Chapter 233: The Golden Boy Tries to Play Hero and Instantly Becomes the Main Course

While Gu Fan lounged on a high rooftop, still wiping tears of laughter from his eyes after watching Gu Bao get turned into a bloody, shit-covered pancake, a much larger catastrophe was already tearing Poison Valley Town apart.

~~~~~

Patriarch Song Tianming rushed through the Song Clan estate, his Spiritual Qi whipping his robes around as he stood at the edge of what used to be his pride and joy, staring in shock at the smoking, completely obliterated ruins of his premium weapon armory.

The Song Clan’s premium weapon armory, the warehouse that had held enough high-tier swords, shields, and forging powder to equip three minor sects was now a smoking, glowing crater of molten slag and shattered stone. The heat still rolled off it in waves. The air reeked of scorched metal and something sharply chemical.

A soot-covered elder stumbled out of the ruins, clutching a jagged chunk of glowing blue ice like it was a holy relic.

"Patriarch... look!" the elder gasped, blood running down his temple, "Look at this! The structural supports were blown from the inside. These casings... they are Bai Clan Frost-Core Demolition Orbs. The residual Qi is that unique to the Bai Clan. No doubt."

Song Tianming stared directly at the shattered ’Frost-Core Demolition Orb’ casing, his eyes violently narrowing into dangerous slits as his usually calm facade entirely shattered.

His spiritul Qi detonated outward like a bomb, pushing the elder back multiple steps as the remaining half-standing pillars cracked.

Nearby disciples dropped to their knees under the pressure.

"Bai Haoran..." Song Tianming’s voice was low, almost calm. Then it rose into a full-throated roar that shook the courtyard, "You desperate, thieving, backstabbing dog! You buried your own clan to the ground and now you dare go against the Song clan?"

"The Song Clan has been silent for far too long for these dogs to stop fearing my clan."

"But now I will show these dogs who rules this town."

And with that he spun toward the nearest captain.

"Sound the war drums. Arm every disciple who can still hold a sword. We are marching into the bazaar right now. I want Bai Haoran’s head on a spike before the sun rises!"

~~~~~

On the opposite side of the valley, Patriarch Bai Haoran was having an almost identical breakdown.

His remaining herbal storehouses, the last real wealth the Bai Clan still possessed after months of drought were being consumed by roaring purple flames that refused to die.

Waves of Frost Qi by the elders and the younger generations slammed into the fire and simply melted. The Purple Nether-Ghost Fire only burned hotter, as if insulted by the attempt.

An elite guard ran up, holding a long silver-feathered arrow that still dripped blood.

"Patriarch! These were pulled from the dead perimeter guards. They belong to the Song Clan archer unit. It is there signature armor-piercing arrows. No one else uses them."

Bai Haoran stared at the arrow.

His eyes went completely bloodshot.

"The Song Clan..." he whispered, then snarled. "Those greedy merchant rats sat back and watched us bleed for months. And the second we were weak they decided to finish the job with a cowardly night attack?!"

He drew both frost-sabers in one smooth motion. The temperature around him plummeted so hard that frost raced across the ground.

"Sound the drums! Every disciple, every elder, every servant who is not dead, I want him here! If those coin-counting bastards want a war, we will drag every last one of them into the underworld with us!"

"We might be weak."

"But we are still alive."

~~~~~

The two armies moved through the dark streets like opposing tides of steel and torchlight.

There was no messenger. No formal challenge. No last attempt at diplomacy.

The moment the Song Clan vanguard spotted the Bai Clan forces pouring into the central bazaar from the opposite direction, Patriarch Song Tianming simply launched himself into the air.

His broadsword came down in a single, merciless arc.

SCHLICK!

A senior Bai Clan elder’s head left his shoulders in a perfect, clean cut. The body stood for half a second longer, blood fountaining upward, before collapsing into the mud.

Bai Haoran’s answering roar shook the rooftops.

"KILL THEM ALL!"

He swung both sabers. A Song Clan captain’s chest froze solid and then exploded into bloody ice shards that sprayed across three nearby disciples.

The bazaar ceased to be a marketplace.

It became a slaughterhouse.

Hundreds of cultivators slammed into each other with zero hesitation.

Swords punched through guts. Spears pinned men to burning stalls.

Exploding talismans and stray fireballs turned merchant carts into flying shrapnel.

The once-colourful banners of the market caught fire and rained burning cloth onto the screaming mass below.

Blood ran in thick rivers between the cobblestones. The air filled with the wet sound of steel meeting flesh and the high, desperate screams of the dying.

But this was just the beginning.

~~~~~~~

Inside his ruined courtyard, Gu Chen jolted awake with a choked gasp.

His body was still covered in cold sweat. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Gu Bao’s filthy, naked form lunging at him, cock erect, eyes mad, screaming about Yang energy. The memory made his stomach turn.

Then the distant roar of explosions and the unmistakable clash of a full-scale clan war reached his ears.

Gu Chen sat up straight.

"Why is there no peace tonight?"

He grabbed his silver sword, kicked open his gate, and began shouting orders.

A squad of confused Gu Clan disciples gathered near the main gates. A scout ran up, face pale.

"Young Master! The Bai and Song clans are killing each other in the central bazaar! It’s a full war!"

Gu Chen’s chin lifted. His voice rang with pure, delusional heroism.

His eyes slowly lit with a familiar, self-righteous fire.

This... this was it.

This was the chance to wipe away the humiliation of the expedition, the humiliation of the assassin ambush, and the absolute soul-scarring humiliation of his own brother trying to rape him. He would stop the senseless bloodshed. He would stand between two raging clans and force them to see reason. The entire town would remember the Golden Boy as the hero who ended the war with a single speech.

"Follow me. Tonight we save this town."

~~~~~~~~

By the time Gu Chen and the Gu Clan guards behind him reached the edge of the central bazaar, the place had already become a vision of hell.

Bodies lay everywhere.

Some were still twitching.

Others had been cut into so many pieces they barely looked human.

A Song Clan disciple was pinned to a burning spice stall by three spears through his chest, screaming as the flames slowly climbed his legs.

A Bai Clan elder dragged himself across the mud with both arms missing, leaving thick red trails behind him until a passing Song cultivator casually stomped on his skull and ended the noise.

Severed limbs floated in the growing pools of blood. The air stank of iron, burning flesh, and ruptured intestines.

In the middle of the worst knot of fighting where the two Patriarchs’ personal guards had collided, the slaughter was still in a frenzy.

A Song captain swung a heavy glaive and took a Bai disciple’s head clean off; the head bounced twice before rolling under a broken cart.

Two Bai elders had surrounded a Song squad and were systematically freezing and shattering arms and legs, laughing as the younger cultivators tried to crawl away on bloody stumps.

Exploding talismans lit the night in brief, white flashes that revealed more and more corpses every time the light faded.

Without hesitation Gu Chen leapt onto the back of a broken, overturned merchant cart right in the middle of that bloodiest knot of combat.

He struck a perfect heroic pose, one foot on the cart edge, silver sword pointed toward the burning sky, white robes still stained with mercenary blood and latrine filth from earlier.

"STOP THIS SENSELESS VIOLENCE!" he roared, Spiritual Qi amplifying his voice so it rolled across the entire market.

"Listen to reason! You are slaughtering each other over a misunderstanding! You are being manipulated! Lower your weapons and..."

No one cared. A heavily bleeding Song Clan elder, eyes completely red with battle frenzy, spun toward the cart the moment he heard a Gu Clan voice. He assumed the Gu Clan had finally decided to side with the Bai Clan.

"Die, you hypocritical Gu Clan dog!"

He hurled a heavy spiked mace with everything he had.

At the exact same moment a Bai Clan elder who still remembered how the Gu Clan had hoarded medical resources while the Bai Clan starved, decided Gu Chen was trying to backstab them mid-fight. A freezing slash screamed toward Gu Chen’s blind side.

Gu Chen’s eyes went wide.

He raised his sword to block the mace.

He was exhausted. He had already fought nine assassins and then beaten his own naked brother half to death. His reactions were a half-step too slow.

CRACK!

The iron mace smashed through his guard and slammed into his ribs with a sickening crunch. Three ribs snapped like dry twigs. The breath left his lungs in a wet, agonized grunt. He stumbled backward off the cart.

The freezing slash arrived a heartbeat later and carved a deep, bleeding gash straight across his thigh. White robes turned red again.

"Protect the Young Master!" the Gu Clan disciples screamed and threw themselves forward.

It was already too late.

Both sides had decided the Golden Boy was fair game.

Elders from Song and Bai closed in like sharks smelling blood. Gu Chen was forced onto pure defense, sword flashing desperately, boots slipping in the mud and blood. Every time he tried to speak another blade or ice spike forced him to shut up and parry.

The heroic aura he had tried so hard to project collapsed in less than ten seconds.

Realizing he was about to die in the middle of a war that had nothing to do with him, Gu Chen finally abandoned every remaining shred of dignity.

"Retreat!" he choked out, blood running down his chin. "Full retreat!"

He turned and limped as fast as his ruined thigh would allow, white robes now black with mud and red with his own blood. His remaining disciples formed a desperate rearguard and died one by one covering his escape.

The Golden Boy fled the burning bazaar looking exactly like what he was: a traumatized, half-broken young master who had just been rejected by both sides of a war he had tried to stop with a speech.

On a high rooftop overlooking the entire bloody chaos, Gu Fan leaned back against a chimney, one leg crossed over the other, a small smile of pure contentment on his face.

He watched Gu Chen’s pathetic, limping retreat with open amusement.

"Third major humiliation in one night," he murmured to himself, "First the assassins, then your own brother trying to fuck you, and now both clans treating you like an annoying rat that wandered onto their battlefield. Truly a legendary performance, Golden Boy."

"But he will still be popular I guess..."

"Heaven’s Will!"

"Ohh! Heaven’s Will!"