"Ji’an," Zechuan called out happily as one of the glands slipped and bounced off his nose, failing to detonate because his abyssal aura passively suppressed kinetic shock. "If the yeast eats the poison, does the yeast become poisonous? Or does the poison become drunk?"
"The yeast metabolizes the neurotoxins into complex esters, Zechuan," Ji’an explained, pulling her paddle out and wiping it down with a clean cloth. "It breaks the molecular bonds of the venom, transforming it from a lethal acid into a dense, numbing flavor profile. It’s basic... organic chemistry."
Ji’an mumbled the word Organic Chemistry, because no one in this world would know it.
Ji’an paused, wiping her hands on her apron.
Organic chemistry...
The words echoed in the damp cellar, triggering a deep wave of nostalgia that hit her right in the chest.
She looked at the perfect, glowing array of barrels. She thought about the spectacular, reality-breaking stunt she had pulled in the Plaza of the Heavens just hours prior, refactoring a three-thousand-year-old Nine-Palace Constriction Array into a hundred-node matrix by treating it like a Friday-night kitchen ticket system.
The Azure Dragon elders thought she was a peerless martial god. They thought she possessed a divine, innate connection to the spiritual geometry of the Heavens.
’I don’t have a divine connection to the Heavens,’ Ji’an’s internal monologue sighed, a fond, wistful smile touching her lips. ’I just have a Bachelor’s Degree in Culinary Science and a minor in Fluid Dynamics.’
She knew perfectly well she never would have been able to pull off that stunt without her modern-age education.
She remembered the late nights in the university library, chugging cheap, terrible coffee, staring at thermodynamic equations and molecular gastronomy textbooks until her eyes bled.
More importantly, she remembered the woman who had forced her to do it.
’Headmistress Lin,’ Ji’an thought, her heart giving a painful, nostalgic squeeze.
The headmistress of the orphanage where Ji’an had grown up on Earth had been a terrifying, strict, utterly uncompromising woman with a ruler and an eagle eye.
When Ji’an had announced she wanted to skip college to immediately start working on the line in a restaurant, the Headmistress had practically dragged her by the ear to the university admissions office.
"You want to be a chef?" the Headmistress had scolded her, rapping the ruler against the desk. "Any fool can chop an onion, Ji’an. A true master understands why the onion cries. You will get your degree. You will learn the science. You will not build a house without a foundation."
At the time, Ji’an had grumbled. She had complained, played orchestrated pranks on the Headmistress to vent her frustration, like swapping her decaf tea with hyper-caffeinated espresso right before a board meeting.
But the Headmistress had never broken.
She had caught Ji’an by the collar, forced her to sit down, and made her finish her calculus homework.
And looking back... it had been the most fun, foundational period of her life.
She missed that dynamic. She missed it with a heart ache.
Here, in this brutal, high-stakes Xianxia world, Ji’an had friends.
She had her "boys."
She could bully Lu Jianheng into a stuttering mess.
She could make Gu Zhiwei fetch things like a golden retriever.
She could banter with Wen Shiru and scream at Hu Yanlie as she pleased.
But they were all her subordinates.
They looked up to her.
Even the elders of her own sect, like Master Jiu Zui and Senior Apprentice Shen Zechuan, Sect Leader Bai only spoiled her rotten. Jiu Zui just handed her legendary artifacts like candy and laughed when she caused international incidents.
She was the Apex Anomaly.
She was the one holding the leash.
’I don’t want to hold the leash all the time,’ Ji’an sighed, leaning back against the barrel. ’I also want a senior. I want someone who looks at my crazy, unhinged stunts, smacks me on the back of the head, tells me my math is wrong, and then helps me build a bigger explosion. I want an equal.’
She wanted someone who would keep her rational. Someone who could stop her from letting her own chaotic, transmigrator hubris run unchecked.
But at the same time, someone she could prank.
Someone she could banter with, who wouldn’t immediately drop to their knees and worship her like the disciples did.
Little did Lin Ji’an know, the Heavens of the Azure Empire possessed a deeply ironic sense of humor.
***
Miles away, on the outer perimeter of the Azure Dragon Sect, standing upon a jagged obsidian cliff overlooking the Plaza of the Heavens, a solitary figure was currently inspecting the aftermath of Ji’an’s afternoon elective.
The man was tall, draped in flowing, chaotic robes of deep, midnight-purple silk that looked as though they had been haphazardly thrown on.
His dark hair was tied back in a messy, careless knot, and a long, slender smoking pipe rested lazily between his lips.
He was not a disciple or a visiting elder.
He possessed an aura that was completely undetectable. He existed outside the normal parameters of the world’s spiritual grid.
He took a slow drag from his pipe, exhaling a thin stream of silver smoke, his sharp, dark, incredibly intelligent eyes locked onto the massive, glowing, hundred-node Nine-Palace Constriction Array that Ji’an had left hovering over the plaza.
"Fascinating," the man murmured, his voice a rich, lazy drawl that carried a terrifying undertone of absolute, unfathomable competence.
He tilted his head, his eyes tracing the glowing lines of the matrix.
"They didn’t balance the equation," the man analyzed, a slow, wicked, deeply amused smirk spreading across his face. "They completely ignored the geometric constants. They treated the elemental nodes like... ingredients. They emulsified the Water and Fire vectors to create a steam-pressure valve, used Metal to contain the acidic runoff of the Wood nodes."
He chuckled with a low, resonant sound.
"It’s not an array. It’s a pressure cooker. An unstable, brilliantly engineered, absolute nightmare of a pressure cooker!"
"Which bastard is it?"