On the thirty-second white marble step of the Azure-Cloud Prefecture High Court, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan [Rank 1 Late, Luck Halo: 5%] froze. If buckets of glacier water had been poured over his bruised skull.
His single unswollen eye locked onto the pigeon-egg-sized, multifaceted [Spiritual Memory Recording Crystal] sparkling between the fuzzy green flippers of the two-foot [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] on the Prefecture Lord’s mahogany desk.
A Spiritual Memory Recording Crystal?! Lin Fan’s heart lurched into his throat in sheer, suffocating panic. How could that old ghost Yao Chen have been recording my private thoughts and midnight plans inside the ring—and how did he record what I said in the sewer last night?!
What Lin Fan didn’t know was that when he had crawled through the sewer pipe beneath the High Court Plaza at midnight. One of Golem Unit #01’s underground earth-sense crystals—infused with a wisp of Grandpa Yao’s alchemical recording array—had been sitting right inside the drainage grate three feet above his head!
“STOP! DON’T TURN THAT ON!”
Driven by blind terror, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan lunged up the last four marble steps on his hands and knees. Reaching out with his mud-caked fingers to smash the crystal sphere out of the plush turtle’s paws!
STEP—TRIP-THUD!
Before Lin Fan could get within six feet of the judicial desk. Fifty-two-year-old Second Elder Gu Ba—standing guard in his bright-pink floral chore apron with Prize Piglet Little Flower tucked under his right arm—casually stuck out his left wooden clog!
With his 5% Luck Halo actively sabotaging his own ankles. Lin Fan hooked his broken right big toe squarely under the heel of Gu Ba’s heavy oak clog and flew face-first into the marble floor with a bone-rattling SMACK!
“OWWWWWWW!”
Spitting out a mouthful of sour turnip pulp as his twice-broken nose flattened for the third time that morning, Lin Fan lay twitching at Gu Ba’s feet. The reformed Second Elder tapped his cedar hog-breeding clipboard disapprovingly:.
“Attempting to assault an elderly plush witness in the middle of a High Court session? That’s another ten points deducted from your conduct score, Lin Fan! Even Little Flower knows how to sit quietly when the judge is watching a projection!”
“Oink-oink!” Prize Piglet Little Flower wagged her curly pink tail in agreement.
Up on the judicial desk, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao adjusted his miniature gold spectacles on his green velvet snout, channeled a wisp of pure golden alchemical soul-force into the [Spiritual Memory Recording Crystal]. Tossed the glowing gem thirty feet into the sunlit air above the High Court terrace!
HUMMMMMM—SHING!
A hundred-foot-wide, crystal-clear three-dimensional sky-curtain unfurled across the blue morning sky above the High Court Plaza—so vivid. Lifelike that all thirty thousand gathered citizens could see every pore on the projected figures’ faces and hear every whispered syllable across a three-mile radius!
Click—Scene One!
The hundred-foot sky-curtain lit up with the interior of Lin Fan’s rented inn room in Frost-Pine Town four months ago.
On the giant projection screen above the city, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan sat on the edge of his bed holding a paper packet of [Seven-Step Heart-Rot Powder] and smirking to himself with cold, venomous arrogance:.
*“Hehehe... Junior Sister Qin Wan’er thinks she can refuse me just because her dead father left the Hundred-Herb Clinic to her? Tomorrow afternoon I’ll drop this odorless Seven-Step Heart-Rot Powder into her teacup!
Once her heart-meridians rot into black ice and she’s coughing up blood on the floor. She’ll have to crawl to my feet like an obedient dog, hand over her family’s secret pill recipes. Warm my bed just to beg for half a dose of antidote!”*
Across the High Court Plaza below, thirty thousand citizens sucked in a collective breath of icy horror!
On the marble terrace, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin’s eyes turned as cold as winter frost. Fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng slammed his fist down on the mahogany armrest of his judicial throne, cracking the two-inch hardwood!
“Turn it off! That’s a fake illusion!” Lin Fan screamed, clawing at the marble floor with bleeding fingernails.
Grandpa Yao ignored him completely and flicked his fuzzy green flipper a second time:.
Click—Scene Two!
The hundred-foot sky-curtain shifted to the damp, torch-lit cellar of the underground Black-Sand Slave Market four months ago—where six-year-old Su Nuannuan was curled up shivering in a rusty iron cage. Lin Fan stood outside holding a dark-red centipede jar and laughing to himself:.
*“An Innate Ten-Thousand-Poison Body for only two hundred silver taels! What a stroke of heaven-defying luck for me! Once I lock this six-year-old brat inside my clay jar with a hundred venomous centipedes and scorpions for forty-nine days, her terror and pain will ferment her blood into thirty Myriad-Venom Blood Pills!
Who cares if an orphan brat dies screaming in a jar? Ordinary mortals and orphans are just weeds grown to nourish a Chosen One like me!”*
Hearing Lin Fan’s own voice boast about locking a six-year-old child in a centipede jar. Calling ordinary citizens “weeds grown to nourish him,” thousands of mothers and fathers across the square trembled with volcanic fury!
Beside twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng at the base of the steps, nine-year-old Gu Nian held seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s small hand tightly and whispered:.
“Nuannuan, don’t look at that ugly screen—look at Dad and me.”
“Nuannuan isn’t scared at all, Big Brother Nian!” seven-year-old Su Nuannuan said bravely. Holding her Dad’s hand on her other side and looking up at the warm golden Rank 3 Mid Grandmaster light surrounding her father.
“Because Dad already smashed that ugly cage to pieces!”
Up on the judicial desk, Grandpa Yao tapped his fuzzy green flipper a third and final time:.
“And now, Lord Qin and fellow neighbors of Azure-Cloud Prefecture—watch Clip Number Three. Recorded at three o’clock this very morning inside the main storm-drain sewer pipe directly beneath the flagstones you are standing on right now!”
Click—Scene Three!
The hundred-foot sky-curtain darkened to the torch-lit stone sewer tunnel beneath the Azure-Cloud Prefecture High Court Plaza!
There on the giant screen above the city—swollen-faced. Missing his front tooth, covered in sewer sludge and rotten cabbage leaves—eighteen-year-old Lin Fan was shown digging holes in the foundation gravel beneath twelve High Court drainage grates. Burying twelve blood-red [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array Stones] while cackling like a rabid demon:.
*“Gu Changsheng! Qin Zheng! And all thirty thousand stupid, gullible citizens of Azure-Cloud Prefecture City!
You laughed at me when I lost the tournament?! You cheered for Gu Changsheng’s five-copper soup and pink stone tractors?! Tomorrow morning at dawn, I’ll beat the Imperial Grievance Drum outside the High Court and pretend to file a petition!
And once thirty thousand of you brainless sheep pack yourselves shoulder-to-shoulder onto the High Court Plaza above. These twelve Blood-Sacrifice Array Stones—I’ll slash my palm on the court steps and activate the [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array]!”*
On the hundred-foot screen in the sky, Lin Fan’s bloodshot eye bulged with murderous, frothing lunacy as he held up the human-skin array scroll:.
“Every man, woman, grandmother, and baby standing in the High Court Plaza tomorrow morning will have their blood and marrow drained dry in ten seconds to push me straight into Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster! Thirty thousand mortal ants dying together to forge my immortal foundation—HAHAHA—”
BZZZZT—END OF RECORDING!
As the hundred-foot projection screen faded back into the clear blue morning sky, a dead, bone-chilling silence fell over the Azure-Cloud Prefecture High Court Plaza.
For three full heartbeats, not a single one of the thirty thousand citizens made a sound.
Farmers in rough linen tunics, blacksmiths with soot on their forearms, mothers holding sleeping babies in their arms, white-haired grandfathers leaning on canes. Young students from the [Frost-Pine Loving-Heart Academy] all looked down at the stone flagstones beneath their own boots.
They were standing on the High Court Plaza right now.
They had come here at dawn with their wives, husbands, parents, and children because they respected the law of the Great Qian Dynasty and wanted to hear a public trial.
And this eighteen-year-old monster kneeling on the steps hadn’t beaten the Grievance Drum to seek justice at all—he had lured thirty thousand innocent neighbors. Including thousands of children, onto this square intending to slaughter every single one of them in a demonic blood-sacrifice!
Then—.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!
Like a dormant volcano blowing its mountain peak into the stratosphere, thirty thousand citizens erupted into an earth-shaking roar of pure, righteous, apocalyptic fury that rattled every roof tile across Azure-Cloud Prefecture City!
“HE LURED THIRTY THOUSAND OF US HERE TO SLAUGHTER OUR FAMILIES AND DRAIN OUR CHILDREN’S BLOOD!”
“DEMON! TRAITOR TO HUMANITY! TEAR HIM LIMB FROM LIMB!”
“LORD QIN—EXECUTE THIS DEMONIC MONSTER ON THE SPOT!”
Up on the high marble dais, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng , at Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster, rose to his full height as his purple judicial robe billowed with blazing Grandmaster wrath:.
“Bailiffs! Cast the three-hundred-pound black-iron Soul-Locking Chains upon the demonic traitor Lin Fan immediately! By emergency wartime decree of Azure-Cloud Prefecture—”
“NOBODY MOVES! DIE WITH ME, YOU THIRTY THOUSAND ANTS!”
Seeing the eighty armored bailiffs lunging toward him with iron chains and hearing thirty thousand people roaring for his head, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan lost the last thread of human reason in his skull!
Ripping the unsealed [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array Scroll] out of his torn sleeve, Lin Fan bit down violently on the thumb of his own right hand. Dark, foul-smelling blood spurted out—and slammed his bleeding palm flat onto the central dragon-carved flagstone at the top of the High Court steps!
“ACTIVATE—[THOUSAND-SOUL BLOOD-SACRIFICE ARRAY]! DRAIN ALL THIRTY THOUSAND OF THEM INTO DRY BONES FOR ME RIGHT NOW!”
In that split second as Lin Fan’s blood-stained palm came down toward the marble flagstone, panic swept across the High Court terrace!
“STOP HIM! HE’S IGNITING THE UNDERGROUND BLOOD ARRAY!” fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng roared.
Drawing his Rank 3 Mid ceremonial broadsword as he leaped forward from the judicial dais to sever Lin Fan’s arm before the blood-seal could complete!
Around the front rows of the plaza, veteran caravan guards and blacksmiths instinctively threw themselves in front of their wives, elderly parents, and young children. Up on the terrace, fifty-two-year-old Second Elder Gu Ba hugged Prize Piglet Little Flower tightly against his pink chore apron and stepped in front of the court scribes!
Yet down at the base of the thirty-six white marble steps. Standing in the exact center of the plaza’s main spiritual meridian node, twenty-nine-year-aged Gu Changsheng , at Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster, didn’t draw a weapon or take a single step backward.
Holding nine-year-old Gu Nian’s small hand in his right hand and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s small hand in his left, with twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin and sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu standing calmly beside him. Gu Changsheng looked up at the crazed, blood-soaked eighteen-year-old on the top step with the calm, unruffled gaze of a father watching a mischievous toad jump into a bucket.
“Dad,” nine-year-old Gu Nian whispered calmly, not a single trace of fear in his clear dark eyes. He watched Lin Fan slam the blood-scroll onto the stone, “Tractor Uncles #01 through #30 already swapped all twelve of his stones for the croton-bean lightning bricks, right?”
“Every single one of them, fifteen minutes ago,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng smiled, reaching down to gently cover seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s small ears with his warm hands so the upcoming thunderclap wouldn’t startle her. “And remember the oath Young Master Lin swore to the clear blue sky at the start of court this morning?
Hold your breath for three seconds, kids—because the heavens are about to answer his request in person, and the smell up on that top step is going to be unforgettable!”
[ DING! SEWER CONFESSION EXPOSED — LIN FAN TRIGGERS THE ARRAY! ]
* Public Broadcast: Grandpa Yao plays HD recording of Lin Fan’s.
plot to sacrifice all 30,000 gathered citizens!
* Final Desperation: Cornered by 30,000 furious citizens, Lin Fan.
Beside the stove, Gu Changsheng wiped his hands on his clean white apron and checked the simmering broth with a steady nod.
bites his thumb and slams his blood onto the.
central flagstone to detonate his array!
* Daily Income : +350,000 DP/day -> +362,000 DP/day!