Inside the quiet, cedar-paneled back courtyard room of the Gu Residence, forty-five-year-aged Imperial Envoy Zhao Kun , at Half-Step Rank 4, sat bound hand and foot to a heavy black-iron chair. His dantian was sealed by Gu Changsheng’s golden internal-qi needles. Outside in the sunny front garden nine-year-old Gu Nian and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan were handing out [Little Red Flower Stickers] to the three thousand pink-aproned Capital Guards.
An Imperial Envoy riding into Frost-Pine Town looking for trouble is just volunteering to pull our luggage cart, Gu Changsheng thought dryly.
Envoy Zhao Kun’s left cheek was swollen to the size of a winter melon from [Father’s Golden Spatula of True Discipline]. Ten of his teeth were missing, and a wooden splint held his dislocated jaw together, yet his triangular viper-eyes still glinted with stubborn fear of his master in the Royal Capital:.
“Gu... Gu Changsheng...” Envoy Zhao Kun slurred through his missing teeth, shivering as he looked at the twenty-nine-year-old Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster sitting across the mahogany desk.
“Even if you beat me to death, I can never speak a word about His Highness the Second Prince’s secret decrees!
His Highness placed a blood-curse on my tongue—”
“A blood-curse on your tongue? How adorable,” three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao [Rank 6 Golden Core Remnant Soul, Warmth: 92/100] chuckled from the center of the mahogany desk. He stood in his chubby two-foot [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] body holding a tiny jade medicine spoon filled with sparkling pink herbal dust.
Pushing his miniature gold spectacles up his green velvet snout, Grandpa Yao hopped to the edge of the desk right in front of Envoy Zhao Kun’s swollen nose:.
“Patriarch Gu, twenty-four-year-old Grand-Disciple Wan’er and I just brewed a fresh pinch of this [Rank 3 Peak Ten-Thousand-Feather Truth-Tickle Powder] using a drop of Little Miss Nuannuan’s medicinal laughter-dew! Not only does it dissolve low-level royal tongue-curses on contact, it makes every nerve ending from the soles of the feet to the armpits feel. If ten thousand goose feathers and warm caterpillars are tickling the bone marrow at once!
Watch!”
Puff!
With a gentle flick of his fuzzy green flipper, Grandpa Yao blew the pinch of sparkling pink herbal dust straight up Envoy Zhao Kun’s nostrils!
For two seconds, forty-five-year-old Envoy Zhao Kun blinked his bloodshot eyes.
Then—.
“PFFFFFFT—BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! STOP! MY ARMPITS!
MY TOES! MY RIBS ARE TICKLING INSIDE MY BONES! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
The dignified Half-Step Rank 4 Imperial Envoy of the Great Qian Royal Capital convulsed in the iron chair like a freshly caught shrimp dropped onto a hot griddle!
Tears and snot poured down his swollen purple cheeks as he laughed so hard his stomach cramped. His bare toes curled and uncurled at twenty beats a second, and the dissolving blood-curse on his tongue evaporated in a harmless puff of pink steam!
“I’LL TALK! HAHAHAHA! PLEASE WAVE THE ANTIDOTE FAN, GRANDPA TURTLE!
I’LL CONFESS EVERYTHING HIS HIGHNESS EVER TOLD ME—EVEN WHERE HE HIDES HIS SPARE IMPERIAL UNDERPANTS! HAHAHAHAHA!”
Only after twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin , at Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster, waved a mint-scented neutralizing sachet twelve inches in front of his nose did Envoy Zhao Kun slump forward against the ropes. He wheezed like a punctured bellows and stared in mortal dread at Grandpa Yao’s tiny jade spoon!
“Speak,” twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng said calmly, tapping his finger against the [Ancient Blood-Dragon Bone Decree] on the desk. “Why does Second Prince Qian Ye’s secret scroll carry a temporal cipher from one hundred years in the future. Why is he hunting my nine-year-old son Gu Nian, my seven-year-old daughter Su Nuannuan, and a ten-year-old orphan boy named Ye Xiao?”
Shuddering at the sight of the jade spoon in the plush turtle’s paw, Envoy Zhao Kun poured out every secret in his skull without daring to pause for breath:.
“Because His Highness Second Prince Qian Ye (Age 26, Rank 4 Early Spirit-Core Realm) is a [100-Year Rebirth Regressor] who returned from a ruined future!”
Inside the study, Auntie Qin, Grandpa Fu, and Grandpa Yao all sucked in a sharp breath as Envoy Zhao Kun spoke rapidly:.
“One year ago in the Royal Capital (Sky-Crown City). Second Prince Qian Ye suddenly woke up in the Eastern Palace possessing a hundred years of future memories AND a fragment of an Upper-Realm artifact called the [Book of World-Plundering Fate]! According to what His Highness told me in his secret chamber, in the original hundred-year timeline he lived through, three neglected.
Abused children born in the Great Qian Dynasty grew up to become three world-ending Supreme Villains who tore down the Great Qian Empire and slaughtered every sect that had wronged them!”
Pointing a trembling chin toward the courtyard window where nine-year-old Gu Nian and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan could be heard laughing happily. They handed out red paper flowers to the soldiers, Envoy Zhao Kun swallowed hard:.
“In Second Prince Qian Ye’s past-life memories, Child #1 was your son Gu Nian! He was supposed to lose his father at age nine in Frost-Pine Town, suffer ten years of torture and starvation. Awaken his [Innate Chaos Demon Bone] in blood and hatred [100% Darkening], and become the [Chaos Demon Sovereign]!
Child #2 was Su Nuannuan! She was supposed to be locked in Lin Fan’s centipede jar for ten years, go mad from pain [100% Darkening], and become the [Ten-Thousand-Poison Empress]!”
Inside the quiet study, the air seemed to drop twenty degrees as Envoy Zhao Kun’s words echoed against the cedar walls.
Hearing what the original, un-altered script of this world had planned for nine-year-old Gu Nian. Seven-year-old Su Nuannuan if twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng hadn’t refused to die on that cold winter morning five months ago. Twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin covered her mouth with trembling fingers.
Tears of retroactive heartache and fierce protective anger welled in her eyes as she looked out the window at the two smiling children in the garden:.
“Little Nian’er and Little Nuannuan are the sweetest, most polite children in the world! Little Nian’er always saves the biggest piece of braised pork for his sister, and Little Nuannuan cries when a baby sparrow falls out of its nest! Those heartless monsters in that original timeline starved and tortured two innocent children for ten years—and then had the audacity to call them ‘villains’ when they fought back?!”
Beside the desk, sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu , at Rank 2 Peak, gripped his black-iron abacus so hard his knuckles turned chalk-white and the iron frame creaked:.
“If Master hadn’t woken up on that December morning and smashed Scar-Face Liu’s teeth with the iron chamber pot... this old servant wouldn’t even be alive to see Young Master Nian wear his yellow bunny slippers or hear Little Miss Nuannuan call me Grandpa Fu!”
“And what about Child #3—ten-year-old Ye Xiao?” Gu Changsheng asked, his voice calm on the surface while a terrifying golden solar heat radiated from his Rank 3 Peak dantian.
“Child #3 is a ten-year-old street orphan in the Royal Capital named Ye Xiao. Born with the supreme [Innate Void-Cleaving Sword Heart] AND a pair of [Star-Gazing Sword Pupils]!” Envoy Zhao Kun confessed in a rush.
“In Second Prince Qian Ye’s past life, ten-year-old Ye Xiao starved in the slums of Sky-Crown City.
His eyes were blinded and his tendons were crippled by noble bullies after he tried to protect a stray puppy. Thirty years later, he crawled out of a sword-graveyard [100% Darkening] as the [Blood-Shadow Sword Fiend] and sliced the Imperial Palace in half with a single sword strike!”
Envoy Zhao Kun’s voice trembled as he revealed the Regressor Prince’s true ambition:.
“When Second Prince Qian Ye regressed a hundred years into the past last year, he didn’t want to save or raise those three children! He wanted to steal all three of their innate supreme constitutions before they grew up and fuse them into his own body so he could ascend to the Upper Realm as a god! That was why he secretly gave Lin Fan a Blood-Dragon Sub-Token to harvest Gu Nian and Su Nuannuan in the north.
Meanwhile, in the Royal Capital itself, Second Prince Qian Ye sent his shadow-hounds into the slums three days ago and captured ten-year-old Ye Xiao alive!”
“He already captured ten-year-old Ye Xiao three days ago?!” Auntie Qin gasped in horror. “Why hasn’t he killed the child yet?!”
“Because extracting a living [Innate Void-Cleaving Sword Heart] and [Star-Gazing Sword Pupils] intact requires the child’s meridians to be frozen in nine-layered Yin ice. The mid-spring blood-moon!” Envoy Zhao Kun blurted out, pointing toward the eastern horizon.
“Right now, ten-year-old Ye Xiao is locked inside an iron cage on the [Nine-Yin Ice-Altar] beneath the Second Prince’s Imperial Astral Tower in the Royal Capital!
That is the exact same tower where His Highness locked away an Upper-Realm silver-blue [Ice-Phoenix Soul-Core Crystal] he found five years ago!”
Both ten-year-old Child #3 Ye Xiao AND Qingxue’s second soul-wisp are locked inside the Second Prince’s Imperial Astral Tower in the Royal Capital!
Standing on the mahogany desk in his two-foot [Jade-Turtle Plush Doll] body, three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao [Warmth: 92/100] slammed his tiny jade medicine spoon down so hard the porcelain saucer rang like a bell. His plush green cheeks trembled with righteous alchemical fury:.
“That shameless, cold-blooded beast Qian Ye! Even given a miracle by the heavens to live a hundred years over again, instead of feeding the hungry or giving that ten-year-old street orphan a warm coat and a teacher. He locked a ten-year-old boy on a Nine-Yin Ice-Altar to carve out his heart and eyes while alive?!
Patriarch Gu—even if this old Sovereign has to burn half my Golden Core soul-fire to light the furnace on the road, we cannot let that poor ten-year-old boy suffer on that ice altar!”
“Master,” sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu stepped forward, his single sharp eye blazing with resolve as he closed his interrogation notebook, “every single word of Envoy Zhao’s confession has been recorded and thumb-printed. In the original timeline, that ten-year-old child Ye Xiao only became a sword fiend. The whole capital left him to freeze and go blind in a gutter after he tried to save a puppy!
He isn’t a villain—he is a good-hearted ten-year-old boy waiting for a father to bring him home!”
“And look at what Envoy Zhao just admitted about the Imperial Astral Tower’s underground vault,” twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin , at Rank 3 Mid Martial Grandmaster, added urgently. Pointing at the map of Sky-Crown City spread across the corner of the mahogany desk. “Second Prince Qian Ye locked ten-year-old Ye Xiao’s iron cage right on the [Nine-Yin Ice-Altar] directly beneath the tower’s central pillar, where the silver-blue [Ice-Phoenix Soul-Core Crystal] is sealed!
That means the freezing Nine-Yin cold hurting Little Ye Xiao’s meridians is actually leaking from the seal Second Prince Qian Ye placed around Sister Qingxue’s second soul-wisp!”
“Hehehe! Then Second Prince Qian Ye has dug his own grave twice over!” three-hundred-and-eighty-year-old Grandpa Yao [Warmth: 92/100] rubbed his fuzzy green turtle flippers together with a sharp glint behind his miniature gold spectacles.
“Not only did that greedy little prince lock Patriarch Gu’s future third child and Empress Luo’s second soul-wisp in the exact same room so we can rescue both in a single trip.
He also spent five years gathering three hundred [Rank 4 Spirit-Core Herbs] and [Astral Star-Iron Ingots] inside that tower to fuel his ritual! Once Patriarch Gu kicks down the door of the Imperial Astral Tower, our household’s pantry will be stocked with enough Rank 4 ingredients to cook soup for a whole year!”
“Not a single hair on that ten-year-old boy’s head is going to be touched,” twenty-nine-year-aged Gu Changsheng , at Rank 3 Peak Martial Grandmaster, said, his voice quiet and steady. He stood up behind the mahogany desk while the golden solar domain inside his dantian hummed like a waking dragon.
“In Second Prince Qian Ye’s past life, nobody stood up for nine-year-old Gu Nian, nobody opened the cage for seven-year-old Su Nuannuan. Nobody gave ten-year-old Ye Xiao a roof over his head—so the world called them ‘villains’ when they grew up and fought back.”
Gu Changsheng rested his right hand on the dragon-hide hilt of [Father’s Golden Spatula of True Discipline] at his waist, his golden eyes flashing with absolute paternal authority:.
“In this life, all three of those children belong to the Gu Household! Whoever tries to steal my kids’ bones or eyes is going to find out that a father’s spatula cuts deeper than any regressor’s memory!”
And at that exact instant, on top of Gu Changsheng’s mahogany desk, [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] burst open with a blinding, siren-red emergency flash!
[ DING! 100-YEAR REGRESSOR SECOND PRINCE QIAN YE UNCOVERED! ]
* Enemy Profile : Second Prince Qian Ye (26, Rank 4 Early Spirit-.
Core Realm, 100-Year Regressor trying to harvest.
all 3 Children’s Innate Constitutions!)
* Capital Target: Imperial Astral Tower (Holds BOTH Mom’s 2nd Soul-.
Wisp AND captive 10-year-old Child #3 Ye Xiao!)
* Daily Income : +485,000 DP/day -> +492,000 DP/day!