Chapter 331: Hunting Us?
"Who is hunting us?" Zechuan asked, dusting off his knees.
"Everyone!" Ji’an groaned. "The foreign sects. The array beasts. Everything! We have to remain vigilant!"
But the universe, determined to test her patience, immediately proved her point.
The heavy fog ahead of them suddenly swirled, parting to reveal a clearing filled with dark, oppressive, crimson-tinged miasma.
The air grew thick, smelling of sulfur and burnt blood.
Stepping out of the shadows, surrounded by a retinue of terrified, subjugated rogue cultivators, was Young Demon Lord Yan Lie.
"Well, well," Yan Lie purred, his voice a dark, grating rasp that echoed in the clearing. He wore a dark, spiked robe that exposed his chest, his crimson aura flaring aggressively. "If it isn’t the little orthodox cook. The one who thinks he can run a kitchen in the middle of a warzone. I smelled your spices from a mile away."
Ji’an let out a long, exhausted breath.
’Great, just great. Now even the Demon Lord is here. Just what I needed. More toxic male-lead posturing,’ Ji’an thought, gripping her spatula.
Yan Lie took a step forward, entirely ignoring Shen Zechuan, treating the Senior Apprentice as if he were merely a background servant carrying luggage.
"I have been looking for you, little cook," Yan Lie sneered, a dark, possessive hunger in his eyes. "You have caused quite a stir among the factions. Some say you are an assassin. Some say you are a prodigy. But to me... you just smell like prey. You reek of the orthodox sects, but there is something underneath... something... sweet and tasty."
He drew a crimson-bladed scimitar, pointing it directly at Ji’an’s chest.
"Surrender your Sovereign Tokens, cook," Yan Lie commanded, his demonic aura expanding to suffocate the clearing. "And perhaps I will let you live long enough to cook me a meal before I break your legs."
Ji’an didn’t even have time to open her mouth to deliver a sarcastic retort.
She didn’t have to.
Shen Zechuan, who had been quietly standing behind her, wiping the last bit of blue mud off his nose, suddenly paused.
He looked at Yan Lie.
He looked at the scimitar pointed at Ji’an.
The goofy, airheaded, clumsy smile entirely vanished from Zechuan’s face.
He didn’t look angry or demonic.
He just looked annoyed, like a man trying to enjoy a quiet walk in the park who had just been interrupted by a loud, obnoxious mosquito.
"He is too loud," Zechuan murmured, his hollow voice carrying a strange, resonant echo.
He took one step out from behind Ji’an.
Yan Lie scoffed, finally noticing the Senior Apprentice. "And who are you supposed to be? The luggage boy? Step aside, pretty face, before I cleave you in half with the cook."
Zechuan didn’t draw a weapon or assume a martial stance.
He casually raised his right hand, keeping his wrist loose, and executed a motion that looked like someone swatting a fly away from their ear.
It was a simple, effortless backhand.
WHAM!!!
There was no explosion of Qi.
There was no clash of elements.
The Void-Devouring Mantra manifested as a wall of kinetic repulsion.
The invisible force slammed into Young Demon Lord Yan Lie with the momentum of a speeding freight train.
Yan Lie didn’t even have time to gasp.
His eyes bugged out of his head.
His spiked armor groaned under the pressure.
He was and spectacularly yeeted.
The Demon Lord flew backward, his feet entirely leaving the ground, blasting through the petrified trees like a human cannonball.
He crashed through the canopy, skipping across the top of the fog, and vanished over the horizon, a distant, fading scream echoing into the stratosphere.
The rogue cultivators who had been following Yan Lie stood frozen in horror, staring at the space where their terrifying boss had just been standing.
Zechuan slowly lowered his hand.
He turned to Ji’an, blinking his dark, innocent eyes.
"He lacked volume control," Zechuan explained softly, his tone completely reasonable. "And his sword was very pointy. You said you had a headache earlier. I did not want him to exacerbate your condition."
Ji’an stood frozen, her spatula dangling limply from her hand.
She stared at the horizon where one of the major protagonists of the novel had just been casually golf-swung into the next biome.
"You... you just yeeted a...," Ji’an whispered, her brain unable to process the casual violence. "You just swatted him away like a bug!"
"Was I not supposed to?" Zechuan asked, his brow furrowing in genuine distress, looking down at his hand as if he had done something wrong. "I can go retrieve him if you wished to hit him with your pan. I apologize, Ji’an. I acted hastily."
Ji’an looked at him.
She looked at his genuine, distressed, puppy-dog expression.
The last remaining shreds of her suspicion and hostility melted away, replaced by an exhausting wave of guilt.
’So... he isn’t a mastermind?’ Ji’an realized, rubbing her eyes in frustration. ’He isn’t plotting to overthrow the sect or fighting the male protagonists. He’s just... a guy who spent five years alone in a dark hole, accidentally absorbed a god-tier power, and has no idea how human interaction works. And I’ve been treating him like garbage just because he looks like Lin Feng.’
The frustration that had been burning inside her, the anger at the plot, the fear of the unknown, the desperate need for answers, suddenly felt incredibly unfair to direct at him.
He didn’t ask to have Lin Feng’s face.
He didn’t ask to be dropped into a death-match with a paranoid, stressed-out chef.
"No," Ji’an sighed, her shoulders dropping. She finally put her spatula away. "No, you don’t need to retrieve him. Swatting that annoying guy was... just fine. It was actually extremely helpful. Move on, Shen Zechuan."
Zechuan’s face instantly lit up.
The distress vanished, replaced by a brilliant, blindingly happy smile that made him look so endearingly cute that Ji’an actually felt a twinge in her chest.
’If they say I’ crazy for fawning over a potential villain-boss, I don’t care!’
Comments