Ji’an blinked, sniffing slightly, her interest immediately piqued. "The Iron-Stone Monastery? What do they cultivate?"
"They don’t cultivate swords, Ji’an," Jiu Zui chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound of amusement. "The Sovereign of the Monastery is an old... acquaintance of mine. An entirely insufferable, stubborn, brilliant old bastard. He is the only man on this continent who understands the manipulation of heat better than you do. Meeting him... observing his grand arrays... it will elevate your Dao to a realm you cannot even comprehend from my backyard."
He leaned back in his chair, waving his hand dismissively.
"Go. Babysit the peacocks. See the dunes. Argue with my old friend. And when you return, you will cook me a meal that will make the Heavens themselves weep with envy. Understood?"
Ji’an looked at her Master.
She looked at the gruff, alcoholic, yet caring immortal who had just handed her a legendary artifact and a roadmap to her own potential.
The heavy, suffocating sadness in her chest evaporated, replaced by a renewed, stubborn, fiercely burning fire.
She stood up straight, snapping a crisp, flawless, deeply respectful martial salute.
"Understood, Master," Ji’an declared, her voice ringing with absolute clarity. "I will go. I will lead the tour, learn everything the old bastard has to teach me. And I promise... I will return and cook a feast that will put you into a food coma for a decade."
"That," Jiu Zui smirked, raising his wine gourd in a toast, "is the only promise I expect you to keep. Now get out of my sight. You have two days to pack your spices, and you smell like pulverized serpent."
Ji’an laughed, a bright, unburdened sound.
She turned and bounded out the heavy oak doors, the heavy weight of the world lifted from her shoulders.
She had two days.
Two days to pack her woks, restock her chili oil, and prepare herself mentally for the absolute nightmare of chaperoning the continent’s most volatile, lovestruck, overpowered protagonists across enemy lines.
The Vanguard Tour was officially underway.
And Lin Ji’an was fully prepared to treat the entire continent like an underperforming prep-kitchen.
***
The heavy, iron-reinforced spirit-wood doors of Lin Ji’an’s bedchamber clicked shut with a resounding, definitive THUD.
For exactly three seconds, Ji’an stood perfectly still in the entryway of her quiet, moonlit room. She listened to the familiar, comforting sounds of the Drunken Peak, the rustling of the ancient peach trees outside her window, the distant, rhythmic chirping of spirit-crickets, and the faint snoring of Master Jiu Zui emanating from the main manor across the courtyard.
She was alone.
The eyes of the hundred thousand spectators were gone.
The suffocating, romantic gravity of Xie Wangchen was miles away on the Eternal Cloud Peak. The bewildered adoration of Shen Zechuan, the righteous tears of Gu Zhiwei, the calculating stares of the foreign elders, all of it was shut out behind six inches of solid, enchanted wood.
The moment the absolute certainty of her isolation registered in her brain, the flawless, arrogant, untouchable mask of the "Goddess of the Iron Wok" completely shattered.
Ji’an didn’t walk to her bed.
She collapsed toward it.
Her knees buckled, her heavy red leather boots dragging across the woven floor mats as she practically fell face-first onto her plush silk mattress. She didn’t bother to take off her ruined, soot-stained Szechuan Red combat silk.
She didn’t unstrap her heavy corset-belt either, even though it felt uncomfortable.
She just lay there, her cheek pressed against the cool silk quilt, staring blankly at the dark wall, and let out a long, ragged, shuddering breath that sounded close to a sob.
She was so sad.
Earlier in the executive lounge, she had bounced on her heels and beamed at her master.
She had bragged about her kinetic crater and acted like a cocky, indestructible teenager eager for her next adventure. She had done it flawlessly, because she loved Master Jiu Zui, and she knew that if she showed him even a fraction of the crushing, existential terror gnawing at her soul, the old man would have drawn his sword and slaughtered the entire Vanguard Retinue to spare her the burden of the diplomatic tour.
She couldn’t do that to him.
She couldn’t let him burn down his own sect for her sake.
So she smiled.
She had played the part of the arrogant, eager prodigy.
"But it’s a lie," Ji’an whispered to the empty room, her voice cracking in the silence. "It’s all just a exhausting, never-ending lie."
She rolled over onto her back, throwing her arm over her eyes, trying to block out the moonlight filtering through the paper screens.
The physical toll of the tournament was nothing compared to the psychological devastation she was currently processing.
When she had first transmigrated into this brutal, hyper-lethal web novel, her primary goal had simply been survival. She had wanted to hide in the background, cook decent meals, and avoid the toxic, sociopathic male leads who were destined to tear the continent apart in their quest for dominance and the Holy Son’s affection.
But the plot had not just diverted; it had derailed, flipped six times in mid-air, and crashed directly into her outdoor kitchen.
She thought about the power she had just displayed in the colosseum.
The Searing Palm of Heavens.
She had generated a shockwave that had brought the greatest sword genius of his generation to his knees.
She was the Apex Anomaly, an unregistered variable.
According to the laws of Xianxia world-building, she was now overpowered.
She was officially stronger than the established hierarchy. If she wanted to, she could completely usurp Gu Zhiwei’s role as the main character.
She could challenge the Sect Leader, conquer the demonic rifts, subjugate the continent with a cast-iron frying pan.
But as she lay there in the dark, the tears she had been suppressing for days finally broke free, hot and silent, tracking down her temples into her dark hair.
"I don’t want it," Ji’an choked out, a raw, ugly, desperately honest confession. "I don’t want to be a war god. I don’t want to be an apex anomaly."
Her mind flashed back to the Illusory Labyrinth.
It flashed back to the Dream-Weaver Spider’s toxin.
She remembered the smell of the bakery.
The warm, cream-colored walls, the potted pothos plants, the sound of the little bell above the glass door. She remembered the feeling of wearing a soft, yellow canvas apron, worrying about nothing more lethal than the proofing time of her croissant dough.
She remembered the modern, mundane, breathtakingly peaceful life where she didn’t have to hide her gender, lower her voice, or constantly calculate the lethal radius of the people she cared about.
That was what she wanted.
A normal life.
Instead, her reality was a suffocating web of deception.
She was a woman pretending to be a boy, navigating a reverse-harem of hyper-lethal prodigies who were all slowly, terrifyingly falling in love with her disguise. If her gender was revealed, she would be hunted as the ultimate Yin-furnace.
If she rejected them, they might destroy the sect.
If she stayed, she was destined to fight in endless, bloody tournaments until her soul gave out.
Thinking about the sheer, inescapable trajectory of her future made a wave of suffocating loneliness wash over her. She was alone in her knowledge of this world’s true nature.
"Stop it," Ji’an hissed to herself, dragging the heel of her hand across her wet eyes. "Stop spiraling. Spiraling gets you killed. You are a Head Chef. You do not cry over spilled milk, and you do not cry over broken plots."
She forced herself to sit up.
Her abdominal muscles screamed in protest, bruised from the kinetic kickback of her own attacks, but she ignored the pain.
She needed to focus on something tangible.
Something she could solve.
Her silver-flecked eyes, still rimmed with red, darted toward the small, carved-jade bedside table next to her canopy bed.
The letter.
Ji’an’s breath hitched.
Her heart, which had been heavy with depressive sorrow, suddenly spiked with an erratic burst of pure adrenaline.
Before the chaos of the final arena, she had secretly dispatched a high-tier Communication Parchment to her father, General Lin, back in the capital. She had demanded the unvarnished truth regarding her family bloodline, desperate to solve the impossible mystery of Shen Zechuan.
She scrambled across the mattress, throwing the heavy silk quilts aside.
Resting squarely in the center of the jade table, glowing with a faint, pulsing crimson aura, was a neatly folded square of heavy imperial parchment. It bore the unmistakable, wax-stamped seal of a roaring tiger, the crest of the Vanguard Commander’s Estate.
General Lin’s communication system was truly, terrifyingly efficient.
The military relays had bypassed the sect’s wards flawlessly.
Ji’an reached out and took it on her hand.
As her fingers hovered over the wax seal, she couldn’t help but notice the subtle trembling of her hands.
It was a physical manifestation of both the dread and excitement warring in her chest.