"You are all stuck at the peak of the Golden Core," Ji’an concluded, stopping in the center of the formation, crossing her arms over her chest. "You think you are strong, but in reality, you are not. You guys are actually weaker than a mere brittle! And if I let you walk into even the weakest Sect in this state, they will chew you up, spit you out, and use your bones for toothpicks!"
Ji’an snapped her fingers.
From the shadows, Shen Zechuan emerged. He was carrying a massive, heavy canvas sack that Ji’an had meticulously prepared during the night.
He dropped the sack onto the moss with a heavy, metallic thud.
"We are going to refactor your meridians," Ji’an announced, a dark, completely unhinged, sadistic grin spreading across her face. "We are going to debug your physical forms until your code compiles cleanly into the Nascent Soul realm. Welcome to the Vanguard Special Training Program!"
She pointed to the canvas sack.
"Step one. Deposit all spatial rings, spatial pouches, and inter-dimensional storage artifacts into the sack. Step two. Deposit all weapons, swords, canes, fans, and offensive talismans into the sack. Step three. Deactivate all passive Qi-shields and elemental barriers."
The clearing erupted in a horrified outrage.
"Confiscate our weapons?!" Lu Jianheng gasped, clutching the hilt of his beloved Autumn Shine as if Ji’an had just asked him to sever his own arm. "We are in the Labyrinth of the Beasts! Surrounded by highly toxic, mutated predators! To walk unarmed is basically committing suicide! Are you sure you didn’t go mad?!"
"My spatial ring contains my entire operating capital!" Wen Shiru protested, his jade eyes wide with panic behind his spectacles. "You cannot seize my assets without a formal writ of requisition!"
"I am a Beast Lord!" Hu Yanlie roared, stepping forward, his feral pride entirely rejecting the order. "I do not surrender my claws to a cook!"
Ji’an didn’t flinch at their rage, didn’t even argue.
She simply turned her head slightly to the left.
"Wangchen," Ji’an called out lazily.
Standing beneath the canopy of a massive petrified tree, Xie Wangchen leaned casually against the trunk. The Ice Demon was not participating in the lineup. He was wearing his pristine white robes, completely unbothered by the miasma.
At Ji’an’s command, Wangchen simply opened his ruby eyes.
CRACK!
The temperature in the clearing instantly dropped by sixty degrees as a terrifying wave of absolute zero, Nascent Soul-level killing intent washed over the protesting disciples like a physical tidal wave. The glowing moss beneath their boots instantly crystallized into black ice.
"The Chef has issued an order," Wangchen murmured softly, his voice a freezing, melodic purr that promised instant, agonizing death. He slowly pushed himself off the tree, raising his pale hand. "Any disciple who fails to deposit their items within the next three seconds will be permanently affixed to the canyon wall."
The protest instantly died.
Faced with the homicidal, yandere wrath of the Ice Demon, the pride of the orthodox prodigies completely crumbled.
With trembling hands, Lu Jianheng unbuckled Autumn Frost and placed it gently, reverently into the canvas sack. Wen Shiru wept silently as he deposited three separate, diamond-encrusted spatial rings. Gu Zhiwei placed his holy broadsword inside, looking like a puppy giving up its favorite bone.
"Excellent," Ji’an beamed, tying the sack shut and tossing it to Zechuan for safekeeping.
She turned back to the unarmed and unshielded, completely vulnerable group of youths.
"You have relied on your artifacts to channel your Qi till now," Ji’an lectured, pacing again. "Today, you will use your muscles to do that, force the raw, heavy Yang energy from the bear meat through your physical pathways through manual labor. It is the only way to crack the bottleneck of the Golden Core."
She pointed her ladle down the highly toxic valley of the Labyrinth.
"The objective is simple. We are hiking through the valley. You will not fly, just directly walk through, but don’t you dare return empty-handed."
.
.
.
What followed was the most absurd, agonizing, and entirely humiliating display of orthodox degradation in the history of the Azure Empire.
Lin Ji’an didn’t just make them hike.
She transformed the most majestic, aristocratic prodigies on the continent into a literal chain-gang of sweaty, groaning farm animals.
She had utilized her spare woks, cast-iron ingots, and heavy chains to construct crude, massive pulling-sleds.
"Hu Yanlie!" Ji’an barked, tossing a heavy harness at the Beast Lord’s chest. "You always boast of your physical superiority! Prove it today right here and now! You are pulling Sled Alpha! It weighs eight hundred pounds! Drag it through the acidic mud pits, and don’t use any beast-fire to dry the path!"
Hu Yanlie, stripped to the waist, snarled, but he strapped the harness across his massive, scarred chest. He leaned forward, his muscles bulging, the veins in his neck popping as he began to drag the massive iron sled through the thick, squelching, toxic blue mud of the valley floor.
"Jianheng!" Ji’an yelled, marching alongside the procession, smacking her ladle against her hand.
She tossed the Sword Lord a long, relatively thin, completely mundane bamboo stick she had snapped off a nearby tree.
"You complain about being unarmed! There is your weapon! You are on point defense! When the venom-wasps swarm from the canopy, you will deflect their stingers using only that stick! If you channel too much Qi, the bamboo will shatter! If you channel too little, you get stung! You must find the absolute, perfect equilibrium of intent without relying on the crutch some of legendary steel!"
Jianheng looked at the flimsy, pathetic piece of wood in his hand. He looked at the massive, glowing, fist-sized venom-wasps beginning to buzz angrily in the canopy above them.
The peerless genius of the Sword Peak let out a pathetic, undignified whimper and fell into a defensive stance, wildly swinging the stick as a wasp dive-bombed his aristocratic face.
"Shiru!" Ji’an continued, turning her sights on the Fox.
Wen Shiru was already panting, his pristine green robes soaked in sweat just from walking in the humid miasma without his cooling arrays.
"You lack endurance, merchant!" Ji’an criticized ruthlessly. "You are on logistical transport! You will carry the water barrels!"
She didn’t give him the magical gourds. She pointed to two hollowed-out, sixty-pound petrified wood barrels filled to the brim with fresh spring water, suspended on a yoke.
"Place the yoke across your shoulders! You will sprint ahead of the group to scout the path, and you will sprint back to report! If you spill a single drop of my drinking water, I will make you lick it off the moss!"
Shiru, possessing the physical strength of a slightly asthmatic scholar, groaned in absolute agony as he hoisted the massive yoke onto his slender shoulders, his knees instantly buckling. "This... this is an OSHA violation!" Shiru gasped out, completely losing his elegant composure.
"There is no HR department in the wilderness, Shiru! SPRINT!" Ji’an roared.
The three Azure Crane maidens, including Fairy Xue, huddled together, looking at Ji’an with wide, hopeful eyes.
"Martial Uncle Lin," Fairy Xue pleaded softly, fluttering her eyelashes. "Surely... surely the delicate constitutions of the maidens are exempt from such brutish labor? We cultivate the soft, flowing Yin energy of the moon."
Ji’an stopped walking. She slowly turned to look at the maidens.
A dark, terrifying, absolute feminist-rage ignited in the transmigrated chef’s eyes.
"Equality in the kitchen means equality in the mud, Fairy Xue," Ji’an hissed, her voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. "Do you think the Heavenly Demon Emperor is going to spare you because you have a delicate constitution? Do you think the demonic beasts care about your flowing Yin energy?!"
She reached into her spatial ring and pulled out three massive, heavy, wide-brimmed ceramic bowls filled to the absolute brim with scalding hot water.
"You cultivate balance?" Ji’an demanded, forcefully placing a bowl directly on top of Fairy Xue’s head. "Balance this! You three will execute continuous, deep, ninety-degree lunges for the next five miles! While balancing the hot water! If you break your posture, you get burned! If you drop the bowl, you start over! LUNGE!"
The maidens shrieked in horror, hastily dropping into agonizingly deep squats, desperately trying to keep their necks rigid to prevent the scalding water from spilling down their silk robes.
The Vanguard Tour had officially devolved into a cross-fit hellscape.
It was a parade of unfiltered suffering.
Hu Yanlie was roaring in agony as he dragged the sled through knee-deep acidic muck.