Rusted iron chains rattled in the freezing dark of Floor Four, echoing with the sound of ten million mothers and fathers weeping for the children they had been forced to leave behind.
Stepping across the threshold of the northern vault door with his [Frost-Pine Town Iron Wok Spatula] raised to cast a warm glow of golden hearth-light. Gu Changsheng pulled [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] out of his blue kitchen apron pocket.
BZZZZT—CRACK!
Gray static sputtered across the paper as the system indicator in the top corner ticked from [Foreknowledge Decay: 90%] to [Foreknowledge Decay: 93%].
In the original grimdark script—back on Original Page Two Thousand Seven Hundred—this fourth tale of the Heavenly Script Pavilion had been described as a deserted chamber housing an ancient Soul-Refining Pill Cauldron. In that original timeline, the Chosen One Lin Fan had arrived here, discovered ten million “nameless, unrefined soul-orbs” stored inside the cauldron.
Casually swallowed all ten million of them to boost his cultivation by half a sub-realm without once asking whose souls they were.
Now, as Gu Changsheng’s golden hearth-light swept across the vast, black-iron plain of Floor Four, the ugly truth behind Lin Fan’s “nameless soul-orbs” was laid bare before the entire Gu Family.
