Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

The Green Flag won.

"As you command, my Ji’an," Wangchen breathed softly, stepping aside and offering a deep, flawless, deeply reverent bow. "I shall guard the pavilion. The beasts shall not scorch your drapes. Return swiftly."

"I always do, Little Puddle," Ji’an smirked, stepping past him and out the heavy oak doors, internally letting out a hysterical sigh of relief.

She had successfully manipulated the endgame boss. Now, she just had to survive the wrath of God.

***

Once she was clear of the Azure Dragon Sect’s perimeter wards, Ji’an didn’t walk to the western ridges.

She pulled her cheap, woven palm-leaf fan from her spatial ring, infused it with a massive surge of kinetic Qi, and hopped aboard as it expanded into her luxury air-yacht.

She didn’t lounge today. She stood at the helm, pushing the fan to its maximum velocity.

She flew for an hour, tearing through the hazy, toxic skies of the Eastern Basin, leaving the miasma valleys far behind. She needed a completely desolate location. No mortals, no cultivators, no flora, no fauna.

Finally, she found it.

***

It was a perfectly flat expanse of cracked, blackened earth and petrified stone, located roughly two hundred miles outside the Azure Dragon Sect’s jurisdiction. It looked like a meteor had struck the continent a thousand years ago, leaving nothing but dust and silence in its wake.

"Perfect," Ji’an muttered, guiding the palm-leaf yacht down to the center of the blackened plain.

She hopped off the leaf, banishing it back into her ring.

The moment her boots hit the cracked earth, the Heavens reacted.

The sky above the Ashen Wastes didn’t just darken. It seemed bruised as a massive, swirling, apocalyptic vortex of pitch-black clouds began to violently condense directly over her head. The ambient air pressure plummeted so drastically that Ji’an’s ears popped.

The scent of raw, burning ozone replaced the dry, dusty smell of the wasteland.

Deep within the swirling black cloud, jagged veins of brilliant, blinding purple lightning began to crackle and boom. It wasn’t normal lightning. It was Tribulation Thunder, the physical manifestation of the World Will’s absolute refusal to let mortals achieve godhood easily.

"Alright, you overgrown static-electricity hazard," Ji’an roared at the sky, stripping off her Szechuan Red outer robes and tossing them aside, leaving only her white inner tunic and her artifact. "Let’s see what you’ve got!"

Ji’an didn’t draw a sword to point at the sky. She went to work building her infrastructure.

’The Heavenly Calamity operates on pure electrical discharge and kinetic shockwaves,’ her transmigrator brain analyzed rapidly, recalling her university physics classes. ’I need to disperse the voltage. I need a Faraday cage, and I need grounding rods.’

She reached into her spatial ring.

She pulled out eight massive, four-hundred-pound Black Iron Woks, but she didn’t use them as shields. She sprinted around the perimeter of her position, embedding the iron bowls upside down into the cracked earth at exactly forty-five-degree angles, creating a perfectly measured octagonal perimeter.

Next, she pulled out the heavy iron roasting spits. She drove them deep into the ground next to the woks, striking them with her spatula until they were buried six feet into the bedrock.

She took the three hundred feet of highly conductive copper wire and rapidly, frantically strung it between the spits and the woks, creating an interconnected, continuous loop of conductive metal.

She stepped into the center of the octagon, dropping into a low, stable, horse-riding martial stance.

She raised her hands, channeling her Qi directly into the copper wire, activating her makeshift, culinary-grade grounding array.

KRA-KOOM!

The Heavens did not offer a warning shot.

The first bolt of Tribulation Thunder dropped from the vortex. It was ten feet wide, blindingly purple, and carried the concussive force of a falling skyscraper. It struck directly toward the top of Ji’an’s head.

"Redirect!" Ji’an screamed, slamming her palms toward the ground.

Her Qi flared.

The interconnected loop of cast-iron woks and copper wire acted as an irresistible magnetic draw for the electrical discharge.

The purple lightning hit the array. The woks violently vibrated, glowing cherry-red. The copper wire hissed and smoked, but the immense, lethal voltage was seamlessly siphoned away from her body and driven deep into the bedrock of the Ashen Wastes.

The ground beneath her feet literally exploded, massive chunks of stone vaporizing as the earth absorbed the shock, leaving her standing untouched in the center of the crater.

"HA!" Ji’an laughed hysterically, the adrenaline surging through her veins. "Eat geometry, you cosmic bully! Your voltage is high, but your grounding is terrible!"

RUMBLE!!!

The clouds seemed to roar in anger at the taunt. The vortex spun faster than before.

The first strike was just the appetizer. The Heavens were preparing the main course.

The purple lightning began to condense, shifting from chaotic bolts into the shape of three massive, roaring, serpentine dragons made of electrical plasma.

Ji’an’s confident smirk faltered slightly.

’Haha... seems like I went too far this time, without master’s assistance... well, okay, three plasma dragons might overload the copper wire,’ she calculated, wiping sweat from her eyes.

She braced herself, gripping her heavy spatula, preparing to deflect whatever the grounding array couldn’t handle. She widened her stance, drawing every ounce of Qi from her expanding, fracturing core.

The plasma dragons opened their maws, preparing to dive in and strike the soul out of Ji’an’s body for being such an ass.

And then...

A rich, earthy, distinct scent of roasted imported tobacco drifted across the desolate wasteland.

"The conductivity of copper is adequate for low-tier atmospheric discharge, little Chef. But attempting to ground a plasma construct using kitchenware is, quite frankly, an insult to metallurgy."

The voice was a lazy, resonant, vibrating drawl that cut through the deafening roar of the thunder like a hot knife through butter.

Ji’an violently whipped her head to the left.

A certain someone was there, sitting casually atop one of her glowing-red, upside-down Black Iron Woks on the edge of the array.

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