At the foot of the North Peak trail, the warm yellow glow of Grandpa Fu’s oiled-paper lantern cut through the swirling midnight snow.
The one-eyed old butler stood beside a two-wheeled wooden handcart. His faded cotton coat was buttoned tightly to his chin, and his heavy black-iron abacus was tucked securely under his left arm. Every thirty seconds, he rose onto his tiptoes and peered anxiously up the steep, dark mountain path.
“The night wind is getting sharper,” Grandpa Fu murmured to himself, his breath puffing white in the freezing air. “Young Master’s dantian was only just flushed with warm broth this afternoon. Little Master Nian is only eight years old.
If that scoundrel from the Second Branch tries to play dirty tricks in the dark, they might catch a chill.”
He adjusted the wool muffler around his neck and tapped the wooden handle of the cart.
“Still, Young Master looked steadier today than he has in three years,” the old butler whispered, a faint smile creasing the corner of his single eye. “When he swung that chamber pot at Scar-Face Liu this morning, he had the late Patriarch’s fire in his bones.”
Before Grandpa Fu could finish his thought, a high-pitched, undignified screech echoed down the pine-lined ridge. Right behind it came the heavy thud of something massive crashing through the frozen brush.
Grandpa Fu stiffened at once. His single good eye narrowed as he set the paper lantern on the corner of the handcart and reached for the iron tire-bar strapped to the cart’s axle.
Out of the dark treeline fifty yards up the slope tumbled a messy figure in shredded, mud-splattered white silk.
It was Lin Fan.
His torn trousers were tangled around his calves, and his hair was full of pine needles. A foul stench trailed ten yards behind him like a yellow fog. Before he could slow down, the Second Branch’s prized nephew-in-law tripped over a frozen tree root and somersaulted headfirst into a deep ditch of winter brambles.
Crash.
“Owww! My face! My teeth!”
Lin Fan whimpered weakly from the bottom of the thorny briar patch.
A second later, his eyes rolled back from the combined shock of croton dehydration, blood loss, and sheer terror. He went limp in the mud.
Yet the thing chasing him did not stop at the ditch.
Roaaar!
Bursting through a wall of snow-laden bushes came the seven-foot Rank 1 Peak Blood-Corpse.
The monster realized at once that the human in the ditch smelled worse than a fermented latrine pit. Instead, its cloudy red eyes caught sight of the warm yellow paper lantern flickering at the bottom of the hill. Right beside that lantern stood Grandpa Fu, whose clean, vigorous blood-qi smelled like a feast.
With a harsh hiss that sent black frost swirling across the trail, the Blood-Corpse kicked off a boulder with legs as thick as oak pillars. It cleared thirty feet in a single bound and thrust ten iron-black claws straight toward Grandpa Fu’s chest.
“An awakened Rank 1 Peak Blood-Corpse?!”
Grandpa Fu’s pupil shrank to a pinprick.
As a loyal Rank 1 Early Martial butler with a crippled leg and a thirty-year hunched spine, he knew the odds. He had zero chance of blocking a monster whose iron skin could shrug off steel sabers. Yet not for a single fraction of a second did the old man step backward toward the town gate.
Right behind his cart lay the direct lane leading to the Third Branch courtyard.
“Young Master and Little Master are still on this mountain!” Grandpa Fu roared. He planted his crippled left leg deep into the frozen ruts and swung his iron abacus up with both hands like a shield.
“Even if this old bone shatters tonight, you won’t take one step toward our house!”
The rank, rotting wind of the Blood-Corpse’s claws was already three feet from Grandpa Fu’s white eyebrows. The cold gale was sharp enough to cut a shallow red line across his wrinkled cheek.
Then a shadow dropped from the sky.
Whoosh!
A tall, broad-shouldered figure plummeted out of the dark canopy of a roadside pine right above the lantern like a descending hawk.
“Grandpa Fu, step back and hold my coat!”
Gu Changsheng landed squarely between the old butler and the charging monster. With his left hand, he set eight-year-old Gu Nian gently down onto the seat of the wooden handcart. With his right hand, he whipped the heavy leather [Seven-Wolves Disciplinary Belt] from his waist and wrapped it three times around his knuckles like an iron-studded gauntlet.
[ FATHER’S AUTHORITY — ACTIVE COMBAT TRIGGER! ]
* Protected Household Within 30 Yards :.
- Child #1: Gu Nian (Age 8 | Rank 0 | Darkening: 24%)
- Elder #1: Grandpa Fu (Age 62 | Rank 1 Early | Warmth: 98/100)
* Host Cultivation : Rank 1 Mid Martial (800 lbs Base Force)
* Weapon Bound : [Seven-Wolves Disciplinary Belt]
* Bonus Activated : +100% True Disciplinary Damage against all.
grave-creatures & intruders threatening family!
Hummm!
A visible ring of warm, golden-red Blood Qi flared around Gu Changsheng’s boots. It melted the snow in a six-foot circle right down to bare black stone.
The charging Blood-Corpse sensed the sudden explosion of pure Yang vitality and tried to twist its stiff iron torso in midair. Against a father standing directly in front of his eight-year-old son and his loyal old butler, however, there was nowhere to dodge.
“Disturbing your own descendants’ sleep at midnight?” Gu Changsheng’s eyes flashed cold and bright under the lantern light. He sank his waist, pivoted on his right heel, and drove his belt-wrapped fist straight upward in a textbook rising uppercut.
“Go back in your box and lie down!”
Clang—Boom!
The sound was not like flesh hitting flesh. It sounded like a thousand-pound siege hammer smashing squarely into the underside of a cast-iron temple bell.
Sparks and golden-red shockwaves exploded outward from the point of impact. The blast blew the snow off the roadside trees for twenty yards in every direction.
The Rank 1 Peak Blood-Corpse’s iron jaw caved inward by three inches with a loud crunch of ancient bone. The unblockable True Disciplinary Force of the [Seven-Wolves Disciplinary Belt] surged straight through its skull and slammed into the fist-sized clump of black corpse-qi knotted inside its throat.
Pop!
Like a soap bubble pierced by a red-hot needle, the centuries-old dark core inside the monster’s gullet shattered into harmless gray ash.
The seven-foot iron-skinned behemoth froze stiff in midair. The crimson flames in its eye sockets winked out in an instant. A heartbeat later, its massive body crashed backward onto the frozen trail like a felled pine trunk and did not twitch again.
Clink. Clatter.
From the shattered throat of the motionless corpse, a thumb-sized piece of mutton-fat jade tumbled out onto the snow. It glowed with a gentle, milky-warm green halo that smelled faintly of spring lotus, and it rolled right up to the toe of Gu Changsheng’s boot.
Silence fell over the mountain crossroads. The only sound was the soft hiss of melting snow around Gu Changsheng’s steaming right fist.
Behind the handcart, Grandpa Fu stood frozen like a wooden statue.
Clack.
The heavy black-iron abacus slipped from the old butler’s trembling fingers and dropped into the snowdrift at his feet.
Grandpa Fu stared at the fallen Rank 1 Peak Blood-Corpse. That monster could have slaughtered Second Elder Gu Ba and ten clan guards without breaking a sweat. Slowly, the old man raised his single teary eye to look at the steady, broad back of the young master he had raised since childhood.
“Y-Young Master...” Grandpa Fu’s voice cracked, and his wrinkled chin quivered as he stepped forward to grab Gu Changsheng’s sleeve with both hands. “That blood-qi...
that eight-hundred-pound punch!
Your crippled dantian... the three-year frost poison is completely gone?! You broke through to Rank 1 Mid Martial?!”
Sitting on the wooden handcart wrapped in his yellow wool scarf, eight-year-old Gu Nian stared at his father’s back too. His black-gold eyes shone in the lantern light, and his small fists clenched tight on his knees in quiet pride.
“Dad didn’t even take a step back,” Gu Nian whispered to himself. “One punch, and the big monster flew away.”
Gu Changsheng exhaled a long plume of white steam. He unwrapped the leather belt from his knuckles, buckled it neatly back around his waist, and bent down to pick up both the glowing [Warm-Marrow Tomb Jade] and Grandpa Fu’s iron abacus.
He brushed the snow off the abacus and pressed it back into the old butler’s hands with a warm, reassuring smile.
“I told you at noon, Grandpa Fu. A bowl of hot bone noodles and a good afternoon nap fixed me right up,” Gu Changsheng said lightly, reaching over to ruffle Gu Nian’s hair. “How could I stay a sick cripple when I have an eight-year-old son to raise and an old butler who still needs to collect his retirement pay?”
Grandpa Fu’s single eye turned bright red. He wiped his sleeve hard across his face and nodded three times. His Warmth Index ticked straight up from 98/100 to 99/100.
“This old servant doesn’t want retirement pay,” Grandpa Fu sniffled, clutching his abacus to his chest. “Seeing the Third Branch stand tall again is worth more than ten thousand taels of gold!”
Just then, the sound of heavy boots and clanking iron halberds echoed from the lower parish road.
Four Frost-Pine Town night-watchmen carrying pine torches came jogging around the bend. They had been drawn by the thunderous roar of the corpse and the awful stench drifting down from the thorny ditch fifty yards up the slope.
“Who goes there?! We heard a monster roaring near the tombs—augh! What in the nine hells died in that ditch?!”
The lead watchman gagged violently. He held his torch high over the bramble patch where the unconscious, half-naked Lin Fan lay sprawled face-down in the mess of his own croton purge.
Gu Changsheng calmly stepped into the shadow of the roadside pine with Grandpa Fu’s cart. Together, father, son, and butler watched as the four night-watchmen pinched their noses and poked Lin Fan’s bare, thorn-scratched backside with the butt of a wooden spear.
“Wait a minute,” the second watchman cried in disgust. “Isn’t this white silk robe Lin Fan? That’s the nephew-in-law from the Gu Clan Second Branch who’s always acting like a righteous saint on Central Street!”
“A saint my foot!” the squad captain spat, pulling out a wooden arrest tally from his belt. “Look at his hands—they’re covered in grave dirt!
And he relieved himself all over the public mountain road right below the ancestral tombs!”
The captain slapped the wooden tally against his palm with a sharp crack.
“By Frost-Pine Town Night Statute Fourteen, public indecency and defiling an ancestral graveyard carries a mandatory twenty-silver sanitation fine and a night in the cold-water stocks! Tie him to a pole and carry him to the magistrate’s shed! Make sure you hold him downwind!”
The four watchmen held their breath, looped a hemp rope around the unconscious Lin Fan’s ankles, and slung him from a carrying pole. As they dragged him bumping down the cobblestones like a sack of wet turnips, a crisp chime echoed inside Gu Changsheng’s mind:.
[ DING! CHOSEN ONE FORTUNE PLUNDERED & HUMILIATED! ]
* Target : Lin Fan (Frost-Pine Town Chosen One)
* Fortune Lost : Three-Hundred-Year Blood-Jade Ginseng +.
Warm-Marrow Tomb Jade + Public Saint Reputation.
* Luck Halo Drop : 100% -> 88% (-12% CRACKED!)
* Plunder Reward : +120 DP! (Current Balance: 170 DP)
* Gu Nian Stats : Darkening Meter 24% -> 22% (-2% DROP!)
* Daily DP Income : +100 DP/day -> +120 DP/day!
Gu Changsheng waited until the watchmen’s torches disappeared down the town road. Then he walked back up the slope with Grandpa Fu and Gu Nian to bury the shattered remains of the ancestor corpse properly so the night wind wouldn’t disturb the tomb.
“Even if his corpse was used by a schemer, he was still an elder of our bloodline,” Gu Changsheng said quietly as he shoveled clean earth back into the pit. “Let the old man rest in peace.”
However, as Gu Changsheng lifted the six-hundred-pound black-iron coffin lid out of the snowbank to set it back over the grave. The yellow light of Grandpa Fu’s lantern caught the underside of the heavy iron plate.
Gu Changsheng’s movements paused.
There, carved deep into the cold black iron on the inner surface of the coffin lid, was a palm-sized, razor-sharp Nine-Petaled Ice-Phoenix Sword Emblem. No ordinary Frost-Pine Town blacksmith could ever have forged a mark like that.
Even after years buried underground, the sword intent lingering inside those carved lines was pure and lofty. Merely looking at it made the air around Gu Changsheng’s eyelashes frost over.
Right beneath the Ice-Phoenix emblem were four tiny, delicate words carved by the tip of a fingernail:.
Left to guard my husband Changsheng and my little Nian’er — Qingxue.
Gu Changsheng’s breath caught in his chest. His thumb traced the familiar, graceful handwriting of his missing wife, Luo Qingxue.
Eight years ago, everyone in Frost-Pine Town believed the mysterious woman who married into the Third Branch. Gave birth to Gu Nian had died in a mountain blizzard or abandoned them for a wealthy sect.
Yet as [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] automatically flipped open in Gu Changsheng’s coat pocket and resonated with the sword emblem on the coffin lid. A line of hidden golden text began to surface across the blank back page.