Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

Ming’er and Qing’er followed suit, completely abandoning their elegance. They tore into the Crispy-Skin Duck, wrapping the meat in the lotus pancakes with frantic, desperate speed.

It was a ravenous, unhinged, incredibly satisfying display of pure survival instinct.

Ji’an didn’t sit down to eat with them.

She leaned against a stone pillar a few feet away, her arms crossed over her chest, watching them gorge themselves.

She had already eaten, but more importantly, she knew that if she sat at the table, her intimidating "Apex Anomaly" aura might make them self-conscious.

She wanted them to let go. She wanted them to understand that it was okay to be messy, to be hungry, and to be human.

"Slow down, Ming’er," Ji’an chuckled softly, tossing a cloth napkin onto the table. "The duck isn’t going to fly away. Drink some broth, or you’ll get the hiccups."

Ming’er, the youngest and most delicate of the three, blushed furiously through her duck-grease-stained cheeks.

She hastily set down her chopsticks and reached for a heavy, thick, beautifully carved crystal goblet filled with chilled, revitalizing plum juice.

She wrapped her small, delicate, trembling hand around the thick crystal.

She squeezed it to lift it to her lips.

CRACK.

The sound was sharp, brittle, and shockingly loud in the quiet garden.

Ming’er froze.

The heavy, reinforced crystal goblet, a piece of glassware designed to withstand being dropped on solid stone, didn’t just chip.

It completely, spectacularly shattered into a thousand glittering shards of fine glass dust directly inside her grip. The chilled plum juice exploded everywhere, splashing across the table and soaking Ming’er’s sleeves.

"Ah!" Ming’er shrieked, dropping the shattered remnants of the base, her eyes wide with panic. She looked at her hand, expecting to see it shredded by the glass.

But her hand was unharmed. There wasn’t a single scratch on her pale skin.

"I... I am so sorry!" Ming’er wailed, immediately dropping to her knees on the courtyard floor, tears welling in her eyes, terrified that she had just ruined the handsome Proctor’s expensive tableware. "Martial Uncle Lin, please forgive me! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t mean to break it! My hand just... it just slipped!"

Ji’an pushed off the stone pillar, walking over immediately. She didn’t look angry. She looked incredibly amused.

"Hey, hey, it’s fine," Ji’an reassured her, her baritone voice dropping into a soft, comforting, patient register. She waved her hand, utilizing a quick spark of Qi to harmlessly sweep the glass shards and spilled juice off the table and into a disposal bin. "It’s just a cup, Ming’er. I have a hundred of them in my ring. Are you cut? Let me see your hand."

Ji’an gently took the trembling girl’s hand, inspecting the palm. "Not a scratch. You’re completely fine. Stand up, sit back down, and finish your duck. I’m not going to yell at you for dropping a dish. My boys break at least three bowls a week."

Ming’er sniffled, nodding gratefully, completely overwhelmed by the handsome Proctor’s gentle, forgiving nature. She sat back down, picking up her chopsticks with extreme, terrified caution.

But while Ming’er was distracted by her embarrassment...

Fairy Xue was staring at the spot where the crystal goblet used to be.

Fairy Xue’s jaw was slightly unhinged.

Her beautiful, intelligent eyes were wide, tracking the sequence of events with rapid, realization.

’Ming’er is a water-mage,’ Xue’s internal monologue whispered, a sensation of absolute shock rippling through her core. ’Her physical strength stat is the lowest in our entire generation. She struggles to lift a standard broadsword. And yet... she just crushed a reinforced crystal goblet into dust using nothing but the ambient grip strength of her right hand.’

Xue slowly, deliberately looked down at her own hands.

Her arms were still trembling from the three hours of agonizing, non-stop whipping. Her muscles ached with a deep, burning fire.

But as she focused her senses inward, looking past the exhaustion, she realized something impossible.

The Yin energy in her meridians, which had always felt like a soft, flowing, ethereal river of silk, was no longer flowing.

It was heavy and dense. It felt like liquid mercury.

By forcing them to channel their evasive, delicate Yin Qi into blunt, repetitive, kinetic impacts against the highly resistant spider-webbing, the terrifying Chef hadn’t just tortured them.

He had compressed their foundations.

He had taken their fluffy, fragile clouds of energy and compacted them into diamonds.

’He didn’t bring us here to humiliate us,’ Fairy Xue realized, her heart hammering a frantic, awe-struck rhythm against her ribs. She looked up at Lin Ji’an, who was casually leaning against the pillar again, pouring a fresh cup of plum juice for Ming’er. ’He saw that our masters were teaching us to be fragile. He saw that our grace was a weakness. He brought us here to forge us into weapons.’

The romantic, starry-eyed crush that Fairy Xue had been harboring for the handsome, bad-boy Proctor completely evaporated.

It was replaced by something far more potent. It was replaced by fanatical martial reverence.

He wasn’t a bad boy to be fixed. He was a supreme, visionary instructor of the Dao.

Fairy Xue didn’t take another bite of duck.

She stood up from her velvet cushion. She ignored the screaming agony in her thighs and her arms.

She stepped back from the table, placed her hands together, and bowed, a deep, flawless, perfect ninety-degree bow of absolute submission to a Master.

"We are ready for the next course, Chef," Fairy Xue announced, her voice ringing with a new, hard, undeniable steel.

Ji’an blinked, slightly surprised by the sudden, intense shift in the girl’s demeanor. She looked at Fairy Xue’s burning, determined eyes.

She saw the realization.

A slow, wicked, incredibly proud grin spread across Ji’an’s face.

’She gets it,’ Ji’an cheered internally.

"Are you sure, Xue?" Ji’an challenged lazily, raising an eyebrow. "You haven’t finished your dumplings. And the second phase is significantly more demanding on the hips and lower lumbar."

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