Chapter 316: Lead the Way
She thought about the sequestered princess who was actively trying to rig an esports death-match to win her hand in marriage.
And she thought about the silver-haired immortal who was currently sitting in a blizzard, patiently calculating how to conquer her mattress.
"I am a chef," Ji’an whispered to the silent room, pulling the heavy silk quilt entirely over her head, tucking herself into her own customized burrito of absolute transmigrator denial. "I just cook food. This is an entirely unreasonable amount of plot for one person."
On the bedside table, her spatial ring chimed softly as the internal arrays aligned.
Outside her window, the moonlight slowly shifted across the peaks.
The grace period was over.
The preparations were complete.
The countdown to the Official Sect Martial Ranking hit absolute zero, and tomorrow morning, the true bloodbath of the Celestial Sword Sect would finally begin.
***
The Official Sect Merit ledger of the Celestial Sword Sect was not merely a record of administrative accounting; it was a towering, three-hundred-foot-tall obelisk of solid, black Spirit-Obsidian situated at the absolute geographic center of the Great Plaza of the Jade Zenith.
For one hundred and eighty days, the obelisk had hummed with a violent, ceaseless, bloodthirsty urgency.
Millions of glowing, golden characters shifted across its polished surface in real time as tens of thousands of Inner and Outer Sect disciples threw their physical bodies into the lethal meat-grinder of the mortal realm, desperately grinding subjugation requests, gathering bounties, and clearing abyssal dungeons to secure their standing before the fiscal cycle concluded.
At precisely 6:00 AM on the morning of the Final Ranking Week, the monolithic spirit-stone let out a single, cataclysmic, deeply resonant CHIME that vibrated the fillings in the teeth of every living entity within a fifty-mile radius.
The gold characters blurred into a blinding, torrential waterfall of light, spinning rapidly before slamming into their absolute, permanent, unalterable configurations.
The six months were officially up.
The final leaderboards had solidified.
And standing at the very base of the obelisk, holding a steaming ceramic mug of double-boiled, hyper-sweetened morning soy milk, Lin Ji’an looked up at the top tier of the monument, took a slow, satisfied sip, and let out the smug, deeply arrogant sigh of a blue-collar line cook who had just accidentally conquered Wall Street.
Rank 1: Xie Wangchen
— 142,000 Merit Points.
Publicly Logged Feats: Solo subjugation of the Twin Frost-Drakes of the Northern Barrens; Complete sealing of the Subterranean Catacombs of Woe.
Rank 2: Gu Zhiwei
— 138,500 Merit Points.
Publicly Logged Feats: Single-handed purging of the Heretic Blood-Coven of the Southern Reaches; Retrieval of the Lost Sun-Cleaving Sword Codex.
Rank 3: Lin Ji’an
— 131,200 Merit Points.
A traumatized silence hung over the massive congregation of ten thousand intermediate disciples gathered in the plaza.
They stared at Rank 3.
They rubbed their eyes.
They looked at the publicly accessible, magically projected administrative ledger detailing the specific quests Lin Ji’an had submitted to accumulate her astronomical score.
- Subjugation of the pinnacle Rank 6 Multi-Eyed Swamp Loach.
Administrative Justification: Required the gelatinous bone marrow to thicken a master-stock reduction.
- Complete ecological depopulation of the Armored Acid-Crabs of the Eastern Coastal Wastes.
Administrative Justification: Requested by the Head Chef for a weekend domestic seafood boil.
- Slaying of the Feral Iron-Bristle Boar King.
Administrative Justification: Premium pork belly procurement.
- Accidental concussive incapacitation of seven rogue heretic brawlers during a dispute over a wild ginger patch.
...
...
"It’s a joke," an intermediate swordsman from the Sword Peak whispered, his knees trembling so violently his scabbard clattered against his shin.
He looked as though he were on the verge of coughing up blood. "I spent the last six months swinging a five-hundred-pound broadsword ten thousand times a day in a blizzard. I slept four hours a night. I ate raw spirit-wheat. And I am ranked only eighty-seventh! The cook... the cook achieved Third Overall by treating Class-A Forbidden Death Zones like a routine grocery run!"
"Look at the margin," another disciple whimpered, clutching his head. "He out-ranked Lu Jianheng! The Sword Lord is fourth! The Iron Wok Demon literally beat the peerless genius of the Sword Peak by twenty thousand merit points just because he wanted to harvest crab meat!"
Ji’an stood near the back of the crowd, entirely ignoring the horrified, existentially shattered murmurs of her peers.
She casually adjusted the heavy cast-iron Black Iron Spatula strapped securely to her calf, her silver-flecked eyes practically turning into glowing gold coins.
’Capitalism remains undefeated,’ Ji’an’s internal goblin celebrated, executing a mental victory lap. ’They grind for abstract concepts like ’the Great Dao’ and ’honorable glory.’ I grind because high-tier monster cores subsidize my dry-goods overhead. I’ve officially secured my unrestricted, lifetime grocery-shopping visa. I am untouchable!’
By securing the Third Overall Rank, Ji’an hadn’t just secured resources; she had officially, automatically been drafted into the elite, ten-person Vanguard Retinue, the ordained squad of supreme prodigies who would represent the host mountain during the opening ceremonies of the tournament.
"Martial Uncle Lin!"
A breathless, deeply terrified Outer Sect logistics runner broke through the crowd, skidding to a halt in front of her, offering a bow so deep his forehead nearly grazed his knees.
"The... the top ten disciples are assembled!" the runner gasped out. "The Tailoring Master of the Woven Destiny Pavilion requires your immediate physical presence! The Vanguard retinue must be fitted for their formal, matching ceremonial armor before the foreign delegations breach the lower gates at dawn!"
Ji’an downed the remainder of her soy milk, vanishing the mug into her spatial ring with a roguish flick of her wrist.
"Lead the way, kid," Ji’an drawled, her voice dripping with insufferable, toxic young-master confidence. "Let’s go see what kind of uncomfortable, heavily starched corporate livery upper management expects me to fight giant crabs in."
The Woven Destiny Pavilion was a vast, circular hall filled with towering spools of glowing, unrefined raw spirit-silk, automated sewing arrays that hummed like cicadas, and dozens of spectral tailors hovering about with floating tape measures.
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