Even the foreign disciples lowered their weapons. Everyone knew that the moment the Ice Demon entered the fray, the dynamics of the battlefield shifted entirely.
"Brother Xie!" Wen Shiru called out urgently, adjusting his spectacles. "Assist us! Martial Uncle Lin has suffered a catastrophic Qi deviation! He has gone rogue and is actively eliminating our own sect members! We must restrain him before he disqualifies Zhiwei!"
Wangchen stopped walking.
He stood at the edge of the arena, his hands resting casually behind his back.
His ruby eyes did not look at Zhiwei. They did not look at the protective wall of male leads.
They locked entirely with absolute devotion upon Lin Ji’an.
Wangchen looked at her.
He saw her hovering slightly off the ground, buoyed by the thick, condensed clouds of her own golden Harmonious Five-Grain Qi. He saw the blazing, hyper-saturated Szechuan Red combat silk whipping around her slender, fitted waist, and saw her holding a heavy black cast-iron spatula like an executioner’s blade.
He saw the wild, manic, beautiful, entirely unhinged, villainous smirk on her face as she actively threatened to butcher the most powerful prodigies in the world.
To the rest of the sect, Ji’an looked like a madman having a psychotic breakdown.
But to Xie Wangchen’s distorted, completely hopeless, permanently compromised yandere psyche...
She was a masterpiece.
’He is flawless,’ Wangchen’s internal monologue practically wept in a religious awe. ’Look at him. Look at my God of War, draped in the crimson, raining culinary destruction upon the unworthy. Look at how he shatters their pathetic dreams with a frying pan. He is the most magnificent, perfect entity in the cosmos!’
The Ice Demon did not draw his sword. He didn’t rush forward to help the others restrain her.
A slow, dark, incredibly smug, terrifyingly proud smile spread across his flawless, aristocratic face.
He folded his arms across his chest, leaned his weight casually onto one leg, and simply stood there on the sidelines, preparing to watch the show.
"Brother Wangchen?!" Zhiwei gasped, tears still in his eyes. "Why are you just standing there?! Help us! Brother Lin is going to turn me into a pot-sticker!"
"I am merely an observer, Brother Gu," Wangchen’s smooth, melodic voice echoed across the frozen arena, dripping with chilling, untouchable arrogance. His ruby eyes never left Ji’an. "If the Chef decrees that your meat is raw, then your meat is raw. I would not dare interfere with his prep station."
"Are you completely out of your mind?!" Hu Yanlie roared, pointing his bone-cleaver at Wangchen. "He is attacking the sect! Your loyalty is to the Celestial Sword Sect, not him!"
"My loyalty," Wangchen whispered, his aura flaring in a protective bubble that insulated Ji’an from any cowardly sneak attacks, "is currently wearing red. Please, proceed with your inevitable subjugation. I find the Chef’s striking forms to be highly... educational."
He was literally, shamelessly simping for her in front of thousands of people, willing to let his own sect be disqualified just because he found her violent outburst incredibly attractive.
Ji’an hovered in the air, listening to the exchange.
A brilliant, furious flush of heat crept up her neck. ’He is completely useless in a team fight!’ Ji’an panicked internally, simultaneously mortified and deeply flattered. ’I am trying to have a serious, high-stakes villain monologue, and he is just standing there watching me like I’m a reality TV show! Stop looking at my waist, you silver-haired menace!’
But Wangchen’s blatant refusal to help the protagonist squad provided Ji’an with the exact opening she needed.
The attention of the entire arena was focused on the bizarre, tense standoff.
It was time to drop the curtain.
Ji’an raised her spatula high above her head.
She channeled her Qi, but not for an attack.
She channeled it directly into her vocal cords, amplifying her voice to such a catastrophic volume that it breached the dimensional barriers, ensuring that the projection arrays broadcasted her words directly to the spectator stands in the real world, where the Sect Leaders and Sovereign Elders were watching.
"YOU ALL THINK THIS IS A MISTAKE!" Ji’an’s voice boomed like a shockwave, rattling the jade tiles of the colosseum. "YOU THINK I HAVE GONE MAD! THAT YOU ARE FIGHTING A ROGUE DISCIPLE!"
She slowly descended, her red boots touching lightly upon the polished jade.
"All of you are fools," Ji’an sneered, projecting absolute arrogance. "You have spent the last three days hunting beasts, hiding in the fog, and squabbling over shiny tokens. And what? You believe you have survived the crucible? That you have proven yourselves worthy of the Grand Arena?"
She began to pace back and forth in front of the protagonist squad, casually tapping her spatula against her palm.
"But you have proven nothing," Ji’an declared coldly. "You have demonstrated that you know how to swing a sword, how to cast a spell. But the Celestial Sword Sect does not just require brute force. It requires refinement. It requires balance. It requires the ability to withstand overwhelming pressure without your core separating!"
She stopped pacing and then looked directly at Gu Zhiwei, Wen Shiru, Hu Yanlie, and the assembled foreign disciples.
"You thought this was a battle royale? Pure bullshit!" Ji’an whispered, her voice carrying a terrifying, undeniable gravity. "It is not. This is a kitchen inspection. And each one of you... is just a bunch of raw materials!"
The silence in the arena was absolute.
"I am not a rogue," Ji’an announced, reaching into her robes and pulling out a heavy, glowing golden medallion, but it wasn’t the medallion of a mere Martial Uncle. It was the heavily warded, exclusive insignia of the Chief Proctor of the Shattered Realm, personally stamped with the absolute authority of Sect Leader Bai Yunfei.
She held it high for all to see.
"By the decree of the Sovereign Council," Ji’an’s voice rang with absolute, unyielding authority. "I am the Apex Anomaly. I am the final, insurmountable hurdle that all of you have to survive. The true objective of the Third Section is not to fight each other. The objective... is to survive ME."
A collective, horrified gasp rippled through the ninety-six surviving disciples.
In the spectator stands of the real world, thousands of visiting nobles, elders, and disciples stared at the massive projection screens in absolute shock.
Master Jiu Zui, sitting in the VIP executive box, threw his head back and let out a booming, roaring laugh, slapping his knee as he watched his apprentice completely hijack the narrative. Sect Leader Bai Yunfei sat beside him, steepled his fingers, and nodded in quiet, profound approval.
The Culinary Dao was finally receiving the terrifying respect it deserved.
Back in the arena, the reality of the situation crashed down upon the prodigies.
"He is the Proctor?" Fairy Xue of the Azure Crane Pavilion whispered, her rapier trembling in her hand. "The cook... the cook is the final boss? How is this possible?!"
"This is absurd!" a heavy-hitter from the Crimson Blade Sect roared, stepping forward. "He is just a chef! He chops vegetables! He possesses no formal sword intent! How can a mere cook be deemed a threat worthy of testing the combined might of ninety-six prodigies?!"
Ji’an looked at the man.
She didn’t speak.
She simply smiled.
The Culinary Dao was entirely misunderstood by the orthodox world. They measured strength in terms of sword strikes, elemental blasts, and spiritual pressure.
But the Dao of the Iron Wok was not about pressure.
It was about mass, taking the chaotic, sprawling energy of the universe and condensing it, reducing it down into a single point of impact.
Ji’an didn’t draw a sword or cast a spell.
She merely lifted her right foot and tapped the heel of her Szechuan Red boot against the solid white jade floor of the colosseum.
The impact was microscopic, and the result was apocalyptic.
The hyper-condensed kinetic mass of her Five-Grain Qi surged downward, bypassing the surface and detonating within the foundational arrays of the arena itself.
A deafening, earth-shattering CRACK split the air.
A massive, jagged fissure instantly and violently tore across the entire length of the colossal jade arena, exactly bisecting the colosseum in half. The shockwave of the tap generated a earthquake so severe that ninety percent of the standing disciples were violently thrown off their feet, crashing to the tiles as the very ground beneath them buckled and groaned.
The Crimson Blade try-hard who had insulted her fell onto his back.