HUMMMMMM—KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Twin 20% cultivation feedback streams surged along the golden threads of the [All-Family Shared Cultivation Link] from nine-year-old Gu Nian , at Rank 3 Early Grandmaster. Seven-year-old Su Nuannuan , at Rank 3 Early Grandmaster. They converged inside twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng’s , at Rank 3 Late Martial Grandmaster, dantian like two celestial rivers pouring into a blazing sun!
At the exact same moment, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin , at Rank 3 Early Martial Grandmaster, stood on the pharmacy veranda and received her share of the family link’s feedback. That warm tide propelled her emerald Life-Nurturing Grandmaster aura cleanly into [Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster]!
Inside twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng’s abdomen, his eighty-foot golden solar and silver frost-phoenix internal-qi sea compressed inward by tenfold. A heartbeat later, it erupted into a flawless, crystalline hundred-and-fifty-foot domain of liquid golden-silver light!
Every single meridian, bone, and acupoint in his twenty-nine-year-old body reached the absolute, unsurpassable pinnacle of the mortal martial path:.
[RANK 3 PEAK MARTIAL GRANDMASTER (100,000 lbs Base Grandmaster Force + Liquid Golden-Solar Internal Qi)]!
Better yet, his household now boasted four Rank 3 Martial Grandmasters: himself at Rank 3 Peak. Auntie Qin at Rank 3 Mid, nine-year-old Gu Nian at Rank 3 Early, and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan at Rank 3 Early. Backed by Rank 2 Peak Grandpa Fu and thirty Rank 2 Peak Lava Golems.
Gu Changsheng’s passive skill [Father’s Authority] [+50% All-Stat Multiplier per Child Protected + 100% True Disciplinary Damage] stacked to a level that transcended the mortal realm!
[ DING! DOUBLE KID FEEDBACK — HOST REACHES RANK 3 PEAK APEX! ]
* Host Realm : Advances from Rank 3 Late -> [RANK 3 PEAK.
MARTIAL GRANDMASTER (Absolute Mortal Apex)]!
* Auntie Qin (24): Advances from Rank 3 Early -> [RANK 3 MID.
MARTIAL GRANDMASTER]!
* Active Buff : [FATHER’S AUTHORITY — MAXIMUM WRATH MODE!]
- Base Force (100,000 lbs) x Sibling Protection.
Multiplier = Crushes Half-Step Rank 4 & Early.
Rank 4 Spirit-Core Cultivators Instantly!
- Weapon Equipped: [Father’s Golden Spatula of.
True Discipline] (100% Shield-Bypassing Slap!)
* Daily Income : +450,000 DP/day -> +465,000 DP/day!
Up at a hundred and twenty feet above Central Avenue, forty-five-year-old Imperial Envoy Zhao Kun , at Half-Step Rank 4, stared in brain-frozen terror at the elementary school balcony. Two children had just punched and sneezed his fifty-thousand-gold [Rank 4 Blood-Lightning Spear] into candy sparks! Suddenly, a voice colder than the depths of the northern glacier echoed directly beside his ear:.
“Envoy Zhao.”
Envoy Zhao Kun’s neck snapped downward so fast his cervical vertebrae popped!
Down on the granite flagstones in front of the [Gu Family Peace Pharmacy], twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng had unhooked the eighteen-inch [Father’s Golden Spatula of True Discipline] from his belt.
Around Gu Changsheng’s tall, broad-shouldered frame swirled a solid, diamond-bright golden dragon-and-phoenix internal-qi canopy that made the entire half-mile street hum like a drawn bowstring!
“W-What is that internal qi density?!” Envoy Zhao Kun’s voice cracked in sudden, suffocating dread as his Half-Step Rank 4 spiritual sense brushed against Gu Changsheng’s aura. “Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster?!
Impossible—you’re not even thirty years old!
How can a border clan head possess Rank 3 Peak Internal Qi denser than my Half-Step Rank 4 Spirit Qi?!”
“Five minutes ago,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng spoke calmly as he took a single step forward into the center of Central Avenue, “I gave you a fair warning. I told you that if you woke my kids from their nap, you could get down off that brass saucer, apologize to the school, and sweep the street.”
STEP—BOOM!
As Gu Changsheng’s cloth-slippered right foot came down on the granite flagstone, he didn’t crush the street. Instead, his Rank 3 Peak golden internal qi solidified beneath his sole into a shimmering, three-foot-wide golden lotus stair-step floating two feet above the ground!
“Instead of apologizing,” Gu Changsheng continued, his dark eyes blazing with golden solar fire. He stepped four feet higher onto a second solid golden stair in midair, “you ordered three thousand soldiers to charge an elementary school. Then you threw a lethal Rank 4 lightning spear at my nine-year-old son, my seven-year-old daughter, and six hundred young schoolchildren.”
*STEP! STEP! STEP!
STEP!*
Forty thousand citizens on the rooftops, three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards in the soap-suds below, fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng, and six hundred cheering children on the school balcony stared with bulging eyes.
Twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng didn’t use a flying artifact or borrow the wind.
With every stride, he condensed solid, bell-ringing golden stairs out of pure Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster Internal Qi beneath his cloth house-slippers. He walked straight up the empty blue sky as casually and unhurriedly as a father walking up his own porch steps to discipline a misbehaving intruder!
Twenty feet... fifty feet... eighty feet...
one hundred and twenty feet!
With every golden stair Gu Changsheng stepped upon in the open sky, the dark storm clouds conjured by Envoy Zhao Kun’s talisman were blasted backward by a hundred yards. Warm golden spring sunlight poured back down over the elementary school and the city streets!
“Walking on empty air by condensing Internal Qi into solid golden stairs?!” Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng gasped from the Yamen roof, his jaw dropping to his chest. “Even in the Royal Capital’s Martial Grandmaster Hall, only a supreme Rank 3 Peak legend whose foundation rivals a Rank 4 Spirit-Core master can tread the sky on pure Internal Qi!”
Down in the six-inch-deep rainbow soap-bubbles on Central Avenue, thirty-eight-year-aged Battalion Commander Chen , at Rank 2 Peak, craned his neck upward until his red-plumed helmet slipped off the back of his head.
“By the Ancestors...” Commander Chen whispered, watching the twelve glowing golden lotus stairs remain suspended in midair like cast-gold bridges. “Back in Sky-Crown City, the Grand Commander of the Imperial Guards is also a Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster, yet he can only glide thirty feet across a courtyard before touching down for breath!
Protector Gu is walking vertically up a hundred and twenty feet of empty air in cloth house-slippers while carrying a kitchen spatula!”
Beside the crosswalk, thirty-five-year-old Guard Captain One-Ear Scar , at Rank 1 Peak, puffed out his chest inside his pink floral apron and tapped his bamboo scrub-broom against the flagstones:.
“What’s so strange about that, Brother Capital Soldier? Last month our Patriarch Gu slapped a underground Spirit Vein into behaving with his belt! Walking up a few flights of air-stairs to spank a noisy flying saucer isn’t even a warm-up before he cooks the afternoon noodles!”
“LOOK AT DAD! DAD IS WALKING UP A GOLDEN STAIRCASE IN THE SKY WITH HIS SPATULA!” seven-year-old Su Nuannuan.
At Rank 3 Early Grandmaster, jumped up and down on the school balcony, waving her pink watering can.
Beside her, nine-year-old Gu Nian , at Rank 3 Early Grandmaster, watched his father’s majestic back with shining, worshipful eyes:.
“Go get him, Dad! Teach him [Gu Household Rule #1]!”
Down on the pharmacy veranda, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao [Warmth: 92/100] stood up on his short green plush turtle hind legs and applauded wildly with both fuzzy flippers:.
“Marvelous! Truly marvelous! Look at those twelve golden lotus stairs hanging in the sky without fading for ten breaths!
Ordinary Rank 3 Peak Grandmasters have to kick the air like frantic sparrows just to stay aloft for three seconds. Yet Patriarch Gu’s liquid golden solar and frost-phoenix Internal Qi is so dense that each stair he leaves behind is harder than three-inch cast iron! And look at Niece Wan’er beside me!
Just from receiving the 20% family cultivation link feedback when the two children broke through, she has stepped straight from Rank 3 Early into Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster!”
Twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin felt her warm emerald Life-Nurturing Grandmaster domain expand fifty feet around her shoulders, now matching her uncle Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng’s Rank 3 Mid realm! She looked up at the tall, broad-shouldered figure standing a hundred and twenty feet in the sky with deep, radiant admiration in her clear eyes:.
“Five months ago in Frost-Pine Town, Master Changsheng stood in front of our little courtyard with an iron soup ladle and promised that. Long as he was standing, the sky over our family would never fall. Now even when an Imperial Envoy flies in on a Rank 4 bronze disk, Master Changsheng simply walks up into the clouds to meet him.”
Beside her on the veranda steps, sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu , at Rank 2 Peak, clicked his black-iron abacus with a reverent smile:.
“And best of all, Doctor Qin—walking up into the sky on pure golden Internal Qi costs zero spirit stones per minute! Compared to Envoy Zhao’s leaky bronze saucer, Master’s fuel efficiency is infinite!”
THUD—SHING!
With his twelfth unhurried step through the sky, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng stepped onto a floating golden qi platform one hundred and twenty feet above Central Avenue. He stood eye-to-eye and just ten feet away from forty-five-year-old Imperial Envoy Zhao Kun on his hovering [Quasi-Rank 4 Wind-Step Flying Bronze Disk]!
Up at a hundred and twenty feet in the air, face-to-face with the twenty-nine-year-old father whose golden aura felt heavier than Mount Tai, Envoy Zhao Kun backed up. His heels nearly slipped off the rear rim of his bronze disk!
“S-Stay back, Gu Changsheng!” Envoy Zhao Kun shrieked, his arrogance evaporating into raw, teeth-chattering panic as he fumbled at his jade belt. “I am a Half-Step Rank 4 Imperial Envoy of His Highness the Second Prince!
Even if you reached Rank 3 Peak, you are still a mortal Grandmaster—you can never break my Royal Capital Rank 4 Spirit Shields!”
Standing calmly in midair ten feet away, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng raised the eighteen-inch [Father’s Golden Spatula of True Discipline] in his right hand. Along the solar-brass blade, the engraved characters—SPARE THE SPATULA, SPOIL THE WORLD—lit up like a miniature sun:.
“House Rule Number One of the Gu Family, Envoy Zhao: nobody points sharp or explosive things at children. Clench your teeth—because this spatula is going to hurt!”
Down on the rooftops, balconies, and soap-covered flagstones of Central Avenue, forty thousand citizens of Azure-Cloud Prefecture and three thousand Black-Armor Capital Guards craned their necks toward the hundred-and-twenty-foot sky in breathless awe.
Bathed in the clear afternoon sunlight, twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng , at Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster. Stood atop his twelfth solid golden internal-qi lotus stair with his dark-blue cotton robe fluttering gently in the high-altitude breeze.
He didn’t need a hundred-thousand-gold bronze flying disk. He didn’t need palace elixirs that poisoned his own meridians.
Behind him on the second-floor veranda of the [Frost-Pine Loving-Heart Elementary School] stood his nine-year-old son Gu Nian , at Rank 3 Early Grandmaster. Seven-year-old daughter Su Nuannuan , at Rank 3 Early Grandmaster. On the pharmacy veranda stood twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin , at Rank 3 Mid Grandmaster, sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu , at Rank 2 Peak, and three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao , at Rank 6 Remnant Soul.
And lining the avenues below stood forty thousand grateful neighbors whose lives, farms, and children his household had protected and fed.
Under the combined resonance of [Father’s Authority], the [All-Family Shared Cultivation Link]. The [Prefecture-Wide Warmth Broadcast Protocol], twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng’s Rank 3 Peak presence in the sky above Azure-Cloud Prefecture was as immovable and absolute as the northern mountains themselves!
Across from him on the wobbling eight-foot [Quasi-Rank 4 Wind-Step Flying Bronze Disk], forty-five-year-old Imperial Envoy Zhao Kun. At Half-Step Rank 4, felt cold sweat soaking through the back of his black dragon-envoy robes. Beneath his boots, the thirty-six wind-runes whined under the crushing weight of Gu Changsheng’s golden solar domain.
“Im-impossible...” Envoy Zhao Kun’s teeth chattered so loud he could hear them echoing inside his own skull. “His Highness the Second Prince told me that Azure-Cloud Prefecture was a barren border wasteland without a single Rank 3 Late cultivator!
How can a twenty-nine-year-old father have two child Martial Grandmasters at home, a Rank 3 Mid female physician on his porch, thirty Rank 2 Peak ancient Lava Golems washing his soup bowls.
Rank 3 Peak golden Internal Qi that can condense stairs in the sky?!”
Seeing Gu Changsheng’s right wrist tilt back half an inch with the gleaming eighteen-inch [Father’s Golden Spatula of True Discipline], Envoy Zhao Kun’s pupils contracted to pinpricks. He frantically reached for the three life-saving Rank 4 jade pendants at his waist:.
“Don’t think you can intimidate an Imperial Envoy of the Royal Capital with a kitchen utensil, Gu Changsheng! Even if you walked up into the sky, let’s see how your mortal spatula gets past three layers of the Imperial Astral Tower’s Rank 4 Jade-Light Spirit Shields!”