Even with thirty twelve-foot Lava-Rock Golems standing in neat pink-aproned columns across the outer magma hall. The thirty-foot-tall double doors carved from translucent blue glacier-stone at the rear of the cavern did not melt by a single drop.
The chill radiating from the seams of those frosted blue doors was not ordinary winter cold—it was the pure, eternal stillness of the high starry heavens.
In the center of the double doors sat a palm-sized indentation shaped like a blooming nine-petaled ice lotus.
“Go ahead, Nian’er,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng said gently, standing right behind his nine-year-old son with seven-year-old Su Nuannuan, Auntie Qin, Grandpa Fu, and Grandpa Yao at his side. “Your mother keyed this seal to her bloodline and yours. Press your hand against the ice lotus.”
Nine-year-old Gu Nian nodded earnestly, stepped up to the frosted blue threshold, and pressed his small right palm squarely into the center of the carved ice lotus.
HUMMMMMM—CHIME!
The instant the nine-year-old boy’s warm skin touched the ancient glacier stone, the bloodline inside his chest hummed in pure harmony!
Instead of freezing his fingers, the azure frost across the thirty-foot doors turned into warm, liquid starlight that flowed gently around Gu Nian’s wrist like a mother’s welcoming embrace!
With a melodic chime that sounded like a thousand crystal wind-bells ringing across a snowy mountain peak, the thirty-foot-tall glacier-stone doors swung smoothly inward!
A wave of crisp, fragrant air—carrying the clean scent of winter plum blossoms and high-altitude starlight—washed over the threshold as Gu Changsheng led his family into the inner sanctum.
The chamber beyond took everyone’s breath away.
It was a magnificent circular dome a hundred feet high, carved entirely out of mirror-smooth, translucent blue star-ice that glowed with soft bioluminescent starlight.
Yet what made three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao freeze in Su Nuannuan’s arms were the walls and pillars surrounding the dome!
Crisscrossing the solid blue glacier walls were thirty-six sword slashes left behind during the seven-day battle eight years ago. Each slash was no wider than a silk thread, yet so unfathomably deep and sharp that even after eight years, faint silver sparks of severed spatial law still shimmered inside the cuts!
Clatter!
Inside his [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] body, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao dropped his miniature porcelain teacup onto the plush shell, his ghostly Golden Core whiskers trembling in sheer, jaw-dropping reverence:.
“Heavens above! Look at the spatial starlight lingering inside those thirty-six sword traces!” Grandpa Yao gasped, pushing his tiny gold spectacles up his nose with both green flippers.
“A Rank 6 Golden Core cultivator can only fly on a sword.
A Rank 7 Nascent Soul cultivator can only split a mountain—whoever left these thirty-six sword marks severed the local void itself while suppressing ninety percent of her power! Patriarch Gu, Nian’er’s mother is at least an Upper-Realm Rank 8 Star-Realm Sword Empress!”
“An Upper-Realm Rank 8 Star-Realm Sword Empress?!” twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin covered her lips in awe, while sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu bowed his head toward the sword marks in deep respect:.
“No wonder Madam Gu’s temperament was as pure as celestial snow when she lived in our small Frost-Pine courtyard nine years ago! Even when she wore plain cotton cloth and helped Young Master plant turnips in the yard, she was a supreme Empress of the starry heavens!”
Walking slowly into the center of the hundred-foot blue glacier dome, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng looked at the thirty-six thread-thin sword marks etched across the ice pillars. A quiet, deeply protective ache rose in his chest.
He could vividly picture the scene here eight winters ago:.
His wife Luo Qingxue—still pale and weak only ten months after giving birth to baby Gu Nian—standing alone inside this underground ice cavern for seven days and seven nights. Holding a plain mortal iron sword in her frost-bitten fingers. She cut down five Upper-Realm Script Enforcers one after another so their cold tracking arrays would.
Never find the small brick house in Frost-Pine Town where her husband and baby son were sleeping.
“Look at the foot of the northern pillar, Dad,” nine-year-old Gu Nian whispered softly, pointing to a small, circular cradle-mark carved into a sheltered alcove behind the central ice-lotus altar. “There’s a warm protective rune carved inside that little niche... Mom practiced how to block the wind from every direction before she sealed her hairpin on the altar.”
“And look at the thirty-six sword slashes on the walls,” seven-year-old Su Nuannuan said in a hushed, respectful voice as she held Auntie Qin’s hand and hugged Grandpa Yao’s green plush turtle. “Even though Grandpa Yao said those sword marks can cut a mountain in half, they don’t feel scary to Nuannuan at all! They feel just like the warm quilt Auntie Qin puts over us when it snows!”
Strange as it was, although those thirty-six Rank 8 sword marks radiated enough residual sharpness to make a mortal Grandmaster’s skin prickle from fifty paces away. Soon as nine-year-old Gu Nian and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan walked into the dome. The sharp sword-intent automatically folded its wings—wrapping around the two children and Gu Changsheng like a soft, protective velvet cloak!
“That is because a Sword Empress’s true sword-heart is born from what she wishes to protect, not what she wishes to destroy,” three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao murmured with deep respect. Taking off his tiny gold spectacles for a moment to bow his plush green turtle head toward the altar. “When Madam Gu left these thirty-six slashes across the dome eight years ago.
She infused every single cut with a mother’s bloodline recognition: to any enemy from the Heavenly Script Pavilion, this room is an inescapable chamber of death. To her husband and her children, it is the safest cradle in the mortal world.”
And right in the center of the glacial dome rose a seven-tiered altar of crystal ice-lotus petals.
Floating three feet above the top of that ice-lotus altar—bathed in a soft column of silver-blue starlight—was an exquisitely carved, seven-inch jade hairpin shaped like a soaring frost-phoenix with translucent wings:.
The [Frost-Phoenix Jade Hairpin]!
Suspended inside the heart of the jade phoenix was a single glowing drop of crimson-and-silver life-essence and a sealed spiritual voice-crystal that had waited eight long winters for its family to arrive.
“Mom’s hairpin...” nine-year-old Gu Nian whispered, his dark eyes shining with unblinking emotion as he walked slowly up the seven crystal steps of the ice altar with his father right beside him.
At the fifth crystal step, nine-year-old Gu Nian paused for half a second and looked up at his father:.
“Dad... what if Mom’s voice-message inside the hairpin is sad? Can we record a message back to tell her that I’m nine years old now, that I’m the Class President of Frost-Pine Elementary School.
That you cook me braised pork and meat porridge every day?”
“Not only will we tell her,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng said warmly. Squeezing his son’s small shoulder with his steady hand. “We’re going to bring this hairpin all the way to Sector 6 in person so you can show her your Gold Star Stickers yourself.
Go on, Nian’er—bring your mother’s present home.”
Reaching out with both small hands, nine-year-old Gu Nian gently touched the wingtip of the floating [Frost-Phoenix Jade Hairpin].
The moment Gu Nian’s fingers brushed the hairpin, however—.
CLICK—WHIRRRRR—BZZZZZT!
High up in the vaulted apex of the glacial dome eighty feet above their heads, a hidden patch of dark spatial distortion—left behind eight years ago by the Upper-Realm Script Enforcers. An automated booby-trap in case Luo Qingxue’s husband or son ever came to retrieve her keepsake!—suddenly tore open!
Triggered by the simultaneous presence of Gu Changsheng and a 10%-Darkening Gu Nian, Foreknowledge Decay and the Heavenly Script Pavilion’s automated alarm system activated at once!
Out of the spatial rift in the cavern ceiling descended a cold, three-foot-wide mechanical golden eyeball forged from interlocking brass-and-gold celestial gears, with a ruthless crimson scanning lens glowing in its center:.
An automated [Upper-Realm Heavenly Script Surveillance Eye , at Rank 3 Peak Enforcer Node,]!
As the mechanical brass eyeball rotated in the ceiling. Icy frost-chains of artificial fate-suppression tried to shoot down from the dome to lock the altar—only for the. Thirty-six Rank 8 sword slashes on the glacier walls to hum in unison and slice the fate-chains to pieces!
SWEEP—LOCK!
Even with its chains severed, a harsh, blinding beam of crimson light shot down from the mechanical golden eyeball in the ceiling. Scanning nine-year-old Gu Nian and twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng from head to toe as a cold, soulless mechanical voice boomed across the ice cavern like iron grinding on stone:.
[ HEAVENLY SCRIPT PAVILION — AUTOMATED SURVEILLANCE EYE #77-B ]
* TARGET SCAN #1: GU NIAN (DESIGNATED FINAL BOSS: CHAOS DEMON KING)
- SCRIPTED STATE : Orphans’ Pit Starvation | Darkening: 95.8%!
- ACTUAL STATE : Well-Fed Class President in Yellow Bunny Apron.
| Warmth: 100/100 | Darkening: 10.0%!
* TARGET SCAN #2: GU CHANGSHENG (DESIGNATED CANNON-FODDER FATHER)
- SCRIPTED STATE : Deceased on Third Day of Winter Month 12!
- ACTUAL STATE : Alive, Rank 2 Peak, Carrying a Seasoning Wok!
* CRITICAL ALERT: LOWER-REALM PLOT TOTALLY DERAILED!
* EXECUTING PROTOCOL: [GOLDEN SCRIPT-ERASURE LIGHTNING] TO VAPORIZE.
ANOMALY FATHER GU CHANGSHENG & FORCE-RESET SUBJECT GU NIAN!
“Dad!” nine-year-old Gu Nian gasped as the oppressive crimson scanning beam tried to pin his small shoulders to the ice altar!
“Big Brother! Dad! What is that big ugly golden eyeball in the ceiling?!”
seven-year-old Su Nuannuan cried out from the base of the stairs.
Immediately raising her [Little Fairy Pink Watering Can] in front of Auntie Qin and Grandpa Fu. Three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao shrieked in alarm from inside his plush turtle shell:.
“Patriarch Gu, look out! That’s an automated [Heavenly Script Surveillance Eye] planted by the Upper-Realm Script Enforcers eight years ago! It’s charging a bolt of [Rank 3 Peak Golden Script-Erasure Lightning] to wipe you out and torture Nian’er back into a villain!”
Without a single microsecond of hesitation, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng stepped directly in front of nine-year-old Gu Nian. Shielding his son completely behind his broad back as he unstrapped the two-foot-wide [Rank 3 Nine-Flavor Earth-Fire Chef Wok] with his right hand and his [Seven-Wolves Disciplinary Belt] with his left!
Looking straight up into the soulless crimson lens of the mechanical golden eyeball eighty feet overhead, Gu Changsheng’s eyes blazed like twin suns of molten gold:.
” Vaporize me and torture my nine-year-old son to ‘fix your script’?! I don’t care if you’re a dead machine from the Heavenly Script Pavilion or the King of Heaven himself—nobody points a bug-zapper at my child!”
KRA-KOOOOOOOOM!
Up in the cavern ceiling, the mechanical [Script Surveillance Eye] reached 100% charge and fired a five-foot-thick bolt of blinding golden-purple [Script-Erasure Lightning] straight down at Gu Changsheng and nine-year-old Gu Nian’s heads!
At the base of the crystal steps, newly promoted Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster Auntie Qin immediately stepped in front of seven-year-old Su Nuannuan and sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu. Sweeping both sleeves upward to raise a shimmering emerald-green [Rank 3 Hundred-Herb Life-Protecting Canopy] across the lower stairs. Grandpa Fu planted his [Dragon-Turtle Meridian Back Brace] and held his heavy black-iron abacus ready like an iron buckler!
“Brother Changsheng, Nian’er—we have Nuannuan covered at the stairs!” Auntie Qin called out, her clear eyes steady and fearless.
And out in the adjacent magma hall just beyond the open glacier doors. All thirty twelve-foot pink-aproned [Lava-Golem Tractors] heard the mechanical screech of the surveillance eye and turned their massive obsidian heads in unison:.
“HOSTILE... PEEPING... CAMERA...
DETECTED... IN... MISTRESS’S...
BEDROOM! PREPARING... GIANT...
DISH-SPONGES... FOR... CLEANUP!”
Standing on the seventh crystal step of the altar right below the plunging golden-purple lightning pillar, nine-year-old Gu Nian didn’t close his eyes or flinch behind his father’s waist.
Instead, the nine-year-old boy held his mother’s [Frost-Phoenix Jade Hairpin] tightly in his right hand. Rested his left hand against his father’s back to channel his Rank 2 Peak Chaos-Bone strength into [Father’s Authority]. Shouted up at the mechanical eyeball in the ceiling:.
“You locked my Mom in a cold prison for eight years—and now you want to hurt my Dad?! Mom’s hairpin and Dad’s wok are going to smash you into pieces!”
[ DING! UPPER-REALM SCRIPT SURVEILLANCE EYE ENGAGED! ]
* Enemy Unit : [Automated Heavenly Script Surveillance Eye]
(Firing Rank 3 Peak Golden Erasure Lightning!)
* Active Buff : [Father’s Authority] Overcharged to 150% + Mom’s.
[Frost-Phoenix Jade Hairpin] Awakening!
* Nuannuan Darkening Drop: 9% -> 8% (Fierce Protective Unity!)
* Daily Income : +225,000 DP/day -> +235,000 DP/day!