Two hours before dawn, while the rest of Frost-Pine Town still slept beneath a thick blanket of December frost, a warm tallow candle flickered inside the kitchen of the Third Branch courtyard.
Eight-year-old Gu Nian was curled up asleep under two thick quilts in the inner room. His small chest rose and fell evenly after the midnight adventure on the mountain. Out by the stove, Gu Changsheng sat at the scrubbed pine table with the milky-green [Warm-Marrow Tomb Jade] in his left hand and [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] open under his right palm.
Where the notebook’s paper had touched the Ice-Phoenix Sword Emblem on the ancestor coffin lid an hour earlier, lines of pale golden ink were slowly surfacing across the parchment:.
[ DAD’S PLOT-SPOILER NOTEBOOK — HIDDEN FAMILY FILE #1 ]
* Subject : Luo Qingxue (Host’s Wife / Gu Nian’s Mother)
* True Identity: Upper-Realm Sword Empress (Sealed Memory)
* 8 Years Ago : Pursued by Upper-Realm Script Enforcers after.
discovering her newborn son’s Innate Chaos Bone.
was marked as a “World-Destroying Villain” by the.
Heavenly Script.
* Action Taken : Before leaving to draw the Enforcers away from the.
mortal world, she sealed the Warm-Marrow Tomb Jade.
inside the ancestral guardian corpse so it would.
absorb eight years of earth-vein warmth to nourish.
little Gu Nian’s freezing Demon Bone!
* Original Plot: Stolen by Chosen One Lin Fan in Night #1; Gu Nian.
never learned his mother loved him and believed he.
was abandoned, fueling his 100% Darkening!
Gu Changsheng stared at the golden lines in silence for a long moment.
In the original grimdark story, Lin Fan had stolen both the Three-Hundred-Year Blood-Jade Ginseng and this Warm-Marrow Tomb Jade on the very first night. That theft had left eight-year-old Gu Nian to freeze in an unheated shack, believing his father hated him and his mother had thrown him away like trash.
“So she didn’t abandon us,” Gu Changsheng murmured softly. He closed his fingers around the warm mutton-fat jade until its gentle heat soaked into his palm. “She left her own marrow-warming treasure behind and walked into a trap just to buy her husband and son a quiet life.”
He glanced toward the inner bedroom door where Gu Nian was sleeping.
An eight-year-old child didn’t need to carry the crushing weight of Upper-Realm enforcers on his small shoulders yet. That was a father’s job. When Gu Nian was a little older—and when Gu Changsheng’s own fists were hard enough to smash through the clouds—they would go bring his mother home together.
“First things first,” Gu Changsheng said, rolling up his sleeves with a practical grin. “A mother leaves a warming jade to keep her son from freezing, so a father ought to put it to proper household use.”
He tapped the silver icon in his mind and opened the three-slot interface of [Dad’s Care-Package Upgrade Box].
Earlier that night, defeating the Blood-Corpse and plundering Lin Fan’s graveyard fortune had pushed his balance to 170 DP, with +120 DP/day set to arrive at the midnight settlement.
Instead of letting Gu Nian carry a raw stone around in his pocket where thieves might eye it, Gu Changsheng decided to upgrade the entire Third Branch living quarters from the ground up.
Into Slot 1, he placed the glowing [Warm-Marrow Tomb Jade] plus two fibrous whiskers trimmed from the real Three-Hundred-Year Blood-Jade Ginseng.
Into Slot 2, he loaded the [Ten Bags of Winter Pine-Charcoal] and [Fifty Courtyard Clay Bricks] collected from Second Elder Gu Ba’s gate bill.
Into Slot 3, he added [Two Yards of Soft Yellow Lambswool], [Scrap Iron Plates from the Ancestor Coffin], and [A Strip of Cured Ox-Hide].
“System, run a full household comfort and defense fusion,” Gu Changsheng whispered. “Cost: eighty Dad Points.”
[ DAD’S CARE-PACKAGE UPGRADE BOX — HOUSEHOLD RENOVATION! ]
* Input 1 : [Warm-Marrow Tomb Jade + Blood-Jade Ginseng Whiskers]
* Input 2 : [10 Bags of Winter Charcoal + 50 Courtyard Clay Bricks]
* Input 3 : [Yellow Lambswool + Tomb Iron Plates + Cured Ox-Hide]
* Cost : 80 DP (Remaining Balance: 90 DP)
[ DING! 100% FLAW-FREE UPGRADE COMPLETE! OUTPUTTING 3 ITEMS: ]
1. [Rank 1 Perfection: Ever-Warm Dragon-Stove Kang Bed & Floor]
- Effect: Connects the bedroom brick bed and floorboards into a.
self-circulating spiritual heat array powered by the Tomb Jade!
Maintains a constant 72-degree spring warmth year-round and.
passively nourishes the sleeper’s bone marrow (+15% sleep XP)!
2. [Rank 1 Perfection: Iron-Defense Yellow Bunny Slippers (Child)]
- Effect: Soft lambswool exterior with hidden Tomb-Iron soles!
Keeps little toes toasty warm, blocks Rank 1 ground traps, and.
adds +300 lbs of stamping impact to every kick!
3. [Rank 1 Perfection: Dragon-Turtle Meridian Back Brace (Elder)]
- Effect: Custom orthopedic waist belt for loyal elders; heals.
old spinal injuries and clears blocked lower-back meridians!
Whoosh!
A silent wave of golden-orange light rippled out of the Upgrade Box and sank straight into the clay bricks beneath the kitchen stove and the inner bedroom.
Within five breaths, the cracked, frost-chilled flagstones of the Third Branch house fused into smooth, dark-gray slate tiles etched with faint dragon-scale heat ducts. Without burning a single stick of smoky firewood, a gentle, dry, spring-like warmth radiated up from the floor. It melted the ice patterns right off the paper windows and filled the whole house with the faint, soothing scent of warm pine and lotus.
Gu Changsheng pressed his palm to the kitchen tiles and nodded in satisfaction.
“Seventy-two degrees in the middle of December, and zero smoke in the chimney,” he murmured. “Even a southern emperor’s palace doesn’t have radiant floor heating this clean.”
Even the leftover main root of the Three-Hundred-Year Blood-Jade Ginseng did not go to waste. Gu Changsheng took out his heavy iron cleaver and minced half of the ruby root with ten catties of fatty pork belly, fresh ginger, and chopped scallions. Then he rolled out thin rounds of white wheat dough and pleated a big bamboo steamer of [Blood-Jade Ginseng & Pork Soup Dumplings] to simmer over the stove for breakfast.
Rich, savory steam soon bubbled up through the woven bamboo lid, filling the warm kitchen with an aroma that could wake a hibernating bear.
Just then, the outer kitchen door creaked open.
One-eyed Grandpa Fu shuffled in carrying an armful of split kindling. His thirty-year hunched back was bent at a painful forty-five-degree angle as the morning frost made his old lumbar injury ache.
“Young Master, you’re awake already?” Grandpa Fu paused in surprise as the warm air inside the kitchen wrapped around his freezing knees. He looked down at his cloth shoes, then up at the ceiling.
“Eh?
Why is the floor so warm? Did you light the big stove an hour ago?”
“Even better than lighting the stove, Grandpa Fu,” Gu Changsheng said, walking over and taking the firewood out of the old butler’s arms. He set the kindling by the wall and held up the wide, bronze-buckled [Dragon-Turtle Meridian Back Brace]. “Here.
Turn around and lift your padded coat for a second.”
“What is this, Young Master?” Grandpa Fu blinked his single eye at the gleaming ox-hide belt. “It looks like a general’s waist guard.
You should wear it yourself—”
“My back is twenty-eight years old; yours has been carrying this family for sixty-two,” Gu Changsheng said firmly.
Before Grandpa Fu could protest that good leather shouldn’t be wasted on an old servant, Gu Changsheng wrapped the warm ox-hide brace around Grandpa Fu’s waist and pulled the brass buckle snug.
Hummm—Crack-Crack-Pop!
The moment the [Dragon-Turtle Meridian Back Brace] locked into place, a concentrated stream of flaw-free Warm-Marrow essence surged straight into the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae of Grandpa Fu’s spine. That was the exact spot where a Second Branch elder had fractured his back thirty years ago while Grandpa Fu was shielding Gu Changsheng’s late father.
Grandpa Fu gasped aloud.
The calcified blood-clots that had pinched his spinal meridians for three decades dissolved like snow in boiling oil. With three crisp, resonant pops, the old butler’s hunched shoulders snapped backward and his spine straightened to its full six-foot height.
Boom!
A wave of pent-up vitality that had been trapped in his lower body for thirty years roared through his limbs. In a single breath, the sixty-two-year-old butler broke cleanly from Rank 1 Early Martial into Rank 1 Mid Martial, gaining a full eight hundred pounds of base strength on the spot.
Grandpa Fu stood frozen in the center of the warm kitchen floor.
Slowly, tremblingly, he raised his hands and looked straight ahead at the kitchen wall—instead of staring down at his own cloth shoes the way he had for thirty winters. He twisted his waist left and right without a single twinge of pain. Then the old man dropped to his knees with tears streaming from his single good eye.
“Young Master... my back! My old back is straight!”
Grandpa Fu choked out, touching the warm brass buckle at his waist.
“Even the Prefecture Alchemist said this crippled spine would go with me into my coffin!”
“No one in our house is going into a coffin anytime soon,” Gu Changsheng said, pulling the old butler up by the elbows with a grin. “Go wash your face, Grandpa Fu. The ginseng pork dumplings are almost ready, and you need to practice walking with your chin up.”
Inside the inner bedroom, woken by the rich aroma of steaming pork dumplings and the cozy warmth beneath his quilt. Eight-year-old Gu Nian rubbed his sleepy eyes and sat up on the brick kang bed.
After all of his life, he didn’t wake up with his teeth chattering or his fingers stiff and purple from the cold.
He slid his bare feet off the edge of the bed, bracing himself for the icy sting of the floor tiles. Instead, he blinked in confusion when the slate beneath his toes felt as warm as a sun-baked rock in July.
“Up already, Nian’er?”
Gu Changsheng walked in carrying a basin of warm water for his son’s face, a fresh yellow towel. A pair of plump, bright-yellow lambswool slippers with two floppy bunny ears stitched onto each toe.
“Wash your hands, eat eight ginseng dumplings first, and then try on your new indoor shoes,” Gu Changsheng said, setting the steaming bamboo tray on the low kang table.
Hungry from the midnight mountain trip, Gu Nian didn’t need to be told twice. He blew on a plump white dumpling, bit a tiny hole in the skin to slurp the golden ginseng-pork broth inside, and ate eight juicy [Blood-Jade Ginseng & Pork Soup Dumplings] in rapid succession.
Every bite sent a pure, gentle current of three-hundred-year medicinal blood-qi into his limbs. The warm broth quietly washed away the dark, volatile spikes of his Innate Chaos Demon Bone and replaced them with solid, golden foundation strength.
When Gu Changsheng knelt down and slipped the [Rank 1 Iron-Defense Yellow Bunny Slippers] onto his son’s feet, however, the eight-year-old future Demon King froze.
Gu Nian stared down at the two chubby yellow bunny heads wiggling their long plush ears over his toes.
Slowly, a deep crimson blush crept from the boy’s collar all the way up to the tips of his ears. He curled his toes tightly inside the warm lambswool lining, and his small eyebrows knotted together in a fierce attempt to look dignified and grown-up.
“B-bunnies are for three-year-old babies, Dad,” Gu Nian muttered in a tiny, muffled voice. He glanced sideways at the wall while refusing to take the slippers off because they were secretly the softest, warmest things his feet had ever touched. “I’m eight years old already...
I’m only wearing them around the house so you don’t cry about wasting the wool.”
“Yes, yes, thank you for sparing your old man’s fragile feelings,” Gu Changsheng replied with a completely straight face, pinching his son’s warm, dumpling-stuffed cheek.
[ DING! COZY WINTER HOME & WARM SLIPPERS! ]
* Grandpa Fu : Crippled spine healed! Rank 1 Early -> Rank 1 Mid!
Warmth Index: 99/100 -> 100/100 (MAX LOYALTY!)
* Gu Nian : Warmth Index: 86/100 -> 91/100!
Darkening Meter: 22% -> 20% (-2% DROP! Just 1% away.
from the <20% 10x Redeemed Kid Jackpot Threshold!)
* Daily Income: +120 DP/day -> +150 DP/day!
Just as Gu Nian hopped off the kang bed and took two experimental steps—making the floppy yellow bunny ears bounce up. Down with every stride—the pale gray light of dawn outside the paper window was suddenly blotted out.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Heavy iron-shod boots stomped across the snow of the front yard, and a massive, menacing shadow fell squarely across the bedroom windowpane.