"Got it!" Miu Huale, having just pulled himself up from the ground, retrieved his cell phone. He immediately began dialing The New York Times editorial department using his personal digital assistant.

"You!" His finger nearly jabbed Gu Juechen right in the nose. Gu Juechen was so enraged he nearly—

"And what about me?" Gu Juechen looked coolly at Gu Juechen, his gaze deliberately brushing past Gu Yuru standing behind his brother. He sneered, "What about me? You dare lay a hand on me? Do you really think I'm still the second son of the Gu family, the one with only a few dozen family guards at his side back then?"

He roughly slapped away the hand pointing at his nose, then straightened his suit, slightly rumpled from the collision. Glaring coldly at Gu Juechen, Gu Juechen turned away, clutching the bouquet of white tulips, and proceeded down the road toward the mausoleum. Peng Hua gave Gu Juechen the middle finger and skipped after Gu Juechen, swinging his hips cheerfully.

"Hmph." Two plumes of intense flame shot from Gu Juechen's nostrils. He let out a muffled roar toward the sky in fury, his face dark, leading his large contingent of clansmen hastily toward the ancestral grounds.

This day was the Gu family’s traditional day of ancestral sacrifice, where all clansmen gathered at the family mausoleum to pay respects to the ancestors who established the Gu family's foundation. Gu Juechen had rushed there from Copenhagen early that morning, and the nearby Gu Juechen naturally could not be left behind. Yet, the two brothers met, quite coincidentally, right at the entrance to the mausoleum for a confrontation. [Pao Ren Ba Shan, Nai Ao Qing) chang Shao, Xia Xin Shan, Novel Maximum]

Peng Hua followed Gu Juechen for a few steps, but couldn't resist turning back for one last look at the wrecked car. "Damn it, a pure hand-built antique gasoline engine car! Never mind anything else, the gasoline in that engine alone took an immense effort to source! Sigh, a total loss, a total loss."

Gu Juechen turned back with a gloomy expression to look at the car, its front end shattered and still emitting black smoke. He let out a low sigh. "Mother loved this kind of car. The sound of the engine made her feel calm."

"Oh? Is that so? No wonder!" Miu Hua, Siren, and Ariditya were visibly taken aback, and as they looked at the vehicle, a more complex emotion entered their gaze.

"The son wishes to care for the parent, but the parent is gone." Gu Juechen sighed softly, and two lines of hot tears traced paths down his cheeks.

Boreas watched the sky expressionlessly; that was the place where the fire rose every night.

Mo He spat a thick gob of phlegm onto the ground. "Care for? That depends on who you're caring for! That old man, damn it, I'm glad he died quickly. Otherwise, I absolutely would not have cared for him! I, Mo He, wouldn't have spent a single cent on him! Minus a hundred degrees! He tossed my elder brother and me out into the snow, naked, to fight snow leopards. To hell with him!" Mo He angrily raised a middle finger to the sky.

Entering the mausoleum gate surrounded by dark green pines, Gu Juechen didn't spare a glance for the ancestral tomb of the founder in the center of the grounds. Instead, he walked directly toward a massive oak tree in the northwest corner of the cemetery.

Beneath the nearly hundred-meter-tall oak, nestled in the green grass, stood a tombstone as pure white as snow. The center of the stone bore laser-printed portraits: a valiant, tall elder man, a dignified and opulent woman, and a serene, lovely young girl. The edges of the tombstone were carved with layer upon layer of tulip petals; the artisan's skill was exceptional, making the stone look as if it were built from stacked blossoms. Three lines of script were etched onto the monument, detailing the birth and death years and names of those interred.

Gently placing the bouquet of tulips before the tombstone, Gu Juechen drew out a small, pure silver hip flask from his inner pocket, unscrewed the stopper, and set it beside the flowers. He then lit three thick, hand-rolled cigars and placed them next to the flask.

The sea breeze blew from behind him, and the blue smoke from the cigars rose, causing the figures in the photographs to blur slightly.

Gu Juechen knelt before the grave. He took out a pristine white handkerchief and slowly began wiping the portraits of the old man and the young girl on the tombstone. Slowly, he wiped the inscriptions beneath the faces.

Gu Yitong, born November 3rd, Year Yin Cong. Died July Wan Day, Year Ao 3.

Xia Xueyan, born Year Fei Bai. Died July Wan Day, Year Chi 3.

The tombstone, coated with a nano-layer, was already spotless, but Gu Juechen meticulously, earnestly, wiped it until it shone. Every character, every stroke, every single petal—he scrubbed with effort. It took him a full half hour to finish polishing the relatively small monument.

Tucking the handkerchief back into his pocket, he sat cross-legged before the grave, smiling faintly, gazing tenderly at the old man and the girl on the stone. [Book source from Lei Shu Ba (Yao Chu) Member Collection and Release]

"All right! Old man, the thing you worried about really happened! I’ve been hunted for quite a while now! If it weren't for the fifty-odd brothers you secretly trained, I would have gone down to join you!"

"But they're all dead. Not one left, wiped out completely! They were all orphans you adopted, with no family to mourn them or receive aid, so I had to follow your example and donate a large sum to the Federal Charity General Association every year. I’ll keep an eye on them to ensure they don’t misuse the money we donate."

"Also, you forced me to handle company affairs when I was twelve. Well, you told me to do it, so I poached Bell Rocks and the others. You can't blame me. The fact that they are fiercely loyal to me—that took a lot of your effort, too. So, it's only natural that I take them in."

"Mother is timid. Take good care of her down there. Does it thunder or rain there? There shouldn't be any caterpillars or things like that, right?"

"I have a 'gentleman's agreement' with Gu Juechen. We won't fight to the death; we will only compete in the marketplace. Do you want me to win, or do you want him to win? Both hands are flesh, tsk tsk. I won't put you in a difficult position with this question. I will squeeze dry the very last drop of profit from him, and then... then what? Those dozens of brothers I grew up with... what should I do, Father? You taught me to be ruthless, but being ruthless to him... would that make you think I'm too cruel?"

He shook his head. Gu Juechen picked up the flask and took a sip of liquor, then poured all the gold-flecked brandy in it onto the ground before the tombstone.

"Don't blame me for tattling to Mother, but when I was twelve, you taught me to smoke, drink, and even how to kill and dissect. Well, you taught me all of that."

Placing the flask back in his pocket, he casually touched the portrait of the young girl on the tombstone.

"Mother, with the old man by your side, you shouldn't be scared, right? I’m sorry, I can't be a kind person. Otherwise, I would already be nothing but bones by now! The old man was right; this is a world where people eat people. If you don't want to be eaten, you have to eat others first. I have killed many people, so many people. You must be heartbroken, right?"

Tears streamed ceaselessly from his eyes as Gu Juechen knelt before the grave, sobbing quietly.

"I didn't want to either. I don't want to kill. But if I don't kill, I will die. If I don't harm others, I will be harmed. The brothers I grew up with since childhood are all gone, and now I have many more brothers. I don't want them to die too, so I must kill even more people. More and more people will die because of me."

"I apologize, Mother. I am destined not to be a kind person!"

"Are there white tulips, your favorite, in Heaven too?"

He kissed the portrait of the young girl on the tombstone with deep affection, and a surge of biting cold energy suddenly erupted from Gu Juechen.

The cold air rapidly expanded in all directions, accompanied by the faint sound of ice crystals freezing. A vast expanse of pale mist quickly enveloped the land for several hundred meters around. A faint, deep-blue spiritual fluctuation spread from the center of Gu Juechen's brow; his power, like ripples on water, gently stroked the thick layer of cold air. With a sharp crack, the cold was shaped by his spiritual energy. A white tulip formed of ice crystals bloomed beside Gu Juechen. As soon as the first tulip took shape, it was as if the Flower God had scattered a massive patch of seeds; thousands upon thousands of ice-crystal tulips surged forth from the mist.

Blue ripples rushed toward the sky, and the vast cloud of cold air shot straight up. The sea breeze swept past. Under Gu Juechen's mighty mental control, countless tiny, bean-sized, perfectly hexagonal ice crystals descended from the heavens with a delicate rustling sound. Sunlight caught the fragments of ice, and a magnificent rainbow arched suspended above.

Innumerable white tulips blossomed on the ground, the cold energy swirling mesmerizingly between their crystalline petals, while the descending ice crystals from the sky enhanced the splendor of this white sea of flowers, turning the area into a vision of fairyland.

A streak of purple light flashed by. Xin Jia, Zhao Yi, and ten others emerged from the light. Zhao Yi held eighty-one palm-sized silver command flags, directing Xin Jia and the others to carefully plant the flags in a pattern corresponding to the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams among the thicket of ice-crystal tulips. Beneath each flag, a fist-sized, pale blue, translucent Zakula crystal was buried. These crystals exuded a chilling cold, appearing as if layers of water waves were contained within them—clearly, they were of the highest grade. [Pao Ren Ba Shan, E Bu Jiu Shan) chang Shao, Li Xin Xie, Novel More]

With a crisp chime, Gu Juechen pulled the Cloud Thunder Bell from his Qiankun Pouch. Gently stroking the crystal-clear bell, he handed it to Zhao Yi without hesitation.

Zhao Yi looked at Gu Juechen in surprise, then accepted the Cloud Bell without a word and buried it directly beneath the tombstone.

With all preparations complete, upon Zhao Yi's command, Xin Jia and the others began launching thin bolts of palm lightning toward the command flags hidden among the flowers.

The lightning struck the silver flags, which immediately began to flutter gracefully without any wind. Eighty-one clear chimes echoed from beneath the ground, and wisps of white mist rose from the base of every ice-crystal tulip. Gradually, the flower thicket spanning several hundred meters was covered by a ghostly, swirling white fog.

The flags dissolved into streaks of silver light and vanished into the bloom. In an instant, a thin layer of silver glow coated every tulip petal.

A column of ethereal mist soared up from the tombstone, merging with the pale, cold air in the sky, forming a thin layer of cloud several hundred meters wide that clung close to the treetops of the oak, covering this patch of land. The sea breeze blew past, but this nearly transparent cloud remained perfectly still, while countless ice crystals continued to drift down from above. Reminder: Intermission soon.

Hmm, no one's going to call Pig Head a pig, are they? Wasting the Cloud Thunder Bell like that?

Uh...

Never mind that now.

Little... Gu snow begins to fall.

Pig Head hopes all sorts of tickets start falling! (To be continued)