Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

Her celestial beauty buff was completely useless against the hollow vacuum of his brain.

To Shen Zechuan, she wasn’t a fairy maiden.

She wasn’t a divine idol.

She was just Ji’an, the grumpy person who made his jerky and yelled at people.

A wave of relief so incredibly heavy washed over Ji’an that she actually felt tears prick the corners of her eyes.

"Zechuan," Ji’an whispered, her voice cracking with genuine, unfiltered emotion.

She scrambled up from the floor, abandoning her cool persona.

She stepped forward and grabbed Zechuan by the shoulders, looking up at him like he was a life raft in a stormy ocean.

"You are the most beautiful, perfect, flawless idiot in the entire universe," Ji’an declared fervently.

Zechuan blinked, chewing his bun slowly.

He looked down at her hands on his shoulders, then back up to her face.

"Thank you," Zechuan replied amicably, swallowing his food. "Sect Leader Bai says I am an idiot very often, but he usually yells it while rubbing his temples. You are much nicer about it."

He held up the jagged gray rock in his right hand.

"I found a new rock," Zechuan announced proudly. "I tried to skip it across the acid, but because it has a jagged edge, it didn’t bounce. It spun in a circle and then sank immediately. It was very disappointing. I think the aerodynamic principles you taught me only apply to smooth surfaces. Do you have a spatula that can flatten rocks?"

Ji’an let out a loud, genuine, slightly hysterical laugh.

He didn’t care about her hair.

He didn’t care about the truffles on the table.

He just wanted to discuss the physics of skipping stones.

"No, Zechuan, I don’t have a rock-flattening spatula," Ji’an chuckled, wiping a tear of sheer relief from her eye. She let go of his shoulders, the crushing weight of the sect’s collective madness finally lifting from her chest. "But if you find a smooth one, I’ll show you how to curve the trajectory."

"Excellent!" Zechuan beamed, his void-like eyes crinkling at the corners. He broke his half-eaten sticky bun in two and held the slightly larger, unbitten half out to her. "Do you want some bun? I saved the part with the most red-bean paste for you. The kitchen here is okay, but their dough is a little dense. It needs more resting time."

Ji’an took the piece of the bun.

It was slightly squished, unglamorous, and perfect.

"Thanks, clone-boy," Ji’an smiled softly, taking a bite.

.

.

.

However, what Ji’an could not see, because her back was turned to the petrified-glass walls of the botanical dome, was the unmitigated nightmare currently unfolding in the shadows outside.

Standing exactly thirty yards away, hidden in the dense, toxic foliage of a swamp-willow, was Xie Wangchen.

The Sovereign of the Eternal Cloud Peak had not abandoned his post.

He had been tailing Ji’an all morning, masking his presence with cloaking arrays, acting as her silent, terrifying, self-appointed guardian angel.

He had watched her humiliate the boys in the mud pits.

He had felt a surge of dark, possessive pride as she forced them to grovel.

He had watched the Azure Crane maidens stare at her with inappropriate stares, and he had spent the last hour plotting how to freeze Fairy Xue’s blood without leaving forensic evidence.

But now, he was watching Shen Zechuan.

Wangchen saw Ji’an grab the abyssal prodigy’s shoulders.

He saw the genuine, unfiltered, beautiful smile on her face, a smile she never directed at Lu Jianheng, Gu Zhiwei, or the elders. He saw her accept a half-eaten piece of food from Zechuan’s hand and eat it without hesitation.

The black frost creeping up the trunk of the swamp-willow accelerated violently, freezing the bark, the leaves, and the surrounding miasma into solid ice.

’She let him touch her,’ Wangchen’s mind hissed, his ruby eyes glowing with a crimson light in the shadows. ’She dropped her guard. She smiled at the void. She accepted his offering.’

Wangchen’s hands clenched into fists, the ice cracking under the pressure of his grip.

He knew, logically, that Shen Zechuan was not a romantic rival.

He knew Zechuan was an airhead who didn’t possess the capacity for lust.

But logic had no place in the heart of the Ice Demon.

’He is monopolizing her relief,’ Wangchen seethed, his jealousy burning hotter than the Phoenix Ember currently sitting in Ji’an’s spatial ring. ’She looks at him and feels safe. She looks at me and feels guarded. I am her Vanguard. I am her equal. I should be the one handing her bread. I should be the one she smiles at.’

The urge to fold space, materialize inside the dome, and sever Shen Zechuan’s head from his shoulders was overwhelming.

It took Wangchen’s hard willpower to restrain himself.

’Patience,’ Wangchen ordered his racing, murderous heart. ’The exam is in two days. We will leave this wretched, toxic valley, travel to the western dunes. The environment will change. I will isolate her, prove my utility, and freeze the void if I have to.’

Wangchen slowly melted back into the shadows, his aura leaving a trail of dead, frozen vegetation in his wake.

Inside the dome, Ji’an chewed her red-bean bun, blissfully unaware of the glacial apocalypse she had just narrowly avoided.

"Hey Zechuan," Ji’an mumbled around the food, looking toward the glass doors. "When the exams are over on Friday... remind me to pack the woks early. I want to be out of this sect before the sun even comes up."

"Okay, Ji’an!" Zechuan nodded happily. "Should we bring the leftover truffles? They look very shiny. I bet they skip well."

Ji’an looked at the priceless, emperor-tier Sapphire-Lotus Truffles sitting on the silver platter.

"You know what, Zechuan?" Ji’an smirked, her arrogant young-master persona finally, comfortably sliding back into place. "That is the best idea anyone has had all day. Let’s go find a deep acid pit."

The Vanguard Tour was hurtling toward its chaotic conclusion at the Azure Dragon Sect.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!