"Excellent kinetic transfer," the deity murmured, a terrifying, brilliant smile illuminating his face. "Yes. I believe I am going to enjoy this kitchen very, very much."
***
The fundamental difference between training the male protagonists and training the Azure Crane maidens lay entirely in the structural architecture of their respective privileges.
When Lin Ji’an looked at Lu Jianheng, Gu Zhiwei, or Hu Yanlie, she saw boys who had been brutally conditioned to equate physical suffering with martial ascension.
They were meatheads.
If she told them to drag a boulder through a swamp, they would simply ask how heavy the boulder should be. They were forged in iron, and to re-forge them, Ji’an had to melt them down in a crucible of tyrannical agony.
But Fairy Xue and her two junior martial sisters, Ming’er and Qing’er?
They were not forged in iron.
They were spun from silk.
They had been raised in the pristine, opulent, incense-scented halls of the Azure Crane Pavilion. Their masters had taught them that orthodox combat was an elegant dance of water and wind.
They drank morning dew from jade cups.
When they went on subjugation missions, their senior sisters carried their luggage, cleared the mud from their paths, and ensured they never experienced the harsh, biting, unglamorous reality of true physical exhaustion.
Even the basic, mortal sensation of hunger was entirely foreign to them; they subsisted on high-grade Bigu (fasting) pills that suppressed their appetites and kept their waists perfectly slender.
Ji’an knew exactly what it was like to not have privilege.
In her past life, she had scrubbed grease traps until her knuckles bled just to afford tuition.
She knew the value of a callous.
But she also wasn’t a monster.
She didn’t hate these girls for being pampered. It wasn’t their fault their sect had wrapped them in bubble wrap.
Ji’an had no intention of breaking them just for the sake of being cruel.
She just wanted to show them that beneath their delicate, fragile exterior, they possessed the capacity to become earth-shattering powerhouses.
If they wanted to tap into that power, she would guide them. If they wanted to quit and go back to being damsels, she wouldn’t force them to stay.
However, after half a day of uninterrupted, muscle-shredding labor... the results were undeniable.
"Time," Ji’an announced softly, lowering the pocket-watch she had pulled from her spatial ring.
In the center of the Moon-Lotus Botanical Gardens, the rhythmic, heavy, metallic CLANG-CLANG-CLANG of iron whisks beating against cast-iron bowls finally, mercifully ceased.
The three maidens collapsed.
They didn’t faint delicately.
They dropped like strings with their puppet-masters’ cords cut.
Fairy Xue hit the stone courtyard on her knees, her breath coming in ragged, wheezing gasps. Ming’er and Qing’er practically melted onto the floor, their arms trembling so violently they looked like vibrating tuning forks.
Their pale blue water-silks were soaked through with sweat.
Their perfectly pinned hair was plastered to their foreheads in messy, damp strands. Their pristine, unblemished skin was flushed a brilliant, feverish pink from the sheer, unprecedented exertion of forcing their Yin energy into blunt force.
But inside their respective cast-iron bowls?
The forty pounds of highly resistant, unrefined demonic-spider webbing had been completely transformed. It was no longer a dense, unbreakable resin.
It had been whipped into a towering, stiff, aerated, perfectly stable white meringue of pure, compressed Yin energy.
"Look at that," Ji’an murmured, walking over and inspecting the bowls, a genuine, soft, incredibly proud smile touching her lips. She didn’t use her drill-instructor voice. She used the gentle, encouraging tone of a mentor. "Stiff peaks. Flawless aeration. You didn’t break the molecular structure, you commanded it. You did your jobs beautifully, girls."
Fairy Xue tried to look up to offer a polite bow of gratitude, but her neck muscles simply refused to cooperate. She managed a weak, exhausted whimper instead.
Ji’an chuckled, shaking her head.
"Alright. You’ve earned your keep," Ji’an announced, clapping her hands together. "Wash your hands in the lotus pool. Dinner is served."
With a flick of her wrist, Ji’an bypassed her spatial ring and activated a pre-prepared summoning array she had set up earlier.
A long, low, elegantly carved petrified-wood table materialized in the center of the courtyard.
And upon this table was a feast that defied all orthodox logic.
Ji’an hadn’t prepared the heavy, testosterone-fueled Bear Ribs she had fed the boys.
She had crafted a menu specifically designed to replenish and soothe the overworked, exhausted Yin meridians of the maidens.
There were delicate, translucent Crystal-Shrimp Har Gow dumplings, steaming in bamboo baskets, the wrappers so thin you could see the pink, succulent meat inside.
There was a massive, shimmering platter of Crispy-Skin Spirit-Duck, the fat rendered to absolute, glass-like perfection, accompanied by paper-thin lotus-root pancakes and a rich, dark plum sauce.
There were bowls of Jade-Bamboo and Winter-Melon Consommé, a broth so clear and pure it looked like liquid emerald, radiating a gentle, soothing, restorative warmth.
The aroma hit the three exhausted maidens like a physical blow.
For their entire lives, they had relied on Bigu fasting pills to sustain their energy. They had never felt the hollow, cavernous, gnawing ache of true physical hunger.
Their bodies had just burned through thousands of calories of manual labor, and their metabolisms were currently screaming for sustenance.
"Go ahead and eat," Ji’an commanded gently, pulling out three plush velvet cushions for them to sit on. "Eat as much as you want. There are no fasting pills on my Vanguard Tour. If you do the work, you eat the food. That is the only law of my kitchen."
The maidens didn’t need to be told twice.
Orthodox etiquette dictated that a maiden must eat slowly, taking tiny, bird-like bites, keeping her lips mostly closed, and never showing eagerness.
Orthodox etiquette did not survive the Dao of the Iron Whisk.
Fairy Xue practically crawled to the table.
She grabbed a pair of jade chopsticks with hands that still trembled, bypassed the small serving plates entirely, and shoved a whole, steaming Crystal-Shrimp dumpling directly into her mouth.