Across the vast stone expanse of the Azure-Cloud Prefecture High Court Plaza, thirty thousand citizens leaned forward in rapt silence. Fifty-two-year-old Second Elder Gu Ba flipped open his cedar clipboard on the marble terrace.
“Lord Qin! Fellow citizens!” Gu Ba’s booming baritone echoed across the square as he pointed to the first page of his ledger.
“Five months ago in Frost-Pine Town, who was the one who sneaked into my courtyard at midnight with a stolen [Seven-Leaf Ice Lotus].
Told me to frame nine-year-old Gu Nian so we could beat a nine-year-old boy to death and seize the Third Branch’s house?! It was Lin Fan!”
The crowd let out an angry gasp as Gu Ba flipped to the second page:.
“And two weeks later at the Frost-Pine Treasure Pavilion Auction. Who swore on his ancestors’ graves that Lot #88 was an ancient immortal treasure chest and tricked me into mortgaging my house to borrow ten thousand silver taels from Boss Shark?!”
Gu Ba glared down at the trembling, purple-faced eighteen-year-old Lin Fan on the steps and bellowed:.
“Ten thousand silver taels for a rusted iron bucket filled with one-hundred-day fermented skunk-cabbage and horse manure—stamped ‘Frost-Pine Municipal Latrine Bucket #4’ on the bottom! You made me eat fermented latrine-gas in front of the whole county, and when the debt collectors came, you ran away out the back window without paying a single copper!”
“PFFFFFT—HAHAHAHAHA!”
In the front rows of the plaza, hundreds of Frost-Pine Town merchants and farmers who had witnessed the legendary ten-thousand-silver latrine-bucket auction burst into side-splitting laughter, pointing at Lin Fan on the steps:.
“I was there that day! Lin Fan bid ten thousand silver for a rusted toilet bucket and got blasted in the face with pickled skunk-cabbage!”
“Lies! He’s senile! Gu Changsheng brainwashed him with pig-feed!”
Lin Fan shrieked hysterically, spitting bloody foam onto the marble steps as his face turned from purple to ash-white.
“Even if Gu Ba went crazy, what about my second charge?! Gu Changsheng used demonic force to coerce my fellow disciple Physician Qin Wan’er and bought a six-year-old poison-bodied girl from the slave market to refine human-blood pills!”
“Did he?”
A clear, dignified, bell-like female voice rang out from the base of the marble steps.
Walking gracefully up the white marble stairs in her spotless emerald-trimmed physician’s robe came twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin. At Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster,—holding seven-year-old Su Nuannuan , at Rank 2 Peak, gently by the hand!
As Auntie Qin stepped onto the high judicial terrace beside Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng, she didn’t even need to raise her voice: she simply released a wisp of her pure. Jade-green Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster (Life-Nurturing Medicinal Domain) internal qi!
HUMMMMMM!
A thirty-foot canopy of luminous emerald-green Grandmaster qi blossomed above Auntie Qin’s slender shoulders. Carrying the soothing fragrance of five-hundred-year snow-lotus and spring pine that instantly refreshed the lungs of everyone in the front ten rows!
On the judicial throne, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng , at Rank 3 Mid, stood up in sheer, undisguised astonishment:.
“External Internal-Qi Projection... and a pure Life-Nurturing Medicinal Domain?! Niece Wan’er, you broke through to Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster at the age of twenty-four?!”
“What?! Twenty-four-year-old Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster AND Chief Physician of the Peace Pharmacy?!” thirty thousand citizens gasped in awe.
“Lin Fan claimed Patriarch Gu oppressed her, yet under the Gu Household’s support she became the youngest female Martial Grandmaster in Azure-Cloud Prefecture history!”
Turning her cool, crystal-clear gaze down toward the cowering Lin Fan on the steps. Twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin reached into her emerald sleeve. Placed two items onto the Prefecture High Court evidence table: a sealed glass evidence jar containing a blackened silver needle and a cracked teacup.
The confiscated iron-bound buyer’s ledger from the underground Black-Sand Market!
“Lord Qin, citizens of Azure-Cloud,” Auntie Qin spoke with calm, unshakeable Grandmaster authority. “Four months ago in Frost-Pine Town, this disgraced former outer-sect apprentice Lin Fan came to my Hundred-Herb Clinic pretending to offer help. When I refused to hand over my late father’s medical notes.
He secretly dropped odorless [Seven-Step Heart-Rot Powder] into my afternoon teacup—a forbidden poison that rots a physician’s heart-meridians. In seven days so she must crawl to the poisoner as a slave to beg for the antidote! Had nine-year-old Gu Nian and Patriarch Gu not exposed the poison on the spot before thirty townspeople, I would be dead in a grave today!”
Opening the iron-bound Black-Sand Market ledger to a blood-stamped page, Auntie Qin raised it high for the twelve court scribes to verify:.
“And as for seven-year-old Su Nuannuan—here is the sworn confession of the arrested Black-Sand Slave Dealer and the blood-contract deposit slip signed by Lin Fan himself! Lin Fan ordered the slave dealer to starve six-year-old Nuannuan in an iron cage and prepared a three-foot clay jar filled with venomous centipedes and scorpions. Intending to seal a living child inside a poison-jar for forty-nine days to refine her [Innate Ten-Thousand-Poison Body] into thirty demonic [Myriad-Venom Blood Pills]!”
“WHAT?!”
Across the plaza, thirty thousand citizens felt a chill of pure revulsion run down their spines. Auntie Qin stepped aside and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan walked forward to the front of the marble terrace in her pink rabbit dress and yellow straw sun-hat.
Setting her little pink watering can down beside her embroidered cloth shoes. Seven-year-old Su Nuannuan unrolled her large sheet of rough rice paper. Held up her colorful wax-crayon drawing with both small hands so the entire court and the front rows of the plaza could see!
On the left side of the rice paper, drawn in dark black crayon, was a tiny. Crying stick-figure girl locked inside a cold iron cage next to a scary brown jar crawling with black centipedes. A mean stick-figure man with a crooked nose pointed a whip at her.
On the right side of the rice paper, drawn in bright, warm golden and red wax crayons, was a tall. Smiling father in a blue robe kneeling with wide-open arms to hug the little girl. A big brother in a yellow bunny apron, a pretty auntie in a green dress, a kind grandpa with an abacus.
A little green turtle stood around a steaming hot-pot table covered in red hearts!
Looking up at Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng with her big, clear, innocent dark eyes, seven-year-old Su Nuannuan spoke in her sweet, ringing child’s voice:.
“Lord Uncle, when Nuannuan was locked in the dark cellar, everybody called Nuannuan a poison monster and wanted to put Nuannuan inside the bug jar. Then Dad came and smashed the iron cage! Dad didn’t wear gloves—he picked Nuannuan up in his bare arms, washed Nuannuan’s hair with warm water, gave Nuannuan a pink rabbit dress and three bowls of sweet mutton soup every day.
Told Nuannuan that Nuannuan’s hands weren’t dirty at all—they were made to grow pretty medicinal flowers to heal grandmas and babies!”
Turning her small finger toward the trembling Lin Fan on the steps, seven-year-old Su Nuannuan pouted fiercely:.
“Dad and Big Brother Nian and Auntie Qin are the best family in the whole world! That bad brother Lin Fan is the one who wanted to put Nuannuan in a bug jar—and he’s telling lies about my Dad!”
For two seconds, the entire High Court Plaza was dead silent.
Then, in the front five rows of the square—where five hundred mothers and grandmothers from Frost-Pine Town. Azure-Cloud Prefecture City were holding the hands of toddlers whose winter fevers had been cured for free at the [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy]—volcanic maternal wrath erupted!
“YOU HEARTLESS ANIMAL! YOU WANTED TO PUT A SIX-YEAR-OLD BABY IN A CENTIPEDE JAR?!” a burly vegetable-seller auntie roared, reaching into her market basket and hurling a two-pound rotten cabbage with all her might!
WHACK-SPLAT!
The rotten cabbage exploded squarely across eighteen-year-old Lin Fan’s flattened nose!
“EAT ROTTEN TURNIPS, YOU CHILD-HURTING SCUM!”
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT-THUD!
Within five seconds, five hundred furious mothers and grandmothers unleashed a pelting hailstorm of rotten turnips, bruised tomatoes, sour pickled radishes. Muddy cabbage leaves onto Lin Fan’s head as he curled into a ball on the marble steps!
And down at the base of the steps, as the boundless gratitude, righteous trust. Love of thirty thousand citizens converged upon twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng like a tidal wave of golden sunlight, his dantian roared!
[ DING! 30,000-CITIZEN RIGHTEOUS RESONANCE — HOST REALM UP! ]
* Public Trust : 30,000 Citizens unite in righteous fury to defend.
Gu Changsheng & Little Nuannuan!
* Breakthrough : Host Gu Changsheng advances effortlessly from.
Rank 3 Early -> [RANK 3 MID MARTIAL GRANDMASTER.
(45,000 lbs Base Force + 50-Foot Golden Solar.
Internal-Qi Domain)]!
* Daily Income : +320,000 DP/day -> +335,000 DP/day!
Feeling his golden internal-qi sun double in size inside his dantian as he stepped smoothly into Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster, Gu Changsheng smiled warmly at his daughter on the terrace.
Up on the steps, choking on sour cabbage juice with rotten tomato skins hanging off his ears, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan pointed a frantic. Trembling finger at the two-foot [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] in nine-year-old Gu Nian’s arms and screamed his third charge at the top of his lungs:.
“WAIT! WHAT ABOUT THE STUFFED TURTLE DOLL IN GU NIAN’S ARMS?! GU CHANGSHENG USED DEMONIC SOUL-SHACKLES TO KIDNAP MY TEACHER—RANK 6 GOLDEN CORE PILL SOVEREIGN YAO CHEN!—AND IMPRISONED HIM INSIDE THAT GREEN PLUSH TOY!
LORD QIN, ORDER GU CHANGSHENG TO RELEASE MY MASTER’S ENSLAVED SOUL RIGHT NOW!”
Before Lin Fan’s hysterical shriek even finished echoing off the High Court pillars, sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu , at Rank 2 Peak. Stepped calmly up the lower marble stairs holding his polished black-iron abacus in one hand. A thick stack of notarized [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy & Loving-Heart Canteen] public audit scrolls in the other.
Bowing respectfully to Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng while the court bailiffs swept a pile of bruised turnips away from the judicial desk, Grandpa Fu spoke in his crisp, dignified butler’s voice:.
“Lord Qin, before we call our third defense witness to address Young Master Lin’s amusing claim about the stuffed turtle doll. Allow this old butler to submit the official financial and medical records for Charge Number Two so the court scribes may seal the file.”
With three flicks of his calloused thumb across the brass beads of his abacus, Grandpa Fu unrolled the twenty-foot audit scroll across the marble balustrade:.
“Over the past sixty days, under Chief Physician Qin Wan’er’s supervision and Little Miss Nuannuan’s medicinal-herb cultivation. Our [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy] has dispensed forty-two thousand doses of [Cold-Dispelling Spirit Gummies]. [Bone-Warming Herbal Plasters] to poor families across Azure-Cloud Prefecture at ten copper coins per dose—one-hundredth the price charged by the former Black-Blood Hall pharmacies!
Every single herb used in our clinic is grown in clean courtyard soil watered by Little Miss Nuannuan’s [Medicinal-Aroma Vitality Dew]. Thirty-eight thousand cured patients have voluntarily signed their thumbprints in gratitude on this scroll!”
Grandpa Fu adjusted his monocle and looked down at the cabbage-stained Lin Fan on the steps with polite, devastating disdain:.
“Meanwhile, the plaintiff Lin Fan never paid a single copper for the tea he drank at Physician Qin’s clinic, owed ten thousand silver taels to the Frost-Pine Auction House before fleeing town. Spent his last two hundred silver taels paying an underground slave dealer to starve a six-year-old girl in an iron cage. By this old butler’s abacus, Young Master Lin’s moral credit balance in Azure-Cloud Prefecture isn’t zero—it is negative three hundred and eighty thousand points!”
“WELL SAID, BUTLER FU!” thirty thousand citizens roared in unanimous approval as Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng stamped the second dismissal seal onto the court docket with a loud THUD!
“Charge Number Two—poisoning and child-trafficking—is proven to be the crime of the plaintiff Lin Fan himself!” Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng declared coldly. Turning his curious gaze toward the chubby two-foot [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] resting calmly in nine-year-old Gu Nian’s arms at the foot of the stairs.
“And now, Patriarch Gu, Young Master Nian—the plaintiff Lin Fan claims that the remnant soul of the legendary Rank 6. Golden Core Pill Sovereign Master Yao Chen has been forcibly imprisoned inside that green cloth turtle doll against his will. Does the stuffed turtle wish to take the witness stand?”