Standing at the foot of the veranda steps in the Frost-Pine courtyard, Grandpa Yao (Master Yao Chen) took a deep breath. His old eyes misting over as he remembered his own past before meeting the Gu family.
“Think about the plight of my old colleagues across the three thousand worlds, Master Gu!” Grandpa Yao said, waving his alchemical pipe stem passionately in the air.
“In the Chief Author’s old script, whenever an ancient Pill-Saint, Sword-Emperor, or Array-Grandmaster suffered an accident, our souls got stuffed inside a rusty copper ring or a cracked jade pendant! And then what happened? Some hotheaded teenage brat who called himself a ‘Chosen One’ would pick up the ring in a flea market and treat us like twenty-four-hour unpaid interns!”
Grandpa Yao counted on his fingers with righteous indignation:
“We had to teach them supreme martial arts for free, refine pills for them all night long, warn them whenever they walked into a trap. Bail them out every time they offended three noble clans at once while showing off at an auction! And what did those ungrateful brats give their Ring-Grandpas in return?
Not a single copper coin of wages! Not a single cup of hot tea! If Master Gu hadn’t seduced me out of Lin Fan’s ring back on the early pages of Book One with a plate of honey-roasted chicken drumsticks.
