Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

She was officially a Body Fusion realm cultivator, and was now one step below the apex of the mortal plane.

But unauthorized server updates always come with unexpected UI glitches.

As Ji’an stretched her arms, popping her shoulders, she remained blissfully oblivious to the physical transformation that had just occurred on the top of her head.

The immense surge of pure, purple tribulation lightning had essentially acted as a cosmic bleach job. Her dark, messy raven hair, the hallmark of her rugged, young-master persona, had been completely stripped of its melanin.

In the span of two seconds, her hair had turned a shimmering, ethereal, cascading shade of brilliant, luminescent silver.

It wasn’t the cold silver of Xie Wangchen.

It was a warm, glowing, starlight-infused silver that caught the hazy light of the miasma sun and refracted it like a halo.

Furthermore, the overwhelming influx of pure, cosmic Yin energy had temporarily glitched the ancient illusion artifact hidden beneath her clothes.

The pendant, which usually broadened her shoulders and sharpened her jawline to maintain her male disguise, was currently struggling to process the massive power spike. The illusion flickered, softening her features, rounding her cheeks, and elongating her eyelashes.

Even wearing a pair of dark training trousers and a slightly loose white inner-tunic, she no longer looked like an arrogant, rugged bad-boy.

She looked like a breathtaking, ethereal, otherworldly moon-goddess with flat chest, who had just descended from the Heavenly Court.

Standing a few feet away, leaning casually on his slender smoking pipe, Yan Zhaoge watched the transformation happen in real-time.

The Sovereign of the Iron-Stone Monastery paused, his dark, intelligent eyes sweeping over her glowing silver hair and her suddenly delicate, yet devastatingly beautiful features.

A lesser man would have immediately informed her of the glitch.

A respectable, orthodox senior would have offered her a mirror so she could take care of her disguise before returning to her heavily populated, hormone-poisoned encampment.

But Yan Zhaoge was not a respectable orthodox senior.

He was a chaotic, manipulative, deeply bored pyromaniac who practically sustained himself on the suffering and embarrassment of others.

’Oh, this is going to be spectacular,’ the Overtime Boss’s internal monologue cackled with pure, troll-like glee. ’She has absolutely no idea. She is going to walk right back into a camp full of teenage boys looking like a legendary fairy maiden. The comedic fallout will be legendary!’

He bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from bursting into laughter.

"Well then, little Chef," Yan Zhaoge drawled lazily, stepping forward and tucking his unlit pipe into his midnight-purple silk robes. "Your infrastructure upgrade was a success. Your core is stabilized. I must admit, the new aesthetic suits your... explosive temperament."

Ji’an, entirely misinterpreting the comment as a compliment on her soot-stained clothes and general badassery, simply scoffed, picking up her heavy spatula.

"I survived. That’s what matters," Ji’an snapped, strapping the spatula back to her calf. "Now, I need to get back to the Azure Dragon Sect. I left the boys unsupervised, and if Gu Zhiwei accidentally teaches the poison masters how to play fetch, I’m going to have a diplomatic crisis on my hands."

"Before you depart," Yan Zhaoge interjected smoothly, raising a long, elegant finger.

He reached into the voluminous, chaotic folds of his deep purple robes.

"We struck a bargain, did we not?" the deity purred, his eyes glinting with a sharp, terrifyingly calculating light. "I am your new, off-the-books IT consultant. You are my personal, exclusive culinary provider. But it is customary in the business world to provide a signing bonus. A... retainer, if you will, to ensure your loyalty to the contract."

Ji’an’s transmigrator paranoia flared. "I don’t sign blood oaths, Mr. Midnight Silk. And I don’t accept sketchy cursed artifacts that track my location."

"It is not an oath, Ji’an. It is an ingredient."

Yan Zhaoge opened his palm.

Resting in the center of his pale hand was a small, perfectly spherical object, no larger than a quail egg.

It was not a stone. It was a hyper-compressed singularity of unyielding thermal energy. It glowed with a deep, pulsing, magma-red light, shifting through shades of brilliant gold and blinding white. The heat radiating from it was intense, yet perfectly controlled, contained within a barrier of spatial pressure.

Ji’an’s high-tier culinary Qi-sense slammed into the object, and her brain immediately ceased all higher cognitive functions.

"That..." Ji’an whispered, her silver-flecked eyes going as wide as saucers, her mouth literally watering. "What is that?"

"The Ember-Core of the Primordial Phoenix," Yan Zhaoge introduced casually, as if he were holding a common potato. "Extracted from the heart of a dying star in the Southern Heavens. It is an infinite, eternally burning, perfectly calibratable heat source."

He tossed the literal piece of a star up in the air and caught it.

"If you place this beneath a wok, you can sear a piece of meat in a vacuum. You can bring a thousand gallons of water to a rolling boil in 0.4 seconds. If you dial the frequency down, you can maintain a perfect 130-degree sous-vide environment for the next ten thousand years without using a single ounce of your own Qi."

He held it out to her, a dark, wicked, incredibly tempting smile on his lips.

"Consider it an investment in your kitchen. So you can cook my snacks faster."

Ji’an stared at the glowing ruby of infinite thermal perfection.

The loot-goblin instinct inside her transmigrated soul violently overrode every single safety protocol she possessed.

’Holy mother of Lord! He is holding a portable, infinite, magical induction burner,’ Ji’an’s mind shrieked, her hands actually trembling with desire. ’I could sear steaks perfectly every single time. I would never have to chop firewood again. I could bake a soufflé on top of a glacier!’

She looked at the Phoenix Ember.

Then she looked at Yan Zhaoge.

For exactly two seconds, a very dark, serious, and highly intrusive thought crossed Ji’an’s mind as she stared at him silently.

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