Little Scumbag, I'll Gladly Take Your Mom!

For the next three days, the blacksmith shop remained shut tight, shutting out the villagers' ceaseless curses.

Of course, even if Tang Hao had heard what the villagers were saying, he might not have cared.

He was busy playing the role of a good father, carefully tending to the bedridden Tang San.

Tang Hao paid no attention to anything beyond the blacksmith shop. All he cared about was Tang San's recovery.

Tang San had lived two lives without ever knowing familial love, so Tang Hao's change moved him deeply. He even felt that his injuries had been worth it.

That was what happened when someone grew up starved of love. A bug that had spent its whole life underground might mistake a firefly for the sun.

Tang San was in much the same state of mind.

Despite the pain wracking his body and his inability to get out of bed, he thought this was the happiest time of either of his lives.

Yep. Certified lunatic. Beyond saving!

Unlike the father and son playing happy family behind closed doors, Chu Chen kept himself busy.

Every morning, he went out to cultivate by the river. At sunrise, he went home to eat, then returned to the river to cultivate until noon. After lunch, he went back again and cultivated until evening...

All right, so he was really just shuttling between two places. Cultivation was a little dull, but seeing his strength grow was a joy.

A few days weren't enough for Chu Chen to break through to the next realm, but the feeling of improving every day was intoxicating.

Throughout those three days, Chu Chen also kept tabs on the Tang family.

Thanks to the Tangs' reputation as the village's most hated family, he didn't have to make inquiries himself.

The uproar over the ungrateful father and son snatching the spot had yet to die down. It still held the top spot on the village gossip chart, miles ahead of every other topic.

And the other hot topics in Holy Soul Village concerned the Tangs too.

For instance: "Why doesn't Little Scumbag have a mom? Did that shameless Tang Hao sell her to a brothel for drinking money?" Or: "Has Tang Hao killed someone? Could he be a wanted criminal?" Or: "Those two never used to be close, so why are they suddenly inseparable? Is there something unnatural going on between them?" And: "The Tang family keeps its door shut all day and never comes out. What filthy, eye-searing things are they doing in there?"

And on and on...

That was life in a rural village. A bunch of old ladies and young wives got together with nothing to do, and no subject was too outrageous for them to imagine.

The worst part was how vividly they told it, as if they had seen it with their own eyes. They could even describe exactly what positions had been used...

Even Chu Chen, who had lived through the information explosion of the internet in his previous life, was shaken by what he heard.

Little Scumbag bedridden, Father Hao tending to his son?

Chu Chen's face went pale. Fighting the urge to vomit, he forced the mental poison he'd heard from the village women out of his head.

Damn it, those village aunties are terrifying. They nearly drove me to cultivation madness!

It wasn't until the evening of the third day after the battle for the spot that Chu Chen finally managed to steady his mind.

After dinner, he left home as usual and went to the river outside the village.

This time, though, Chu Chen didn't sit down to cultivate in his usual clearing. He followed the river upstream instead.

His destination... was the cave where Tang Hao had hidden Ah Yin!

In the original story, Tang Hao had hidden Ah Yin, reduced to her Blue Silver Grass form, along with the Hundred Thousand Year Blue Silver Emperor right leg bone in the mountains near Holy Soul Village. They were in a cave behind the upper-middle section of a hundred-zhang waterfall.

There were no coordinates, no direction, not even a distance. Finding the exact place should have been difficult, even for someone determined to search.

But Chu Chen was a local.

And Holy Soul Village was poor.

Farming was the village's main livelihood. Its grain and vegetables went to nearby Notting City.

The problem was that the farmland belonged to nobles. The villagers toiled every day just to keep themselves fed. After a whole year of hard work, they barely had a coin left in their pockets.

If they wanted an extra length of cloth for the family or another piece of meat on the table during the holidays, the villagers had to turn to the wild.

Gathering wild vegetables and mushrooms in the mountains, or trapping a few rabbits, became their routine whenever there was a lull in farmwork.

But resources were limited. As the wilds near the village grew bare, people inevitably ventured deeper into the mountains. Some villagers who went to gather medicinal herbs traveled farther still.

The villagers had explored almost every corner within a dozen or so li. Chu Chen had never gone himself, but he had learned plenty from those who regularly went deep into the mountains for herbs.

The more unusual features of the terrain there often came up in village chatter.

One magnificent waterfall, a hundred zhang high and surrounded by mountains, had been mentioned several times by an old herb gatherer.

The first time Chu Chen heard about it, he suspected it was where Tang Hao had hidden Ah Yin.

Waterfalls weren't especially common to begin with. A towering one with such a steep drop was rarer still.

What were the odds of two rare landmarks of the same kind appearing near Holy Soul Village? Practically none.

Chu Chen hadn't deliberately asked where the waterfall was before. Back then, all he wanted was to live his own life.

But things were different now. He had made enemies of the Tang family, so there was no reason to hold back.

He couldn't leave a treasure like the Hundred Thousand Year Soul Bone for Little Scumbag!

The only problem was the distance. According to the old herb gatherer, the waterfall was more than twenty li from the village.

It lay deep in the mountains, with no path leading to it. Finding his way through the dense forest would be difficult, and the round trip would take quite some time.

Fortunately, the old herb gatherer remembered the waterfall well. He had found plenty of wild medicinal herbs in its valley and, perhaps planning to return someday, had drawn a rough map from memory.

Chu Chen had now borrowed that map.

As luck would have it, Old Jack had gone to Notting City on business and wouldn't return until the following day. With a whole night to himself, Chu Chen could slip away and search the mountains for that waterfall!

Even if I don't use it myself, I can't leave it there to strengthen my enemy...

Chu Chen thought as he wove through the dense forest.

He pictured the murderous look in Tang San's eyes, and a cold smile slowly curled his lips.

Little Scumbag, oh, Little Scumbag. Your mom... I'll gladly take her!