narrowed as he looked down the winding path. “But someone we care about is waiting at the bottom of the trail, and a good boss doesn’t let grave trash bother his butler.”
Half a mile down, the mountain road met the woodshed lane. A yellow paper lantern swung there in the night wind, casting a warm circle of light across the ruts.
One-eyed Grandpa Fu stood beside a wooden handcart full of empty sacks. He rubbed his gloved hands together and blew warm breath onto his knuckles. He was waiting patiently in the freezing dark to help his Young Master carry home the night’s harvest.
On the slope above him, the Blood-Corpse lifted its head and sniffed the air.
It kicked the exhausted Lin Fan into a thorny ditch like a sack of wet trash. Then it turned toward the warm lantern light and charged straight at Grandpa Fu.