Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

He knew her secret.

He knew she was a maiden.

He knew she was the most devastatingly beautiful creature to ever grace the mortal plane.

And as the Vanguard Tour charted a course toward the western dunes, toward the domain of the Overtime Boss, Yan Zhaoge, the Ice Demon silently vowed that no matter what trials awaited them in the desert, he would never, ever let her escape his gaze.

The boys had their broken bones.

The elders had their notes.

But as Ji’an reached into her spatial ring, her fingers brushing against the infinitely hot, pulsing Phoenix Ember she had essentially extorted from a god, a tiny, genuine, dangerous smirk finally broke through her exhaustion.

The reverse-harem was a nightmare.

The plot was a disaster.

But her kitchen had just received a massive upgrade. And she was ready to cook.

The high-altitude winds of the western corridor whipped fiercely against the massive, woven edges of the hovering palm-leaf yacht, carrying the dry, arid heat of the approaching dunes.

For the Vanguard Retinue of the Celestial Sword Sect, the journey had settled into a bizarre, highly traumatized rhythm of recovery and intense, competitive domesticity.

Lounging at the helm, completely exhausted and deeply regretting her life choices, sat Lin Ji’an.

Her newly stabilized Body Fusion core hummed with terrifying, infinite power, perfectly complemented by the Phoenix Ember burning quietly in her spatial ring.

However, her physical appearance was still catastrophically compromised. The ancient disguise locket resting against her collarbone was glitching, failing to suppress the ethereal, celestial beauty she had gained from her heavenly tribulation.

Her hair remained a shimmering, luminescent waterfall of pure silver.

She looked less like a hardened, spatulawielding Vanguard Leader and more like a devastatingly handsome, impossibly delicate deity who had gotten lost on the way to a heavenly banquet.

Because of this, the thirteen male protagonists occupying the rear of the yacht were acting like unmitigated lunatics.

Gu Zhiwei, despite having his left arm bound in a petrified-wood splint from the tournament, was currently attempting to peel a spirit-grape with one hand and his teeth, determined to present it to Ji’an.

Lu Jianheng, nursing a fractured shin, had spent the last three hours polishing his sword and reciting embarrassing haikus about the moonlight reflecting off silver surfaces.

Hu Yanlie was doing one-armed pull-ups on the bamboo mast, loudly grunting to ensure his virility was properly acknowledged.

And standing directly behind Ji’an’s chair, radiating an aura of absolute zero that kept the arid desert heat at bay, was Xie Wangchen.

The Ice Demon had not spoken a word of his world-shattering epiphany regarding her true gender.

He simply hovered, his ruby eyes dark, possessive, and tracking every single movement she made, ready to freeze the blood of any man who looked at her for longer than two seconds.

Ji’an rubbed her temples, praying for a distraction.

A monster. A storm. Anything.

"Ji’an! Look down there!" Shen Zechuan called out cheerfully, leaning over the edge of the palm leaf and pointing toward a jagged, winding canyon far below them. "Those men are playing a very aggressive game of tug-of-war! Except the rope is tied around their wrists, and they are crying!"

Ji’an instantly sat up, her instincts overriding her migraine, peering over the edge of the yacht.

Down in the dusty, winding gorge, a group of about twenty heavily armed, rugged-looking individuals were dragging a procession of young, remarkably handsome mortal men through the dirt.

The captives were weeping, struggling, and pleading for mercy, their fine silk clothes torn from the rough handling.

But it wasn’t the kidnapping that made Ji’an’s culinary Qi-sense flare with warning.

It was the kidnappers.

They were dressed in the crude, mismatched leather and furs typical of mountain bandits.

But they moved with the synchronized, fluid grace of highly trained martial artists. More terrifyingly, the ambient spiritual pressure rolling off the "bandits" was dense and suffocating.

’Those aren’t mere mountain thugs,’ Ji’an analyzed, her eyes narrowing sharply. ’The grunts are at the mid-stage of the Golden Core realm. The leader is pushing Nascent Soul. A random bandit camp doesn’t possess the foundational resources to mass-produce Golden Core cultivators. That is an organized, highly funded, rogue sectarian operation.’

"Hold the perimeter," Ji’an commanded softly, steering the palm-leaf yacht into a steep, silent dive, merging with the shadows of the canyon walls. "We are going stealth. No glowing auras, Zhiwei. No frosty footprints, Wangchen. We track them."

The yacht touched down silently a mile behind the procession.

Ji’an led her retinue on foot, utilizing high-tier stealth arrays to mask their presence. They trailed the kidnappers through the winding, treacherous gorge for an hour, the air growing thicker and strangely perfumed with the heavy, intoxicating scent of crushed night-blooming jasmine and burning incense.

Finally, the canyon opened up into a massive, hidden caldera.

Ji’an peered through a cluster of dried brush, stunned by the sight.

It wasn’t a bandit camp. It was a sprawling, opulent, luxurious underground village. Buildings of polished red lacquered wood and crimson silk lanterns clung to the cavern walls.

In the center of the village stood a massive, multi-tiered brothel, radiating the unmistakable aura of dual-cultivation magic. The guards at the gates were all women, clad in revealing crimson silks, carrying curved scimitars that hummed with volatile Qi.

"A Yin-Gathering Sect," Fairy Xue whispered from behind Ji’an, her face paling in orthodox horror. "They use illicit dual-cultivation techniques to forcefully extract the Yang energy from their captives to fuel their own ascension. It is a demonic practice! They will drain those poor men until they are nothing but hollow husks!"

Lu Jianheng gripped his scabbard, his aristocratic justice flaring. "We must purge this den of iniquity, Vanguard Leader! I shall strike down their gates!"

"You will do no such thing, Jianheng; you have a broken leg," Ji’an hissed, slapping his hand away from his sword. "Did you miss the part where their gatekeepers are Nascent Soul level? If we charge in there swinging, they will activate their defensive arrays."

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