Personally, Ji’an detested drinking wine.
In her previous life on Earth, she had been a chef whose palate was her most prized asset; drowning it in cheap alcohol was a culinary sin.
In this life, alcohol was even worse, usually infused with random, volatile spiritual herbs that tasted like fermented gym socks and battery acid.
Being forcefully presented with a flagon of warm, unbalanced, arsenic-laced garbage under the guise of a "toast" had deeply offended her professional sensibilities.
She slowly turned around.
The silver flecks in her eyes were not glowing with the manic, drill-instructor fire of the swamp, nor the victorious, unhinged glee of the colosseum.
They were cold, flat, and completely devoid of amusement.
"Go to bed, everyone," Ji’an commanded softly.
Her baritone voice, magically maintained by the dull-looking artifact locket her father had given her, which currently rested securely beneath her clothes, echoed across the courtyard with finality.
"The physical conditioning phase is paused for the night," Ji’an continued, looking at the assembled prodigies. "But tomorrow morning, the real work begins. We are not here to vacation. We are here to dismantle their infrastructure and learn their techniques. Get your rest and hydrate yourselves. If I see a single one of you wandering the halls tonight looking for a late-night duel, I will personally tie your meridians into a pretzel."
Under normal circumstances, the feral Beast Lord or the aristocratic Sword Lord would have protested being sent to bed like toddlers.
Tonight, they looked at the flat, sour expression on the Apex Anomaly’s face, remembered the shattered iron flagon, and decided that their egos were not worth their lives.
"Yes, Martial Uncle!" Gu Zhiwei saluted crisply, his golden aura completely subdued.
"Understood, Chef," Hu Yanlie grunted, uncharacteristically polite, practically tiptoeing toward his assigned dormitory.
Within thirty seconds, the courtyard was empty.
The thirteen demigods and the three Azure Crane maidens had scattered with the panicked speed of cockroaches fleeing a suddenly illuminated kitchen.
***
Left alone in the quiet, luminescent green glow of the miasma valley, Ji’an let out a long, heavy, exhausted sigh.
She walked over to the edge of the courtyard balcony, which overlooked one of the massive, roaring waterfalls. She leaned her forearms against the smooth, cold obsidian railing, letting the chilly night air wash over her face.
The cold helped.
It leached some of the burning irritation from her skin. But as the adrenaline of the banquet confrontation faded, it left behind a hollow, aching vacuum in her chest.
She looked up at the fractured, starry sky visible through the breaks in the miasma fog.
’I’m tired,’ Ji’an thought, her shoulders slumping. ’I am so unbelievably tired.’
The silence of the sect amplified her isolation. For the first time in days, she wasn’t yelling at anyone, plotting a training regimen, or fighting a mutant beast.
The quiet allowed the contents of the "iron box" in her mind to rattle against the lid.
She missed home.
She missed the loud, chaotic, obnoxiously supportive environment of the Lin General’s Estate. She missed her father’s booming laughter.
She missed her older brother, Lin Feng, whose face was currently being worn by an airhead who liked to blow snot-bubbles.
And, to her own surprise, she missed the Drunken Peak.
She missed the smell of the peach blossoms, the comfortable, familiar scorch marks on her outdoor prep tables. And she deeply missed Master Jiu Zui.
’The old man is probably sitting on his roof right now, drinking plum wine and laughing at me,’ Ji’an smiled faintly, a sad, nostalgic warmth blooming in her chest.
She thought about Jiu Zui’s wine. The Sovereign of the Drunken Peak consumed alcohol the way normal mortals consumed oxygen.
But Jiu Zui didn’t drink garbage.
His personal cellars were filled with centuries-old, meticulously fermented vintages that smelled of rich, dark plums, aged oak, and starlight.
Ji’an’s nose wrinkled in disgust as she remembered the acrid, metallic stench of the Viper’s Breath wine Senior Brother Kui had tried to force on her.
’It lacked depth,’ her brain immediately began to critique the host sect’s vintage. ’They rely entirely on the shock-value of the venom to mask the terrible fermentation process. The acidity was completely unchecked. It’s an insult to the art of brewing.’
She tapped her finger rhythmically against the obsidian railing.
’Master would have spit that wine directly into Kui’s face,’ Ji’an mused. ’And father would have used it to clean his armor.’
A sudden, unexpected spark of inspiration ignited in the dark, homesick void of her mind.
Why was she letting the Azure Dragon Sect’s terrible brewing standards ruin her mood?
She was a Chef. She was a master of flavor profiles, fermentation, and chemical neutralization. She had literally just spent the afternoon theorizing how to weaponize toxic soil for culinary use.
’I should brew my own,’ Ji’an realized, her eyes widening as the pieces fell into place.
It was the perfect plan.
It was the most productive distraction.
She didn’t like drinking wine, but she understood the science of making it.
If the Azure Dragon Sect had access to rare, resilient, miasma-infused botanicals, then their raw ingredients were likely unparalleled on the continent.
They just didn’t know how to process them properly.
’I will hijack their breweries,’ Ji’an resolved, the sour mood completely evaporating, replaced by a fierce enthusiasm. ’I will requisition their finest toxic grapes, their rarest venom-lotus extracts, and establish a rogue fermentation array in the guest pavilion. I’ll balance the pH levels, introduce a proper, slow-acting yeast strain, and age it using compressed Qi.’
She could already picture it.
A dark, smooth, perfectly balanced, lethal-yet-luxurious vintage.
’I’ll make a batch for Master Jiu Zui,’ Ji’an smiled, her heart lightening considerably. ’I’ll bring it back as a souvenir. A wine so good it will make him weep into his beard! And I’ll send a crate back to the capital for Dad. It’s the perfect way to show them I’m surviving here just fine.’
The thought of doing something tangible, something creative, for the people she loved finally cooled the lingering anger in her blood.