At the exact moment twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng raised two fingers to whistle for Second Elder Gu Ba, his left hand—resting casually behind seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s yellow straw sun-hat—made a subtle, three-finger downward tap.
Household Chore Protocol #3: Underground Weed-Pulling & Pipe Replacement.
Standing at the outer stone balustrade of the High Court Plaza beside the thirty twelve-foot Rank 2 Peak Lava-Rock Golems. Reformed Guard Captain One-Ear Scar [Rank 1 Peak, Warmth: 85/100] immediately caught the signal and blew two short, cheerful chirps on his brass traffic whistle:.
Tweet-TWEET!
Around the entire outer perimeter of the packed thirty-thousand-person square, all thirty twelve-foot obsidian giants in their giant pink [I Love Chores & Hard Work] floral aprons shifted their massive stone feet in unison!
Because the thirty Rank 2 Peak Lava-Rock Golems had been forged three hundred years ago from living earth-vein magma crystals. Their innate elemental connection to the underground bedrock and drainage tunnels beneath Azure-Cloud Prefecture City was as effortless as a fish swimming through water.
Without disturbing a single flagstone or startling a single citizen in the crowd. All thirty Lava Golems pressed their warm stone palms flat against the outer perimeter curb-stones and silently extended thirty invisible. Precision threads of [Geothermal Earth-Sense Qi] three feet underground through the loose gravel foundation!
Within three breaths, the thirty underground earth-qi tendrils located the exact twelve drainage pipe junctions beneath the plaza. Eighteen-year-old Lin Fan had spent five hours in the sewer burying his twelve [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array Stones]!
Inside Gu Changsheng’s mind, the golden system prompt chimed:.
[ DING! CARE-PACKAGE UPGRADE BOX — UNDERGROUND SWAP PROTOCOL! ]
* Target Array : 12x [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array Stones]
buried beneath High Court Plaza by Lin Fan!
* Replacement : 12x [Fused Sky-Static Lightning-Rod & Concentrated.
Croton-Laxative Gas Bricks] [Cost: 5,000 DP]!
* New Function : Reverses blood-array polarity! Instead of draining.
30,000 citizens, channels 100% of atmospheric.
static electricity & pressurized Croton-Bean gas.
exclusively into the array caster’s belt buckle!
* Current DP : 12,000 DP -> 7,000 DP!
Five thousand Dad Points to turn a thirty-thousand-person blood-sacrifice array into a single-target lightning rod and high-pressure laxative-gas dispenser, Gu Changsheng smiled inwardly. Execute the swap.
Shhh-clink!
Three feet beneath the boots of the thirty thousand gathered citizens. The thirty Lava Golems’ underground earth-qi tendrils silently plucked all twelve sinister crimson blood-stones out of the drainage vents (tucking. Them neatly into Golem Unit #01’s compost bin to be ground into sterile road-gravel later) and seated the twelve heavy.
Copper-wired [Fused Lightning-Rod & Croton-Gas Bricks] into the exact same sockets!
Up on the thirty-sixth marble step of the High Court. Eighteen-year-old Lin Fan felt the faint underground hum through his bruised knees and mistook it for his twelve blood-stones locking into resonance with the crowd’s vitality!
Hahaha! The underground array veins just locked into place! Lin Fan gloated inside his warped mind, barely able to suppress a mad cackle.
In ten more minutes, every person in this square is going to become nourishment for my Rank 3 breakthrough!
“Order in the court!” fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng boomed from the judicial dais, waving his purple sleeve as heavy, energetic wooden clogs echoed from the side corridor. “Bring forward Defense Witness Number One: Second Elder Gu Ba of the Frost-Pine Town Gu Clan!”
Clack-clack-clack!
Marching briskly up the side steps onto the high marble terrace came a plump, rosy-cheeked, round-bellied man of fifty-two years!
He wore a spotless hemp work-tunic, sturdy oak clogs, and a freshly ironed bright-pink floral chore apron tied in a neat bow behind his back. In his left hand he carried a polished cedar clipboard thick with hog-breeding charts. Tucked comfortably under his right arm was a snow-white, twenty-pound prize piglet wearing a red silk ribbon around its chubby neck!
It was none other than Second Elder Gu Ba [Warmth: 74/100]!
Five months ago in Frost-Pine Town, Gu Ba had been a sallow, hook-nosed, bitter clan elder with four rotting teeth, chronic stomach ulcers. A dark scowl who schemed with Lin Fan to bully orphans and widows.
Today—after five months of honest daily labor as Chief Supervisor of the Gu Family’s geothermal-heated model pigsties, eating three square meals of hot braised pork noodles a day. Receiving monthly performance bonuses—Gu Ba had gained twenty pounds of healthy muscle, his complexion was as ruddy as an autumn apple. His eyes shone with the fierce pride of a tenured agricultural civil servant!
Stopping before the judicial dais, Gu Ba bowed politely to Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng, patted the squealing pink piglet under his arm, and announced in a booming, cheerful baritone:.
“Greetings, Lord Qin! Greetings, fellow neighbors of Azure-Cloud Prefecture! Second Elder Gu Ba—Chief Supervisor of the Gu Clan Ecological Hog-Breeding Division—reporting with Prize Piglet ‘Little Flower’ to give sworn testimony!”
Seeing the plump, glowing, pink-aproned Gu Ba standing proudly on the court terrace cradling a ribboned piglet, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan nearly dislocated his jaw!
“Gu... Second Uncle Gu Ba?!” Lin Fan shrieked, pointing a trembling, scab-covered finger at his former co-conspirator.
“What happened to you?!
Why are you so fat and rosy?! Why are you wearing a pink apron and holding a pig in the Prefecture High Court?! Didn’t Gu Changsheng knock out four of your teeth and enslave you in a dungeon?!”
Gu Ba turned his head, looked down at the foul-smelling, toothless, manure-stained eighteen-year-old kneeling on the marble steps, and let out a loud, disgusted snort:.
“Who’s enslaved in a dungeon, you unfilial little sewer-weasel?! And mind your tone when you speak to Little Flower—she just won First Prize at the Azure-Cloud Agricultural Fair yesterday for gaining three pounds of lean bacon a week on our geothermal-heated stone floors!”
Stepping over to Lin Fan and tapping his cedar hog-breeding clipboard sharply against Lin Fan’s bruised forehead, Gu Ba scolded him in front of all thirty thousand citizens:.
“Look at yourself, Lin Fan! Missing front teeth, swollen nose, bird droppings dried behind your ears, and wearing a stolen scholar’s robe that smells like a clogged latrine! And you have the nerve to claim Patriarch Changsheng abused me?!”
Turning toward the thirty thousand citizens in the plaza below, fifty-two-year-old Gu Ba puffed out his plump chest in his pink chore apron and spoke with genuine, tearful emotion:.
“Neighbors of Azure-Cloud Prefecture! I won’t hide my past shame from the court! Five months ago in Frost-Pine Town, I was a greedy, rotten old fool!
Because I listened to this two-faced snake Lin Fan, I tried to bully my own nephew Changsheng when he was sick and frame nine-year-old Nian’er! When Patriarch Changsheng woke up and whipped out four of my decayed molars with his leather belt, it was the greatest wake-up call of my fifty-two years!”
Gu Ba held up his cedar clipboard and his calloused, healthy hands for the entire square to see:.
“Instead of executing me or throwing me out into the snow, Patriarch Changsheng put a pink chore apron on me, handed me a shovel. Told me: ‘Second Uncle, an idle mind breeds wicked thoughts—go clean the clan pigsties and learn what honest sweat tastes like!’ And by the Ancestors, he saved my life! Six months of honest farm labor cured my insomnia, healed my stomach ulcers, and taught me the joy of earning clean silver!
Now I manage two hundred prize spirit-hogs, eat braised pork ribs every night, sleep eight hours on a heated brick bed, and earn ten silver taels a month in clean bonuses!”
Whirling back around on his wooden clogs, Gu Ba pointed his cedar clipboard straight at Lin Fan’s flattened nose like a broadsword and roared:.
“Enslaved?! If you tried to take away my pink chore apron and my pigsty supervisor badge today, I’d bite your ears off myself! And as for who the real villain in Frost-Pine Town was—Lord Qin, let me read from my personal diary every dirty scheme this ungrateful rat Lin Fan put me up to!”
Before Lin Fan could even croak a single syllable through his missing front teeth. Fifty-two-year-old Gu Ba reached into the front pocket of his bright-pink floral chore apron and pulled out a stack of neatly bound red-ink payroll receipts, three shiny [Little Red Flower Stickers]. An official bronze medal from the Azure-Cloud Prefecture Livestock Bureau!
Walking proudly over to the judicial clerk’s table. Prize Piglet Little Flower oinked cheerfully in his arms, Gu Ba laid the documents out one by one for the twelve blue-robed court scribes to inspect:.
“Chief Scribe, please record Exhibit A through Exhibit D in the official High Court register! Exhibit A: my five monthly wage-and-bonus slips signed by Butler Fu Shan. Totaling fifty-two silver taels of honest hard-earned income—every single copper of which I used to pay back the families in Frost-Pine Town whom I wronged in my foolish youth!
Exhibit B: my medical pulse chart examined weekly by Chief Physician Qin Wan’er. Certifying that six months of shoveling pig manure and eating [Rank 3 Earth-Fire Spirit Soup] cured my thirty-year fatty liver, lowered my blood pressure. Grew back half an inch of black hair on my crown!”
Holding up the three crimson silk flower stickers pinned to his collar with tears of genuine pride glistening in his eyes, fifty-two-year-old Gu Ba patted his chest:.
“And Exhibit C: three genuine [Gu Household Little Red Flower Stickers] personally awarded to me by Young Master Nian. Little Miss Nuannuan for keeping our two hundred ecological spirit-hogs mud-free during the winter snowstorm! In our Gu Clan, even a twelve-foot Rank 2 Peak Lava-Rock Golem has to plow a thousand acres of barley to earn one of these red flowers—yet this old man has three!”
Out on the perimeter of the High Court Plaza. Hearing Second Elder Gu Ba brag about having three [Little Red Flower Stickers] on his pink apron. Twelve-foot-tall Golem Unit #01 and Golem Unit #03 tilted their massive volcanic-stone heads and let out an envious, bass-drum hum:.
“SECOND... ELDER... GU...
BA... HAS... THREE...
RED... FLOWERS! GOLEM...
TRACTOR... BRIGADE... MUST...
WORK... HARDER... AT...
LUNCH... DISHWASHING... TO...
CATCH... UP!”
Watching a twelve-foot ancient war-golem express sincere jealousy over a fifty-two-year-old clan elder’s three paper flower stickers—while Gu Ba stood on the High Court terrace glowing with robust health. Hugging a prize piglet—all thirty thousand citizens in the plaza burst into thunderous, belly-shaking laughter!
“Hahaha! Did you hear that?! Lin Fan claimed Patriarch Gu tortured and enslaved Second Elder Gu Ba.
Old Ba is twenty pounds healthier, makes ten silver a month in bonuses, and won First Prize at the Prefecture Hog Fair!”
“If that’s what ‘enslavement’ in the Gu Household looks like, sign my lazy brother-in-law up for the pigsty tomorrow morning!”
On the judicial dais, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng stroked his gray beard with a broad smile and nodded to the chief scribe:.
“Charge Number One—unlawful enslavement and abuse of clan elders—is officially dismissed as absurd! Second Elder Gu Ba, you may proceed to read your sworn testimony regarding the plaintiff Lin Fan’s conduct in Frost-Pine Town!”
Kneeling in the dirt on the thirty-sixth marble step as thirty thousand people laughed at him, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan felt his chest tighten. He could barely breathe—still completely oblivious to the fact that three feet beneath his bruised knees. The twelve copper-wired [Fused Sky-Static Lightning-Rod & Concentrated Croton-Laxative Gas Bricks] had already finished linking into the High Court drainage grid and were quietly waiting for him to lose his temper!
Down at the base of the steps, seven-year-old Su Nuannuan , at Rank 2 Peak, tugged gently on her father’s dark-blue sleeve and whispered with a bright, dimpled giggle:.
“Dad, Second Uncle Gu Ba is doing such a good job telling the judge the truth! When we get home tonight, can Nuannuan and Big Brother Nian give Little Flower the piggy an extra sweet-potato bun?”
“Two sweet-potato buns for Little Flower, and an extra ladle of braised pork ribs for Second Uncle Gu Ba,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng smiled warmly. Resting his hand on his daughter’s yellow straw sun-hat. Fifty-two-year-old Gu Ba cleared his throat on the terrace and flipped open his leather-bound diary to expose Lin Fan’s very first frame-up in Frost-Pine Town!
[ DING! ARRAY STONES SWAPPED & WITNESS #1 GU BA TESTIFIES! ]
* Underground Swap: 30 Pink-Apron Lava Golems secretly replace all.
12 Blood-Sacrifice Stones with [Fused Sky-.
Static Lightning-Rod & Croton-Gas Bricks]!
* Star Witness #1 : Reformed Second Elder Gu Ba (Warmth: 74/100)
crushes Lin Fan’s first accusation!
* Daily Income : +310,000 DP/day -> +320,000 DP/day!