At the stroke of noon on the following day, the warm spring sun over Azure-Cloud Prefecture City was abruptly swallowed by an unnatural bank of dark, iron-gray clouds rolling in from the eastern horizon.
Along the wide stone highway outside the eastern gatehouse, the earth trembled under the synchronized, iron-shod march of three thousand pairs of heavy war-boots!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Marching straight through the open eastern gates in six disciplined columns came an elite military force clad from helmet to boot in cold, gleaming black-spirit scale armor:.
[3,000 Elite Black-Armor Capital Guards] from the Great Qian Royal Capital (Sky-Crown City). Led on the ground by thirty-eight-year-old Battalion Commander Chen (Rank 2 Peak), with every soldier’s long black-iron lance crackling with military formation qi!
And forty yards above the marching black-armored columns. Riding the howling wind currents without a mount or wings, floated an eight-foot-wide circular platform cast from glowing green-gold spirit bronze and carved with thirty-six wind-gathering runes:.
A [Quasi-Rank 4 Wind-Step Flying Bronze Disk] from the Imperial Astral Armory!
Standing atop the hovering flying bronze disk with his hands clasped arrogantly behind his gold-embroidered black dragon-envoy robes was forty-five-year-old Imperial Envoy Zhao Kun—a peak Rank 3. Martial Grandmaster who had forcibly refined half a wisp of true Spirit Qi using royal palace elixirs to step into the legendary [Half-Step Rank 4 Spirit-Core Realm]!
As Envoy Zhao Kun allowed his Half-Step Rank 4 spiritual pressure to roll down from a hundred and twenty feet in the sky like a suffocating lead mountain. Market stalls rattled along Central Avenue, horses whinnied in fright. Thousands of townspeople hurried out onto the sidewalks to stare up at the sky in shock.
Up on the high balcony of the Prefecture Yamen, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng , at Rank 3 Mid, gripped the marble railing until his knuckles turned white:.
“A [Quasi-Rank 4 Wind-Step Flying Bronze Disk] and three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards... Second Prince Qian Ye really dispatched his personal Half-Step Rank 4 hound Zhao Kun from the Royal Capital!”
Stopping his hovering bronze disk forty yards above the central intersection directly in front of the newly expanded [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy] and the two-story [Frost-Pine Loving-Heart Elementary School]. Forty-five-year-old Envoy Zhao Kun looked down at the bustling northern prefecture city with the icy. Sneering disdain of a noble looking down into a mud ditch.
Taking half a step forward to the rim of his spinning bronze disk, Envoy Zhao Kun infused his Half-Step Rank 4 qi into his throat and bellowed down from the clouds:.
“CITIZENS OF AZURE-CLOUD PREFECTURE—KNEEL AND LISTEN TO THE DECREE OF THE GREAT QIAN ROYAL CAPITAL!”
KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!
The sonic shockwave of Envoy Zhao Kun’s Half-Step Rank 4 roar rattled every shop sign along Central Avenue and cracked a dozen clay flowerpots on the upper balconies!
Pointing a black-gloved finger straight down at the gates of the [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy] and the elementary school beside it, Envoy Zhao Kun’s triangular viper-eyes gleamed with ruthless cruelty:.
“Yesterday morning in this backwater prefecture, someone dared to cripple Lin Fan—an outer emissary holding the Blood-Dragon Sub-Token of His Highness the Second Prince! Worse still, intelligence from the Imperial Astral Tower confirms that the Gu Clan of Frost-Pine Town is illegally harboring an Upper-Realm jade hairpin. Two special-constitution demon brats wanted for the Second Prince’s palace alchemy furnace!”
Raising ten fingers into the stormy air above his head, Envoy Zhao Kun sneered down at the forty thousand citizens gathering along the avenues and rooftops:.
“This Imperial Envoy gives Azure-Cloud Prefecture exactly TEN BREATHS! Within ten breaths, Gu Changsheng must crawl out of his door on his knees, offer up the [Frost-Phoenix Jade Hairpin] with both hands. Lock his nine-year-old son Gu Nian and seven-year-old daughter Su Nuannuan inside our iron prisoner-cages to be transported to the Royal Capital!
If I do not see both children in chains. I count to ten—my three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards will raze this school and pharmacy to flat gravel and slaughter every household on Central Avenue for treason!”
Across the avenues and rooftops of Azure-Cloud Prefecture City, forty thousand citizens—farmers whose fields had been plowed by the Gu Family’s golems, mothers whose babies had been saved by the Peace Pharmacy. Laborers who ate five-copper mutton soup every day—flushed crimson with anger instead of kneeling!
“WHAT KIND OF IMPERIAL ENVOY IS THIS?! LIN FAN TRIED TO SACRIFICE THIRTY THOUSAND OF US IN A BLOOD ARRAY YESTERDAY, AND THIS ENVOY CALLS HIM A ROYAL EMISSARY?!”
“HE WANTS TO PUT NINE-YEAR-OLD LITTLE BROTHER NIAN AND SEVEN-YEAR-OLD NUANNUAN IN IRON CAGES FOR A PALACE FURNACE?! OVER OUR DEAD BODIES!”
Up on the Yamen balcony, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng shouted urgently toward the sky:.
“Envoy Zhao! Hold your hand! Patriarch Gu Changsheng is the officially appointed [Benevolent Honorary Protector of Azure-Cloud Prefecture] who saved thirty thousand subjects of the Great Qian Dynasty yesterday!
You have no judicial warrant from the Emperor to arrest his nine-year-old and seven-year-old children!”
“An Honorary Protector of a border mud-puddle?!” Envoy Zhao Kun laughed scornfully from his flying bronze disk and began counting down aloud. The three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards leveled their iron lances toward the elementary school gates:.
“A million border peasants aren’t worth a single fingernail of His Highness the Second Prince! ONE! TWO!
THREE—”
“FOUR! FIVE! SIX—”
“SEVEN! EIGHT! NINE!
TIME IS UP—PREPARE TO RAZE THE—”
CREEEEEEAK.
Before Envoy Zhao Kun could shout the word ten, the carved cedar front door of the [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy] swung open at a leisurely pace.
Stepping out onto the sunlit wooden veranda was twenty-nine-year-aged Gu Changsheng , at Rank 3 Late Martial Grandmaster.
He wasn’t wearing battle armor, nor was he crawling on his knees. Dressed in a comfortable dark-blue linen robe and soft cloth house-slippers, with [Father’s Golden Spatula of True Discipline] hanging calmly at his belt. Twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng was holding a clean white porcelain soup bowl in his left hand and casually wiping it dry with a white cotton dish-towel in his right!
Stopping at the top of the three veranda steps, Gu Changsheng draped the white dish-towel neatly over his left shoulder, rested one hand on the wooden porch railing. Looked up at the forty-five-year-old envoy hovering a hundred and twenty feet in the air on his buzzing bronze saucer.
“Hey,” Gu Changsheng called up in a calm, conversational voice that cut effortlessly through the buzzing wind-runes of the flying disk. “You up there standing on the oversized brass dinner plate.”
Across Central Avenue, forty thousand citizens—and all three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards—froze in stunned silence!
Oversized brass dinner plate?!
Up in the sky, forty-five-year-old Envoy Zhao Kun nearly bit his own tongue off as his triangular eyes bulged in disbelief:.
“What did you just call my [Quasi-Rank 4 Wind-Step Flying Bronze Disk], you mortal peasant?!”
“I called it a noisy brass dinner plate,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng replied deadpan, pointing his porcelain soup bowl toward the quiet second-floor windows of the [Frost-Pine Loving-Heart Elementary School] next door. Six hundred young schoolchildren—along with nine-year-old Gu Nian , at Half-Step Rank 3, and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan , at Half-Step Rank 3,—were just waking up from their post-lunch nap.
“Do you know what time it is right now, Envoy Zhao?” Gu Changsheng asked mildly, setting the dry porcelain bowl down on the porch rail. “It’s twelve-fifteen in the afternoon.
In Azure-Cloud Prefecture, twelve to twelve-thirty is elementary school nap time, followed by sweet mung-bean soup at twelve-thirty.
Yet you flew into my neighborhood without a transit permit, parked your noisy brass saucer above a school zone, woke up six hundred kids with your shouting. Just threatened to put my nine-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter in iron cages?”
Stepping out onto the wooden veranda right behind Gu Changsheng, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin , at Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster, adjusted her emerald physician’s cuffs. Sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu , at Rank 2 Peak. Opened his leather-bound municipal fine ledger and three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao [Warmth: 92/100] poked his plush green.
Turtle head out of the window box with his miniature gold spectacles gleaming in the noon light!
Peering up at forty-five-year-old Envoy Zhao Kun hovering on the buzzing bronze saucer in the sky, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao let out a loud, mocking snort that carried across the entire avenue:.
“Pffft! And here this old Sovereign thought a genuine Rank 4 Spirit-Core cultivator had arrived from the Royal Capital—turns. Out it’s just a bloated Half-Step Rank 4 palace lapdog whose meridians are choked with third-rate Spirit-Forcing Pills!
Look at the green wind-sparks leaking out of the bottom of that [Quasi-Rank 4 Wind-Step Flying Bronze Disk]—two of the thirty-six wind-gathering runes on the rim are already rusted. You have to burn three middle-grade spirit stones a minute just to keep your heels forty yards off the ground!”
“And Master, I have already calculated the noise-violation and street-obstruction penalties!” sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu clicked his black-iron abacus briskly on the veranda steps. “Three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards marching onto Central Avenue during the noon lunch rush without paying the highway maintenance toll comes to thirty thousand silver taels.
Plus another twenty thousand silver taels for cracking twelve clay flowerpots on the second-floor balconies with unauthorized sonic shouting!”
Up on the second-floor wooden veranda of the [Frost-Pine Loving-Heart Elementary School] next door, the carved cedar doors slid open as nine-year-old Gu Nian , at Half-Step Rank 3. Seven-year-old Su Nuannuan , at Half-Step Rank 3. Stepped out onto the balcony rail in their clean yellow bunny apron and pink rabbit dress to shield the six hundred waking schoolchildren behind them.
Looking up at the fuming forty-five-year-old envoy floating on his bronze saucer, seven-year-old Su Nuannuan tilted her yellow straw sun-hat back. Held her little pink watering can with both hands, and called out in her sweet, clear voice:.
“Noisy flying uncle! You woke up all six hundred kids in our school right in the middle of our dream about Dad’s sweet mung-bean soup! If you don’t come down and say sorry to Principal Fu and Teacher Qin right now, Dad is going to spank your flying saucer with his golden spatula!”
Right beside her, nine-year-old Gu Nian stood steady as a young mountain pine with his hand resting over his mother’s warm [Frost-Phoenix Jade Hairpin] beneath his tunic:.
“Dad already warned you once, Envoy Zhao. Nobody brings iron cages to our school—and nobody touches my little sister or our classmates!”
Down on Central Avenue, seeing nine-year-old Gu Nian and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan standing fearlessly on the school balcony. Twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng stood below with a dish-towel over his shoulder, forty thousand citizens of Azure-Cloud Prefecture erupted into thunderous cheers of solidarity:.
“WELL SAID, PROTECTOR GU! WELL SAID, LITTLE BROTHER NIAN AND NUANNUAN! THIS IS AZURE-CLOUD PREFECTURE—WE DON’T KNEEL TO CHILD-SNATCHING BULLIES!”
Down in the front rank of the three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards, thirty-eight-year-old Battalion Commander Chen. At Rank 2 Peak, felt a drop of cold sweat trickle down the inside of his iron helmet. He looked from the forty thousand defiant citizens on the balconies to the calm twenty-nine-year-old father standing on the pharmacy steps:.
“Wait a minute... when we marched into border counties in the past, the local gentry and commoners always hid behind bolted doors at the mere sight of Envoy Zhao’s flying bronze disk! Why isn’t a single citizen in Azure-Cloud Prefecture afraid of us—and why are thirty twelve-foot stone giants in pink aprons wheeling soup-carts into the intersection ahead?!”
Stepping calmly down the three wooden porch steps onto the clean granite flagstones of Central Avenue. Twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng looked up at the trembling, purple-faced Half-Step Rank 4 envoy in the sky with a warm, dangerous smile:.
“I’ll give you and your three thousand tin soldiers one polite warning under [Gu Household Rule #3]: get down off that brass saucer, apologize to the school for waking the kids. Put on a pink chore apron to help sweep the street—or in five minutes I’m going to slap you off that flying dinner plate with my kitchen spatula. Hitch you to our family luggage cart like a mule!”
[ DING! CAPITAL ENVOY ZHAO KUN ARRIVES ABOVE CENTRAL AVENUE! ]
* Enemy Force : Envoy Zhao Kun (45, Half-Step Rank 4 Spirit-Core.
Realm on Flying Bronze Disk) + 3,000 Black-Armor.
Capital Guards (Led by Commander Chen, Rank 2 Peak)
* Dad’s Warning : Steps out wiping a soup bowl and warns Envoy Zhao.
not to disturb elementary school nap time!
* Daily Income : +390,000 DP/day -> +400,000 DP/day!