She looked like a saintly god of the hearth, graciously providing salvation to her weary flock.
Gu Zhiwei, the Golden Retriever, was the first to break.
He practically scrambled across the glowing moss on his hands and knees, tears welling up in his brilliant golden eyes as he accepted the massive bowl from her hands.
"Brother Lin..." Zhiwei wept, his voice cracking with sheer, unfiltered emotional exhaustion. "I thought you hated us. I thought you were going to let us starve to teach us a lesson about martial discipline. You... you are truly the most merciful, compassionate soul in the Azure Empire!"
"Haha, ah. Eat up, Zhiwei," Ji’an cooed sweetly, patting the Holy Son on his broad, trembling shoulder. "You need your strength. A growing boy needs his nutrients. Don’t be shy, there is plenty for everyone!"
The floodgates opened.
Lu Jianheng, the Sword Lord, stepped forward.
He tried, desperately, to maintain his aristocratic, peerless-genius composure, bowing stiffly. "I... I extend my gratitude for your provisioning, Tour Leader."
But the moment the bowl touched his hands and the scent of the spiced meat hit his olfactory receptors, the Sword Peak heir completely abandoned his dignity.
He retreated to a nearby rock, sat down, and began devouring the ribs with a frantic, aggressive speed, his eyes rolling back in his head as the perfectly rendered fat melted across his palate.
Wen Shiru didn’t even attempt to appraise the market value of the meal. He took his bowl, sat on his golden palanquin, and ate in silence, a faint flush of culinary euphoria painting his pale cheeks.
Hu Yanlie, the Beast Lord, didn’t bother with chopsticks. He grabbed a massive, bone-in rib with his bare hands and tore into the meat like a feral predator, a low, rumbling growl of approval vibrating in his chest.
Even Fairy Xue and the two Azure Crane maidens, who had been terrified of Ji’an just hours prior, were huddled together, taking delicate but incredibly rapid bites of the stew, wiping tears of joy from beneath their veils.
"The spice profile..." Elder Viper hissed from the shadows, sitting cross-legged with his own bowl, his slitted yellow eyes wide with a world-shattering culinary revelation. "The numbing sensation... it clears the miasma from the lungs perfectly. You used the local ecosystem into a restorative tonic. It is... magnificent."
"I told you, Elder," Ji’an beamed innocently, ladling out a second helping for Shen Zechuan, who was happily sitting next to Xie Wangchen, both of them eating in quiet, deeply contented, VIP-tier bliss. "Flavor is just a matter of proper chemical neutralization. Eat as much as you want, everyone! Fill your bellies to the absolute brim! Do not leave a single drop of broth!"
’Eat, my sweet, baby little lambs,’ Ji’an’s internal monologue whispered, the sweet, saintly smile on her face masking a dark, incredibly villainous, calculating psychological spreadsheet. ’Fatten yourselves up. Consume the massive Yang energy of the Rank 7 apex predator. Let the rich, heavy proteins settle deep into your meridians. You’re going to need every single calorie.’
As she watched them gorge themselves, completely dropping their guards, Ji’an stepped back from the fire, leaning casually against the petrified trunk of a swamp-willow.
Her silver-flecked eyes scanned the clearing, analyzing her touring group with the cold, ruthless, critical gaze of a senior backend software engineer reviewing an inefficient legacy codebase.
Because that was exactly what they were.
They were inefficient code.
Ji’an crossed her arms over her chest, tapping her index finger against her bicep.
’Something is fundamentally, structurally wrong with this server’s power scaling,’ Ji’an theorized, her brow furrowing in the shadows.
She knew the original plot of this heavily convoluted, trashy BL novel. By this point in the timeline, the conclusion of the Official Sect Martial Ranking and the beginning of the Vanguard Tour, the major male protagonists were supposed to have hit a critical milestone.
They were supposed to have completely crystallized their Golden Cores, shattered their mortal limits, and compiled their spiritual data to break through into the Nascent Soul Realm.
Nascent Soul was the threshold of true immortality.
It was the level required to fly without a sword, to project one’s soul, and to fight the mountain-crushing demonic tyrants that were scheduled to spawn in the later Chapters of the book.
But as she looked at them, her high-tier culinary Qi-sense picked up their exact, current system diagnostics.
Gu Zhiwei: Level 49. Peak Golden Core.
Lu Jianheng: Level 49. Peak Golden Core.
Hu Yanlie: Level 49. Peak Golden Core.
Wen Shiru: Level 48. High Golden Core.
They were stuck.
Every single one of them, save for Xie Wangchen, who had ascended and Shen Zechuan, who was a walking abyssal glitch, was completely, hopelessly trapped in a bottleneck.
’It’s a memory leak in their cultivation architecture,’ Ji’an analyzed, her eyes narrowing. ’They have the raw data. They have the talent. But their physical servers, their mortal bodies haven’t been pushed hard enough to trigger the system upgrade. They’ve relied too heavily on their legendary swords, their inherited artifacts, and their flashy, mana-heavy spellcasting. They are like those soft tofus.’
It was torubling.
A deep sense of unease washed over her.
If this were just a normal story, she would have ignored it and let the plot figure itself out. But she had actively disrupted the narrative. stolen their opportunitive encounters and beaten up the villains they were supposed to fight.
She had monopolized the tournament.
Because of her, they hadn’t faced the necessary, life-or-death crucibles required to level up.
And that was a massive, unacceptable problem.
’I am not tannking this universe by myself,’ Ji’an’s inner goblin declared, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck. ’If someone like the Heavenly Demon Emperor breaches the continent in volume six, and these idiots are still stuck swinging broadswords like peak-tier novices, I am going to have to do all the heavy lifting. I am going to be stuck acting as the primary DPS, the main tank!’