Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

Ji’an roared, projecting her voice with a burst of heavy, kinetic Qi.

She pointed her finger aggressively at the mud pits. "Did I say you could stop sweating?! Drop the boulders! Everyone! Three hundred one-armed push-ups in the acidic sludge! Right now! If I see a single core sag, I am doubling the count!"

Normally, an order to submerge oneself in flesh-eating acid and perform agonizing manual labor would be met with groans of despair and desperate pleas for mercy.

Not today.

"YES, CHEF!" the eighty men roared in absolute, terrifying, fanatical unison.

It was not a cry of submission.

It was a cry of pure, unhinged ecstasy.

Gu Zhiwei practically threw his boulder aside, diving face-first into the bubbling purple mud.

He didn’t just do a push-up; he propelled his entire body three feet into the air with one arm, his golden muscles flexing violently, his eyes locked entirely on Ji’an, desperately hoping she was watching his latissimus dorsi.

"Observe my form, Martial Uncle!" Lu Jianheng shouted, executing a flawless, perfectly horizontal one-armed plank over a highly corrosive geyser, his face twisted in a bizarre mixture of physical agony and profound romantic devotion. "My triceps are entirely engaged! I am perfectly balanced, just like the Dao!"

"I AM DOING CLAPPING PUSH-UPS!" Hu Yanlie bellowed, launching his massive, scarred bulk into the air, slapping his hands together before crashing back into the toxic sludge, splashing acid everywhere. "LOOK AT MY VIRILITY!"

Even Wen Shiru, the frail, calculating merchant who usually avoided physical exertion like the plague, had stripped off his green silk outer robes.

He was struggling in the mud, his arms shaking violently, his glasses fogged with sweat, but he was staring up at Ji’an with a look of predatory capitalist.

Ji’an stood on the platform, her mouth slightly open, a wave of profound, existential despair washing over her soul.

’My beauty buff is too strong,’ Ji’an realized, rubbing her temples as a migraine began to bloom behind her eyes.

’I am trying to torture them. I am actively trying to make them suffer. And they are treating it like an Olympic fan-service event. I’m not a drill instructor anymore. I’m a Twitch streamer, and they’re all fighting to be my top donator.’

She couldn’t take it.

The volume of their masculine desperation was suffocating.

She needed to escape. She needed to find an environment where her authority was respected, where the disciples weren’t trying to aggressively court her via calisthenics.

She turned on her heel, her silver hair whipping behind her, and marched away from the mud pits, heading straight for the Moon-Lotus Botanical Gardens.

She would supervise the Azure Crane maidens.

Girls were sensible.

Girls didn’t lose their minds over a pretty face.

The maidens had learned the Dao of the Iron Whisk; they were disciplined, focused warriors now.

They would provide a sanctuary of rational, platonic training.

Or so she thought.

***

Ji’an threw open the petrified-glass doors of the botanical dome, stepping into the humid, glowing blue light of the lotus gardens.

"Alright, ladies, break time is over," Ji’an announced, falling back into her strict, professional Head Chef persona. "I want to see the progress on your dough-pounding arts. If your hips aren’t rotating..."

Ji’an’s voice trailed off.

Standing in the center of the garden were Fairy Xue, Ming’er, and Qing’er.

They were holding their massive, heavy wooden mallets. They were covered in sweat, their pale blue water-silks clinging to their exhausted bodies.

But they were not pounding the dough.

The moment Ji’an had walked through the doors, the three maidens had frozen.

Fairy Xue dropped her mallet.

The heavy wood hit the stone courtyard with a dull thud.

The lead maiden of the Azure Crane Pavilion was staring at Ji’an. But it wasn’t the terrified, respectful stare of a junior disciple looking at her master.

Fairy Xue’s eyes were glassy.

They were hooded.

Her pupils were dilated to the absolute maximum.

A deep, heavy, crimson blush had spread across her cheeks, traveling all the way down her neck to her collarbones.

She was looking at Ji’an’s silver hair, the sharp, elegant cut of her jaw, and the confident, arrogant slouch of her posture with a look of such intense, dreamy, overwhelmingly romantic yearning that it practically burned a hole through the air.

’Oh, sweet merciful Heavens,’ Ji’an’s internal transmigrator alarm system began blaring at maximum volume. ’She’s doing it too. She is giving me the exact same look as the boys. No, wait... this is worse. This is so much worse.’

Because Ji’an was biologically female, and because Fairy Xue thought she was looking at a breathtakingly handsome young man, Xue’s expression was meant to be one of pure, orthodox maidenly devotion.

But to Ji’an, who knew the truth of her own gender, the intense, heavy-lidded, lip-biting stare coming from the beautiful fairy maiden didn’t look like orthodox courtship.

’She looks like a certified lesbian,’ Ji’an panicked internally, taking a subconscious half-step backward toward the door. ’She looks like she’s about to write a ten-thousand-word sapphic romance novel in her head right now. I can’t believe I have accidentally activated the yuri route!’

"M-Martial Uncle Lin," Fairy Xue breathed, her voice trembling, dropping an octave into a breathy, incredibly suggestive register.

She took a step forward, completely abandoning her orthodox modesty. "You... you have returned to us. Your hair... it catches the moonlight so beautifully. It makes you look like a god of the winter winds."

Ming’er and Qing’er flanked their senior sister, nodding frantically, their faces equally flushed, clutching their hands over their hearts like they were attending a boy-band concert in the modern world.

"We were just talking about your... your technique, Chef," Ming’er squeaked, her eyes darting to Ji’an’s waist. "The way you wield the spatula... it is so commanding. So firm. I..."

Ji’an felt a cold sweat break out on the back of her neck.

The second-hand cringe was so dense it was creating a gravity well inside the botanical dome.

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