Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

He was holding a mundane, un-enchanted bamboo stick.

Surrounding him in a wide circle were fifteen elite Azure Dragon disciples, including Senior Brother Kui, the leader whose iron flagon Ji’an had previously kicked into the stratosphere.

Kui was not looking at Lu Jianheng with hostility.

He was looking at the Sword Lord with the wide, desperate, incredibly eager eyes of a freshman attending a masterclass.

"Observe the transfer!" Jianheng lectured, his icy-blue aura entirely subdued as he demonstrated a flawless, high-speed parry. "Martial Uncle Lin taught us that relying on the edge of the blade breeds complacency!"

You must treat the weapon as a blunt instrument of leverage! Do not slice the miasma; displace it! Shift your hips!"

"Like this, Sword Lord?" Kui asked, stepping forward and executing a clumsy, overly aggressive swipe with his own wooden practice sword.

THWACK!

Jianheng effortlessly parried the strike and slapped the bamboo stick sharply against Kui’s shoulder blade. "Sloppy! You are telegraphing your intent! Again! And this time, imagine you are attempting to tenderize a piece of tough meat without rupturing the membrane!"

"Yes, Instructor Lu!" the disciples roared in unison, dropping into synchronized stances, entirely brainwashed by the brutal, hyper-effective training methodology Ji’an had unleashed upon them.

A hundred yards away, near the bubbling, highly corrosive edge of the arena’s mud pits, Gu Zhiwei and Hu Yanlie were currently engaged in a testosterone-fueled weightlifting competition that was actively defying the laws of physics.

They were not lifting standard iron weights.

They were lifting massive, five-ton chunks of petrified swamp-oak.

"One hundred and forty-two!" Zhiwei cheered, his golden holy light flaring brilliantly as he executed a flawless, deep squat with a massive boulder balanced on his broad, bare shoulders. "The Yang energy from the bear ribs is still propagating through my lower dantian! I feel invincible! Come on, Yanlie, do not let your core temperature drop!"

"Shut up, you retired puppy!" Yanlie roared, his scarred chest heaving, his crimson beast-fire igniting the damp air as he deadlifted a petrified log that was roughly the size of a small carriage. "My cardiovascular endurance is peerless! I will carry this log until the sun burns out!"

Sitting on the edge of the mud pit, furiously taking notes on a glowing jade slate, was a cluster of local Azure Dragon alchemists.

"Fascinating," a local elder muttered, adjusting his monocle. "The visitors are completely ignoring the traditional Qi-circulation pathways. They are utilizing pure manual labor to physically force their meridians to expand, thereby creating a vacuum that passively absorbs the ambient miasma and neutralizes it through metabolic combustion. It is... it is so incredibly primitive, yet the data is undeniable. Their output has increased by forty percent in three days."

"Should we attempt the boulder-squats, Elder?" a junior alchemist asked nervously.

"We are scholars, you fool, our knees would shatter like glass," the Elder snapped. "But we shall mandate that the outer sect begins carrying water buckets uphill immediately."

And then, there was Wen Shiru.

The calculating Fox had entirely abandoned physical training for the afternoon.

Instead, Shiru had set up a small, organized desk near the entrance of the arena. He was currently surrounded by a massive crowd of eager merchants and officers.

"The Vanguard Leader’s recipe for the neutralized Shadow-Bear reduction is proprietary, of course," Shiru stated smoothly, adjusting his silver spectacles, his jade cane resting against his chair. He tapped his solid-gold abacus. "However, I have secured the exclusive distribution rights. If the Azure Dragon Sect wishes to license the methodology for extracting the Ghost-Toad venom without detonation... we are prepared to negotiate a trade agreement involving unrestricted access to your Nightshade-Plum orchards and a thirty percent cut of all subsequent alchemical yields."

The local merchants groaned, clutching their ledgers, outmatched by the ruthless, predatory capitalism of the young prodigy.

Ji’an watched it all from the elevated VIP pavilion, taking another slow, deeply contented sip of her tea.

The chaos was harmonizing perfectly.

The Azure Dragon Sect had realized that trying to intimidate the Celestial Sword Vanguard was a fool’s errand. They had witnessed Ji’an shatter their colosseum, watched her extract a volatile venom gland in four seconds and rewrite their greatest defensive array into a kitchen ticket system.

When you encounter an entity that fundamentally breaks your understanding of reality, you only have two choices: you either try to kill it, or you try to learn from it.

Because Master Jiu Zui had terrified their leadership into submission, killing her was off the table.

Therefore, the entire sect had shamelessly pivoted to idol-worship.

They were treating Ji’an not as a visiting junior martial uncle, but as a walking, talking, volatile oracle of forbidden knowledge.

The hostility had completely evaporated, replaced by an overwhelming, cloying, almost suffocating level of polite deference.

Whenever Ji’an walked down the corridors, local disciples would literally press their backs against the walls, bowing at perfect ninety-degree angles.

If she looked at a local plant for more than two seconds, three different alchemists would immediately sprint over to provide her with a comprehensive, thousand-page dissertation on its soil pH levels and flavor profile.

It was, frankly, a huge relief.

"Hm, hm, hmm... I have successfully domesticated an entire sect of poison-wielding assassins," Ji’an whispered to herself, a slow, smug, incredibly arrogant young-master smirk curling her lips. "I am a diplomatic genius.! I should write a manual on ’How to Win Friends and Subjugate Enemies Using Cast-Iron Cookware.’"

****

Because the situation on the ground had stabilized into a self-sustaining ecosystem of mutual training and economic extortion, Ji’an had officially designated the afternoon as her "Off-Duty" hours.

She had retreated to the Elders’ Pavilion, the most exclusive, heavily warded, and luxurious structure in the entire Azure Dragon Sect.

It was an open-air, multi-tiered pagoda constructed of glowing, polished green jade, suspended over a pristine, crystal-clear, magically purified hot spring.

Normally, a Second or Third-Generation junior like Ji’an would never be allowed to step foot in this pavilion. It was reserved exclusively for the host Sect Leader, the Sovereign Elders, and high-ranking visiting dignitaries.

But Ji’an was the Apex Anomaly.

The rules of hierarchy had been entirely suspended for her.

In fact, the local elders actively encouraged her to sit in the pavilion. They treated her presence as a badge of honor.

Elder Viper, the gaunt, reptilian guide who had escorted them across the continent, was currently sitting a few tables away, playing a game of spiritual chess with another sect elder.

Elder Viper looked incredibly robust. His skin was glowing with health, his chronic miasma-cough entirely cured by Ji’an’s cooking. Whenever Ji’an glanced in his direction, the terrifying poison master would offer her a respectful, almost deferential nod.

Ji’an was perfectly content.

She was wearing a lightweight, comfortable, un-starched version of her Szechuan Red robes, having discarded the heavy leather corset-belt in favor of a simple black silk sash.

The artifact beneath her tunic was a constant, itchy annoyance, but the cool breeze blowing through the open arches of the pagoda helped alleviate the discomfort.

She had an ancient, leather-bound tome open on the table in front of her, a compendium of local, highly toxic flora that she had "borrowed" from the sect’s restricted archives.

She was currently taking copious, detailed notes on a piece of parchment, formulating the exact, mathematical yeast-to-sugar ratio required to safely ferment the volatile Nightshade-Plums currently sitting in the cellar of her guest house.

’If I introduce a localized, low-temperature combustion array to the bottom of the barrel...’

Ji’an calculated, chewing on the end of her jade stylus. ’I can force the heavier, toxic sediment to coagulate and sink, leaving the pure, unadulterated fruit esters suspended in the upper alcohol matrix. It should produce a wine so smooth it could negotiate a peace treaty.’

She was deeply, blissfully in the zone.

The chaos of the tournament was behind her.

The stress of the boys’ training was delegated. Xie Wangchen was currently locked in the cellar, acting as her magical refrigerator, and Shen Zechuan was off somewhere in the valley, happily hunting for shiny rocks.

For the first time in weeks, Lin Ji’an felt entirely at peace.

But in a trashy, highly contrived, heavily manipulated Xianxia web novel... peace was never a permanent state of existence.

Peace was merely the agonizingly brief loading screen that occurred right before the server spawned an unkillable boss.

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It started with a subtle, almost imperceptible shift in the atmosphere of the Elders’ Pavilion.

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