Sitting casually atop one of her glowing-red, upside-down Black Iron Woks on the edge of the array, looking completely unbothered by the fact that he was currently sitting on a piece of metal absorbing several million volts of electricity, was Yan Zhaoge.
The Sovereign of the Iron-Stone Monastery was wearing the same chaotic, midnight-purple silk robes.
His dark hair was blowing wildly in the tempestuous winds of the calamity. He had one leg propped up, his elbow resting on his knee, his slender smoking pipe clutched loosely in his hand.
He took a slow, languid drag from the pipe, ignoring the apocalyptic, world-ending lightning dragons swirling fifty feet above his head.
"You!" Ji’an shrieked, her voice cracking, completely losing her mind. "What are you doing here?! Get out of my Faraday cage! You’re going to mess up my grounding resistance! The Heavens are going to register your presence and multiply the strike yield!"
"The Heavens do not register my presence, Ji’an," Yan Zhaoge chuckled softly, exhaling a plume of silver smoke that miraculously did not disperse in the hurricane-force winds. "The Heavens and I have an... understanding. They pretend I do not exist, and I refrain from setting their clouds on fire."
"..."
It was the most arrogant, absurd, ridiculously overpowered flex she had ever heard in her life.
"I don’t care about your cosmic treaties!" Ji’an screamed, her hair whipping around her face as the plasma dragons began their dive. "I am in the middle of a server migration! Get off my wok!"
Yan Zhaoge didn’t move.
He simply tilted his head, his dark, intelligent eyes studying her.
"A Body Fusion tribulation at your age," the deity mused, a look of profound, genuine impressed delight spreading across his handsome face. "Jiu Zui truly struck gold in the dirt. But your physical vessel is exhausted from babysitting those Azure Dragon novices. If you take the kinetic shockwave of those three plasma constructs directly... your meridians will hold, but your bones will likely shatter."
The plasma dragons roared, diving straight down toward the array, their mouths wide open.
Ji’an raised her spatula, preparing for the agony.
Yan Zhaoge sighed, a lazy, dramatic sound.
He didn’t stand up. He simply reached out with his free hand, the hand not holding the pipe, and casually flicked them toward the sky.
He didn’t summon a sword or chant a spell.
He simply exerted a fraction of a percent of his unparalleled dominance over thermal and kinetic energy.
The three roaring dragons of pure purple tribulation lightning froze in mid-air.
They didn’t just stop.
They hit an invisible, impenetrable wall of spatial pressure and were instantly compressed. The roaring plasma was forcefully, brutally crushed inward, condensing from massive, serpentine beasts into three tiny, vibrating, marble-sized spheres of pure, solid purple electricity.
Yan Zhaoge casually caught the three marbles of condensed lightning in his palm.
For the next 97 strikes, only sound of swatting off the lightnings coming from every direction came from above Ji’an’s head.
The swirling, pitch-black vortex of clouds above them awkwardly halted. It was as if the World Will’s automated auditing system had just encountered a fatal, unresolvable firewall error and simply gave up.
The clouds slowly began to disperse, letting the pale sunlight filter back down onto the Wastelands.
The apocalyptic calamity was over.
Ji’an stood in the center of her copper-wire array, her spatula raised, her jaw literally unhinged, staring at the man on the wok.
"You..." Ji’an choked out, completely unable to process the sheer, terrifying, casual magnitude of what he had just done. "You just... you just swatted away a Heavenly Tribulation. You turned a cosmic judgment into marbles."
"I am an excellent heavenly consultant, you see..." Yan Zhaoge smirked, slipping the lightning marbles into his pocket. He hopped lightly off the wok, his purple robes settling around him.
He walked slowly toward her, stepping effortlessly over the sizzling copper wires.
"You followed me," Ji’an stated, the realization hitting her. She gripped her spatula tighter, backing up a half-step. "You didn’t leave the Azure Dragon Sect. You stalked me all the way into the wasteland?"
"I was merely observing your methodology," Yan Zhaoge replied smoothly, stopping a few feet away. He towered over her, his presence heavy, and incredibly dangerous. "You possess a brilliant, unorthodox architectural mind. But your execution is chaotic. You use woks as grounding rods. You use a palm leaf as a transport vessel."
He leaned down slightly, his dark eyes locking onto hers.
"You need a proper forge, little Chef. You need proper materials. And more importantly... you need proper supervision."
"I already told you, Mr. Overtime Boss," Ji’an scowled, standing her ground, aggressively poking a finger into his midnight-silk chest. "I am not taking an unpaid internship. I am not fixing your arrays. And I am definitely not letting you poach me from My Master. So you can take your pipe, your teleportation tricks, and your smug face, and you can kindly fuck off back to your desert."
Yan Zhaoge didn’t flinch at the poke. In fact, his smile widened, amusement radiating from his core.
He looked down at the finger pressed against his chest. He looked back up at her furious, silver-flecked eyes.
"Looks like we have a misunderstanding, but I am not here to poach you, Ji’an," Yan Zhaoge murmured, his voice dropping into a low, husky, incredibly persuasive register. "I am here to make a transaction."
’Not here to poach me? Then what does he want from me?’
Ji’an narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What kind of transaction?"
Yan Zhaoge let out a slow, dramatic sigh. He pulled the beautifully carved smoking pipe from his lips. He looked at it with a mixture of fond nostalgia and dramatic sorrow.
"You wrinkled your nose," Yan Zhaoge stated simply.
Ji’an blinked. "What?"
"Two days ago. In the Elders’ Pavilion," Yan Zhaoge explained, pointing the stem of the pipe at her. "When I manifested beside you. You caught the scent of my tobacco, and your nose wrinkled. It was a expression of disgust."
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