Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

Wangchen’s mind fractured, completely surrendering to the madness.

’He is praising the maiden’s stamina. She is commanding them to thrust. They are pleasing my Chef!’

Wangchen raised his right hand.

He didn’t summon Winter’s Sigh, but summoned The Glacier of the Forgotten Abyss, a cataclysmic, forbidden technique that would encase the entire botanical garden, the glass domes, and everything inside them in an impenetrable block of absolute zero, permanently preserving the Chef and shattering the maidens into red dust.

"I will eradicate those concubines," Wangchen whispered, his voice a horrifying, melodic hum of absolute genocide. "I will be the only one she praises."

"Brother Wangchen, NO!" Jianheng hissed, leaping up and desperately grabbing the Ice Demon’s arm. "You cannot murder the Azure Crane heirs! It will start a continental war!"

"War is an acceptable trade-off for exclusivity," Wangchen purred, his aura expanding.

But before the Ice Demon could drop a ice-age on the garden, the heavy, wet slapping sounds inside the dome suddenly stopped.

"Alright, that’s enough! Excellent work, ladies!" Ji’an’s voice rang out, sounding cheerful and entirely professional.

CRASH!

The heavy petrified-glass doors of the botanical dome were kicked open.

Lin Ji’an stepped out into the cool night air of the miasma valley.

She wiped her brow with a towel, looking completely relaxed, a satisfied smile on her face.

Behind her, staggering out of the dome, completely fully clothed, covered in sweat, and carrying massive, sticky blobs of white spirit-mochi in their hands, were the three Azure Crane maidens.

The four boys in the bushes froze.

The genocidal aura surrounding Wangchen stuttered.

Jianheng dropped his hands from his face. Zhiwei stopped crying, while Shiru stopped calculating.

They stared at the fully clothed maidens. They stared at the giant wooden mallets leaning against the wall. They stared at the sticky, white mochi dough.

The realization hit the boys with the force of a speeding cargo carriage.

They hadn’t been listening to a scandalous, debauched, unhinged dual-cultivation session.

They had been listening to a cooking class.

The sheer, concentrated, atomic weight of the second-hand embarrassment instantly crushed their souls into diamond dust. If the ground had suddenly opened up and swallowed them into the abyss, they would have thanked the Heavens for the sweet release of death.

"We are such fools," Jianheng whispered, his face burying into the dirt, entirely unable to cope with the absolute depravity of his own imagination. "My Dao heart is filthy. I am unfit to wield a blade."

"I thought... I thought he was..." Zhiwei mumbled, his face bright red, completely traumatized by his own thoughts.

Ji’an, standing on the steps of the dome, took a deep breath of the night air.

And then, her Qi-sense picked up the specific emotional resonance of four absolute morons radiating cringe from the toxic shrubbery thirty yards away.

Ji’an didn’t turn her head or draw her spatula.

She just stood there, staring straight ahead, and let out a long, heavy, deeply exhausted sigh.

"I know you’re in the bushes, you bunch of degenerates," Ji’an stated, her baritone voice flat, carrying across the courtyard with terrifying clarity.

The four boys flinched violently.

"I don’t want to know what you thought you were listening to," Ji’an continued, closing her eyes, aggressively pinching the bridge of her nose to stave off the impending migraine. "I don’t want to know why the temperature just dropped thirty degrees. And I absolutely do not want to see your faces for the rest of the evening."

She pointed a finger toward the guest pavilions.

"You have exactly three seconds to evacuate those bushes and go to sleep. If I catch you spying on my prep-station one more time... I will not use the spatula. I will use the meat grinder."

WHOOSH!

The bushes rustled violently. The four demigods didn’t hesitate.

They deployed their maximum level escape arrays, vanishing into the night with the desperate, frantic speed of men fleeing a burning building, leaving only a few trampled toxic ferns in their wake.

Ji’an stood on the steps, shaking her head, letting out a small, tired chuckle.

"Boys," Ji’an muttered to the maidens, rolling her eyes. "They have exactly one brain cell, and they share it on a rotating schedule. Come on, let’s go boil this mochi. You earned a sweet treat."

***

High above the Moon-Lotus Botanical Gardens, standing upon the jagged obsidian cliff overlooking the entire valley, the mysterious man in the midnight-purple robes was struggling to breathe.

He wasn’t suffocating from the miasma.

He was suffocating because he was laughing so hard he was weeping.

The man leaned against a petrified tree trunk, clutching his stomach, tears streaming from his sharp, intelligent eyes, letting out deep, resonant, booming roars of absolute, unadulterated comedic joy.

He had witnessed the entire sequence of events. He had seen the maidens pounding the dough. He had seen the four terrified, jealous prodigies having an existential crisis in the bushes.

He had seen the Chef walk out and verbally annihilate them without even turning her head.

"Oh, Heavens above," the man gasped, pulling a silk handkerchief from his robes to wipe his eyes. "This is... this is the greatest theatrical performance I have seen in three hundred years."

He took a slow drag from his pipe, his eyes locked on the small, retreating figure of Lin Ji’an in her Szechuan Red robes.

"Jiu Zui, you magnificent, drunken old bastard," the man chuckled softly to the wind, his voice rich with profound, genuine affection and deep intrigue. "You didn’t exaggerate in your letters. You really did find a treasure."

The Sovereign of the Iron-Stove Monastery, the erratic, brilliant, chaotic deity of thermal manipulation smiled.

He saw what the others didn’t. He didn’t just see a funny cook bullying a bunch of kids. He saw a youth who possessed an unfathomable, staggering understanding of spatial geometry, kinetic transfer, and Qi-compression.

He saw a prodigy who was actively, flawlessly rewriting the foundational rules of orthodox cultivation using the logic of a kitchen.

"A genius wrapped in an apron, wasting away playing chaperone to a bunch of emotionally stunted peacocks," the man murmured, tapping his pipe against the tree.

He turned around, his purple robes billowing in the toxic wind.

"Well, little Chef," the deity smiled, a thrilling, anticipatory light igniting in his eyes. "If by any chance, you are looking for a senior... I believe I have an opening in my schedule. Let us see how you handle a real fire."

With a swirl of midnight silk, the Sovereign vanished into the void undetected, leaving only the faint, lingering scent of roasted tobacco and impending chaos in his wake.

***

The fundamental, unwritten law of the Azure Empire’s orthodox cultivation world was that respect was never freely given; it was violently, repeatedly, and meticulously beaten out of the opposing party until their egos were reduced to a fine powder.

It had been exactly four days since Lin Ji’an had utilized a heavy, cast-iron spatula to completely shatter the foundational pride, the academic curriculum, and the physical architecture of the Azure Dragon Sect.

The results of that brutal, high-leverage diplomacy were currently on full, miraculous display across the toxic, misty expanse of the sect’s primary training grounds.

The sprawling obsidian arena, situated beneath the roaring, bioluminescent green waterfalls of the miasma valley, was usually a place of grim, silent, lethal training. The disciples here were taught to be aloof, ruthless, and deeply suspicious of outsiders.

Today, however, the arena looked less like a hardened orthodox military encampment and more like an enthusiastic, bizarre, cross-sectarian fraternity retreat.

Sitting in the plush, elevated, heavily warded VIP executive box overlooking the arena, Lin Ji’an rested her chin on her hand, a cup of chilled plum-tea resting on the jade table beside her.

She watched the chaos below with the detached, mildly amused satisfaction of a Head Chef observing a fully staffed, perfectly synchronized kitchen line during a slow lunch service.

Down on the arena floor, the previously terrifying, battle-crazed elites of the sect had been entirely domesticated.

They were no longer glaring at the visiting Celestial Sword prodigies. They were actively, enthusiastically taking notes.

"No, no, you’re dropping your elbow on the follow-through!" Lu Jianheng, the Sword Lord, barked loudly.

The aristocratic heir of the Sword Peak was currently standing in the center of a sparring ring, stripped of his pristine blue outer robes, wearing only his sweat-soaked white inner tunic.

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