SLAP!
As eighteen-year-old Lin Fan’s blood-smeared palm slammed flat against the central white marble flagstone at the top of the High Court steps. Infused his last shred of Rank 1 Late qi into the [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array Scroll]. A terrifying crimson rune flashed across the human-skin parchment!
“HAHAHAHAHA! TOO LATE, GU CHANGSHENG! TOO LATE, QIN ZHENG!”
Lin Fan howled at the top of his lungs, his single bloodshot eye bulging with crazed, murderous glee.
He waited for red pillars of blood-devouring mist to erupt from the twelve drainage vents beneath the plaza. “WATCH THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE WITHER INTO DRY HUSKS BEFORE YOUR EYES!”
In the front rows of the plaza, mothers instinctively shielded their children while Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng and twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin prepared to expand their Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster qi barriers.
Down at the base of the steps, however, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng , at Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster, didn’t even raise his hand.
He simply rested one warm palm over seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s straw sun-hat, held nine-year-old Gu Nian’s shoulder with the other, and counted down silently in his head:.
*Three... two... one.
Let’s see how our five-thousand-point [Fused Sky-Static Lightning-Rod & Concentrated Croton-Laxative Gas Bricks] handle a demonic blood circuit.*
CLICK—BZZZZZZZT!
Three feet beneath the flagstones of the High Court Plaza, the twelve array sockets woke up!
Only there were no [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array Stones] down in the drainage pipes anymore!
The instant Lin Fan’s blood-scroll sent its activation pulse down into the underground circuit. The twelve copper-wired [Fused Sky-Static Lightning-Rod & Concentrated Croton-Laxative Gas Bricks] planted by the thirty pink-aproned Lava Golems fifteen minutes earlier immediately reversed the array’s polarity by a hundred and eighty degrees!
Instead of drawing a single drop of blood or vitality from the thirty thousand citizens standing on the plaza—.
First, the twelve underground bricks converted the array’s suction force into twelve high-pressure pneumatic pumps that blasted. Straight up through the single storm-drain vent directly beneath eighteen-year-old Lin Fan’s knees on the top marble step!
PFFFFFFFFFT—WHOOOOOOSH!
A pressurized, ten-foot-high geyser of yellowish-green [100x Concentrated Fermented Croton-Bean & Skunk-Cabbage Flatulence Vapor] erupted straight out of the marble drain grate between Lin Fan’s legs. Enveloping him from waist to crown in a suffocating cloud of high-pressure laxative gas!
“BLURGH—COUGH-HACK! GURGLE-BLORT!”
Before Lin Fan’s brain could even register why his terrifying blood-sacrifice array smelled like ten thousand rotten eggs and fermented croton beans. A single inhalation of the concentrated laxative vapor caused his intestines to detonate like a string of wet firecrackers!
And second—and far more catastrophically for the former “Chosen One”—the twelve copper-wired grounding bricks beneath the square acted as a giant three-hundred-yard parabolic lightning Dish. Gathering the righteous karmic outrage of thirty thousand innocent citizens and focusing one hundred percent of the upper atmosphere’s static charge directly onto the single person holding the blood-scroll!
Remember that ten minutes earlier, standing on that exact marble step before thirty thousand witnesses, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan had raised three fingers toward the heavens and sworn at the top of his lungs:.
“If a single word of my blood-petition is false, may the Nine Heavens strike me down with clear-sky lightning right here on these court steps!”
And now, after lying on every single count and attempting to mass-murder thirty thousand innocent neighbors, Lin Fan had just turned his own brass belt buckle into a hundred-thousand-volt lightning rod. His [Protagonist Luck Halo] was teetering at a fragile 5.0%!
CRACK-SHATTER!
Above Lin Fan’s head, unable to withstand the simultaneous karmic backlash of thirty thousand furious citizens, a false blood-oath. A reversed demonic array, the last cracked 5.0% remnant of Lin Fan’s [Protagonist Luck Halo] exploded into nothingness!
[ DING! ULTIMATE PLOT-BREAK — LIN FAN’S LUCK HALO HITS 0.0%! ]
* Karmic Trigger: Attempted mass sacrifice of 30,000 citizens +.
False Lightning Oath + Reversed Grounding Array!
* Halo Status : 5.0% -> 0.0% (PERMANENTLY SHATTERED & REVOKED!)
* World Verdict : Clear-Sky Karmic Backlash Lightning Authorized!
KRA-KOOOOOOOOM!
Directly overhead in the completely cloudless, sunny blue morning sky, a blinding bolt of purple-gold [Clear-Sky Karmic Retribution Lightning] as thick as a water barrel tore straight down out of the blue heavens!
It didn’t touch a single roof tile of the High Court. It didn’t singe a single hair on the thirty thousand citizens, Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng, Gu Ba, or Little Flower the piglet.
Guided with pinpoint mathematical precision by the twelve underground lightning-rod bricks and the [Thousand-Soul Blood-Sacrifice Array Scroll] in Lin Fan’s hand. The barrel-thick bolt of clear-sky lightning struck eighteen-year-old Lin Fan squarely on the brass buckle of his trousers!
ZZZZZZZAP—BOOOOOOOOM!
For two full seconds, eighteen-year-old Lin Fan lit up like a human filament inside a purple-gold lantern. Vibrating at sixty cycles a second as black smoke and electric sparks shot out of his ears and nostrils!
Then, with a loud POOF! like an over-inflated pig bladder bursting, the lightning vanished!
As the ring of purple smoke cleared from the top of the thirty-six marble steps, all thirty thousand citizens in the plaza lowered their hands from their eyes and stared up at the terrace.
Not a single citizen in the square had lost so much as a fingernail.
And sitting in the center of a three-foot circle of scorched black soot at the top of the steps was eighteen-year-old Lin Fan.
The stolen white scholar’s robe and outer trousers he had been wearing were completely gone—vaporized into drifting black ash by the clear-sky lightning strike on his belt buckle!
All that remained on his soot-blackened lower body was a pair of frayed, singed, bright-red-and-white polka-dot cotton underpants with a big charred hole smoking on the backside!
His matted hair had been blasted outward into a giant, two-foot-wide spherical dandelion-puff of frizzy black char, his eyebrows were gone. His face was pitch-black with soot except for the whites of his dazed eyes, and when he slowly opened his toothless mouth—.
Puff... puff...
Two neat little gray smoke-rings floated out of his mouth and drifted lazily into the morning breeze!
Worse still, deep inside Lin Fan’s abdomen, a crisp CRACK-POP! echoed. His already fractured Rank 1 Late dantian and meridians collapsed completely under the lightning backlash—permanently reducing him.
From a martial cultivator to a Rank 0 Crippled Mortal with zero internal qi left in his body!
For three seconds, thirty thousand citizens stared in stunned silence at the smoking, mushroom-haired youth sitting in his red-and-white polka-dot underpants on the High Court steps.
Then seven-year-old Su Nuannuan peeked out from beneath her yellow straw sun-hat at the base of the steps, pointed her small finger at the terrace. Giggled in a voice as clear as a silver bell:.
“Dad! Big Brother Nian! Look—the clear blue sky really listened to that bad brother’s wish!
The lightning blew his pants off, and he’s wearing red polka-dot bloomers!”
“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
In an instant, all thirty thousand citizens across the Azure-Cloud Prefecture High Court Plaza—along with the eighty armored bailiffs, the twelve court scribes, Second Elder Gu Ba. Even fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng—erupted into the loudest, most cathartic roar of belly-laughter in the three-hundred-year history of Azure-Cloud Prefecture!
“HE SWORE AN OATH THAT THE CLEAR SKY WOULD STRIKE HIM WITH LIGHTNING IF HE LIED—AND TEN MINUTES LATER A CLOUDLESS SKY BLEW HIS PANTS OFF!”
“Look at his dandelion hair and his red polka-dot underpants! So that’s what a ‘Chosen One’ wears underneath!”
Up on the judicial desk of the High Court terrace. Three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao—still standing in his chubby two-foot [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] body—clutched his soft green velvet belly with both flippers. Laughed so hard his miniature gold spectacles slid all the way down to the tip of his plush snout:.
“Bwahaha! By the Ancestors, this old Sovereign has lived for three hundred and eighty years and watched a dozen heavenly tribulations. I have never seen a clear-sky lightning bolt strip a man down to his red polka-dot bloomers while sparing thirty thousand bystanders two feet away!
Look at his hair—if Little Miss Nuannuan planted a single dandelion seed on his head right now, it would sprout into a bush!”
Standing a few steps back on the marble terrace with Prize Piglet Little Flower tucked safely under his arm. Fifty-two-year-old Second Elder Gu Ba [Warmth: 74/100] fanned the air in front of his nose with his cedar hog-breeding clipboard and shook his head in profound moral satisfaction:.
“Lord Qin, neighbors of Azure-Cloud! Did you all see that with your own eyes?! Five minutes ago, Lin Fan raised three fingers to the sky and swore that if a single word of his petition against Patriarch Changsheng was a lie.
The Nine Heavens could strike him with clear-sky lightning right here on these court steps! Even the Old Man in the Sky couldn’t stand listening to his shameless slanders anymore and personally sent a thunderbolt to blow his pants off!”
In the front row at the base of the marble stairs, sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu , at Rank 2 Peak. Clicked the brass beads of his black-iron abacus with a beaming smile and bowed toward twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng:.
“Master, allow this old butler to report the final cost-benefit accounting for today’s High Court defense! Total expenditure: five thousand Dad Points’ worth of copper-grounded croton-gas bricks and zero silver taels! Total return: thirty thousand protected citizens completely unharmed, twelve high-grade underground drainage vents automatically sterilized by lightning, and one former enemy permanently reduced to a Rank 0 polka-dot scarecrow!
Even the High Court’s marble steps only suffered a three-foot soot smudge, which Golem Unit #16 is already volunteering to scrub clean with lye water for free!”
Out on the perimeter of the plaza, twelve-foot-tall Golem Unit #16 raised a giant wooden mop in one obsidian hand and saluted crisply in its pink floral apron:.
“REPORTING... TO... GRANDMASTER...
GU! MOP... AND...
SOAP... BUCKET... READY!
REQUESTING... PERMISSION... TO...
SCRUB... THE... SOOT...
OFF... THE... HIGH...
COURT... STAIRS!”
“Permission granted, Unit #16—just make sure you use the long-handled broom when you sweep around Young Master. Lin so you don’t get croton-bean soot on your clean pink apron,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng chuckled warmly. Setting his hands on nine-year-old Gu Nian’s and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan’s shoulders as the cheering of thirty thousand grateful citizens echoed to the clouds.
Beside them, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin , at Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster, smiled softly and tucked a clean mint-scented handkerchief into nine-year-old Gu Nian’s collar. Looking up at the dazed, smoke-ring-puffing Lin Fan on the top marble step:.
“As a physician, I can confirm that the clear-sky lightning bolt and the concentrated croton-bean vapor actually did him a medical favor—the electric shock cauterized his rat-bitten nose. The croton-bean gas purged all the expired Blood-Burst Pill toxins out of his intestines in three seconds flat. Of course, his dantian is permanently shattered to Rank 0, so the heaviest martial weapon he’ll ever lift again is a wooden manure shovel.”
“A wooden manure shovel is far healthier for a young man’s spine than a stolen demonic blood-scroll anyway,” Gu Changsheng laughed. Watching two armored Prefecture Bailiffs hold their noses with linen cloths as they prodded the twitching, polka-dot-clad eighteen-year-old with eight-foot wooden poles.
And down at the base of the marble steps. Lin Fan’s [Protagonist Luck Halo] officially hit 0.0% and his status. The first major antagonist of the mortal plane collapsed forever, a majestic golden fanfare of celestial chimes rang inside twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng’s mind!
[ DING! GRAND MILESTONE ACHIEVED — 1ST CHOSEN ONE DEFEATED! ]
* Target Status : Lin Fan (18) — Luck Halo stripped from 100% -> 0%!
Cultivation crippled to Rank 0 Mortal!
* Milestone Gift: +100,000 DAD POINTS BONUS!
* Special Drop : 1x [GOLDEN PLOT-DEFIANCE TREASURE CHEST]!
* Current DP : 7,000 DP + 100,000 DP = 107,000 DP!
* Daily Income : +362,000 DP/day -> +372,000 DP/day!
Yet just as the golden treasure chest materialized inside Gu Changsheng’s system space, a small. Triangular blood-red jade token hidden inside the charred ashes of Lin Fan’s vest pocket—stamped with the secret emblem. Of the Great Qian Royal Capital’s Second Prince—cracked down the middle with a sharp SNAP and shot a thin.
Invisible crimson distress-pulse two thousand miles east toward the Royal Capital!