Why wasn’t the Apex Anomaly flying?
Hovering on his glowing sword, a try-hard disciple from the Crimson Blade Sect, a guy who had barely scraped into the 16th rank by hiding in a cave during her rampage, saw his opportunity to reclaim some face.
"What is the matter, Martial Uncle Lin?" the Crimson Blade try-hard sneered loudly, his voice echoing over the plaza. He pointed down at her. "Did the great Iron Wok Demon forget to pack an aviation array? Or is your heavy, unrefined cooking style completely useless when it comes to the elegant, delicate art of aerial traversal?"
A few of the other foreign disciples chuckled, their bruised egos leaping at the chance to mock the tyrant who had terrorized them the day before.
"Perhaps he intends to fly on his frying pan!" another rogue cultivator mocked. "Or maybe he will ride a roasted duck to the Azure Dragon Sect!"
High above, Xie Wangchen’s ruby eyes instantly flared with apocalyptic, murderous crimson light.
The temperature plummeted.
He raised his hand, fully prepared to freeze the Crimson Blade disciple’s vocal cords, lungs, and blood supply into solid ice for daring to disrespect his Chef.
"Brother Ji’an," Wangchen called down softly, entirely ignoring the others, his voice a gentle, devoted hum. "You need not exert yourself. Step onto my ice. I shall carry you across the continent."
"Or ride with me, Brother Lin!" Zhiwei offered eagerly, maneuvering his holy sword lower. "There is plenty of room!"
"I can carry you, Uncle Ji’an!" Zechuan chimed in from his void-disc, his dark eyes wide and helpful. "I can just fold space and we will be there in three seconds! Walking in the sky seems very tedious!"
The crowd gasped. The three most powerful prodigies in the realm were actively, desperately offering to chauffeur the red-robed chef.
It was a massive public display of absolute favoritism.
But Ji’an didn’t want a chauffeur.
And she absolutely refused to be mocked by a rank-64 try-hard who couldn’t even chop an onion.
Ji’an let out a long, heavy, deeply arrogant sigh.
She rolled her eyes, shaking her head as if dealing with a group of particularly slow, disappointing toddlers.
"You think Sword Flight is elegant?" Ji’an drawled, her baritone voice carrying perfectly across the silent plaza. "Standing rigidly on a narrow piece of sharpened steel for three thousand miles, burning your core Qi just to maintain balance, exposing your face to the windburn and the sun?"
She scoffed, a sharp, mocking sound.
"That isn’t elegance. That is just highly inefficient manual labor."
Ji’an reached into the deep, voluminous folds of her Szechuan Red outer robes.
She bypassed the spices, bypassed the healing pills, and accessed a specific section of her spatial ring.
She pulled out a fan.
It was not a mystical, glowing artifact of pure energy, or a forged weapon of ancient steel.
It was a round, flat, completely ordinary hand-fan, woven from cheap, dried palm tree leaves, the kind sold by mortal street vendors for three copper coins to swat away mosquitoes during the humid summer months. It had a slightly frayed bamboo handle and looked like it had seen better days.
The crowd stared.
The hovering prodigies stared.
Elder Viper, the Azure Dragon guide, raised a skeptical, reptilian eyebrow.
"A palm leaf?" the Crimson Blade disciple laughed uproariously. "Are you going to fan yourself all the way to the eastern basin, cook?!"
Ji’an didn’t answer or even glare at him.
She simply flicked her wrist.
She infused a dense surge of her Harmonious Five-Grain Qi directly into the cheap bamboo handle. The mundane object absorbed the monstrous energy, glowing with a brilliant, blinding golden-red light.
Ji’an tossed the palm-leaf fan casually straight up into the air above her head.
The moment the fan left her hand, it didn’t just hover. It detonated with spatial expansion magic.
FWOOMP~!!!
The tiny, cheap palm leaf violently expanded.
It didn’t just become the size of a surfboard. It grew until it was a colossal, twelve-foot-wide, intricately woven, floating platform of reinforced, golden-glowing palm fronds.
The stem curled upward, forming a natural, sturdy backrest. The sheer density of the Qi infused into the cheap material turned it into an aerodynamic masterpiece, hovering silently, steadily in the air, creating its own localized, cooling breeze.
The laughter of the Crimson Blade disciple instantly died in his throat. His jaw unhinged.
Ji’an didn’t execute a flashy, twisting martial-arts leap.
She simply bent her knees, hopped lightly off the marble plaza, and landed squarely in the center of the massive, floating leaf.
She didn’t stand rigidly at attention like the swordsmen.
She didn’t cross her arms like the Beast Lord.
Ji’an turned around, sank back against the curled bamboo backrest, and unabashedly, lazily lounged.
She crossed one red leather boot over the other knee and leaned back, resting her elbow comfortably on the edge of the frond.
She looked exactly like a wealthy, retired emperor lounging on a private, luxury yacht on a tranquil lake.
The fan bobbed gently, stabilizing with unyielding perfection.
Ji’an reached into her robes again.
She didn’t pull out a compass or a map.
She pulled out a small, steaming paper bag of freshly fried, fragrant, golden-brown sesame dough twists.
She popped a warm, sugary dough twist into her mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and looked up at the hovering, completely stunned assembly of prodigies.
"Well?" Ji’an mumbled around the dough, waving her hand lazily toward the east. "Are we going, or are you all just going to hover there burning your fuel reserves to impress the novices? I have a schedule to keep."
The plaza erupted into absolute, hysterical, screaming cheers.
"THE PALM LEAF OF DOMINANCE!" the junior disciples wept, frantically writing down notes. "He weaponized a street vendor’s fan! The unmitigated disrespect to the sword! He is lounging! He is eating snacks! Martial Uncle is absolutely right! The absolute pinnacle of the Dao is relaxation!"
"From now on, let’s try our best to become like Martial Uncle Lin!"