’It is a circus,’ Ji’an sighed heavily. ’Fourteen emotionally repressed peacocks, three terrified girls, and me. We are going to cause an international incident before lunch.’
.
.
.
At the head of the plaza, Sect Leader Bai Yunfei stepped up to the grand podium. The crowd instantly hushed.
The Sect Leader delivered a sweeping, majestic, twenty-minute oration regarding the virtues of orthodox unity, the strength of the Northern Territories, and the profound, diplomatic importance of this student exchange program.
He looked incredibly majestic, but Ji’an, knowing he had spent the last two days trying to figure out a new way to forcefully betroth her to his daughter, glared at his perfectly styled hairline.
"Your first destination on this Vanguard Tour," Bai Yunfei announced, gesturing gracefully to the side, "shall be the illustrious Azure Dragon Sect."
A murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
Ji’an’s tactical brain immediately pulled up the lore archives. ’Azure Dragon Sect. Situated in the toxic miasma valleys of the eastern basin. Famous for three things: impenetrable array formations, hyper-lethal poison mastery, and producing cultivators who are paranoid enough to poison their own tea just to build an immunity.’
Stepping forward to take the podium was the elder who would serve as their official guide for this leg of the journey.
He was a wizened, terrifyingly gaunt man named Elder Viper.
He wore robes of sickly, pale green silk. His skin had a faint, iridescent, reptilian sheen to it, and his eyes were a piercing, slitted yellow.
He carried a heavy, gnarled staff made of petrified swamp-wood, wrapped in a live, hissing emerald serpent.
"Vanguard Retinue," Elder Viper hissed, his voice sounding like dry scales rubbing against stone. He didn’t project benevolence; he projected lethal efficiency. "The Azure Dragon Sect does not welcome fools. Our valleys are cloaked in a corrosive miasma that will liquefy the lungs of the unprepared. You will follow my exact coordinates, not stray from the formation path. If you touch a flower, you will die. If you drink from a stream, you will die. If you insult my arrays... I will let you die."
The junior disciples swallowed hard, thoroughly intimidated.
Ji’an, however, felt her culinary curiosity peak.
’Corrosive miasma? I wonder if the ambient toxicity alters the pH balance of the local soil. If I harvest wild garlic from a poison valley, does the venom act as a natural preservative? Can I ferment a chili paste using toxic dew?’
"The journey is three thousand miles to the east," Elder Viper concluded, tapping his staff against the marble. "We depart immediately. To the skies, Vanguard!"
The command was given.
The grand departure had arrived.
In the orthodox cultivation world, traveling three thousand miles was not done on foot. It was done via the majestic and dramatic method of Sword Flight.
But this wasn’t just a group of random disciples.
This was the Top Sixteen. And they possessed egos the size of small moons.
The moment Elder Viper gave the order, the plaza erupted into an absolute, blinding display of extravagant, hyper-expensive, flex-oriented aviation technology.
"Ascend!" Gu Zhiwei called out cheerfully. He summoned a massive, glowing broadsword of pure holy light. He leapt onto the blade with heroic grace, hovering ten feet in the air, his golden hair blowing perfectly in the artificial updraft.
Lu Jianheng, the Sword Lord, scoffed at the display of light. With a flick of his wrist, Autumn Shine multiplied into a localized flurry of spinning, icy-blue phantom blades.
He stepped onto the central sword, his hands clasped behind his back, looking like a peerless immortal of the highest order.
Wen Shiru, utterly rejecting manual labor, tossed a handful of jade coins into the air.
The coins expanded, locking together to form a luxurious, hovering, gold-trimmed merchant’s palanquin pulled by two spectral cranes.
Hu Yanlie didn’t use an artifact. He let out a booming whistle, and a massive, terrifying, crimson-winged Rank 6 Blood-Eagle swooped down from the peaks.
The Beast Lord vaulted onto the eagle’s back, crossing his scarred arms, looking down at the others with feral disdain.
Shen Zechuan didn’t summon a sword. He simply stepped onto a localized, floating disc of abyssal void-energy, balancing Ji’an’s wok perfectly on his shoulder, happily finishing his sticky-rice bun.
And Xie Wangchen?
The Ice Demon didn’t even bother to summon a weapon. He manipulated the absolute zero of the atmosphere itself, condensing the moisture in the air into a shimmering, flawless, completely transparent platform of diamond-hard ice.
He stepped onto it, his white robes flowing, looking like a god judging mortals from the clouds.
Within ten seconds, sixteen of the most powerful youths on the continent were hovering in the air above the plaza, radiating blinding light, terrifying auras, and absolute, undisputed wealth.
Down on the marble plaza, standing perfectly still amidst the swirling winds of their combined liftoffs, was Lin Ji’an.
She hadn’t summoned a sword or whistled for a beast.
She was just standing there, her hands resting casually on her hips, looking up at the hovering armada with a look of deeply unamused blankness.
’We have to fly?’ Ji’an’s internal monologue flatlined.
In her defense, she was a transmigrator who spent ninety-nine percent of her time in a kitchen. The remaining one percent was spent walking into swamps to punch crabs.
She knew the theory of Sword Flight and understood the mechanics. But she hadn’t actively practiced it since she hijacked the original host’s body, mostly because she was terrified of heights and preferred the stability of solid ground.
More importantly, she was a chef.
Her primary weapon was a heavy, blunt, cast-iron spatula.
’You can’t surf on a spatula,’ Ji’an realized, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck. ’It’s aerodynamically impossible. It doesn’t have the surface area. If I try to stand on my cooking utensil, I am going to immediately flip upside down and plummet into a pine tree.’
The silence on the plaza stretched.
The roaring cheers of the crowd faltered, replaced by a murmur of collective confusion.