Chapter 332: The Terrifying Abbysslord
"You are welcome, Ji’an!" Zechuan beamed, effortlessly picking the four-hundred-pound iron wok back up. "Shall we continue? I am becoming quite hungry. Do you think we could find a beast that tastes like chicken?"
"Yeah," Ji’an murmured, a soft, reluctant, deeply fond smile finally breaking through her tough exterior. "Yeah. I’ll find you a chicken. Let’s go."
The first day of the tournament passed in a blur of erratic fog movements, frantic beast encounters, and the bizarre, burgeoning camaraderie between a cynical, transmigrated chef and a hopelessly overpowered, cute puppy-brained abyssal prodigy.
As they moved through the realm, Ji’an actively dropped her villainous act.
She stopped making unreasonable demands.
When Zechuan offered to carry her gear, she let him, but she made sure to point out the poisonous plants so he wouldn’t try to eat them.
When they stopped to rest in the late afternoon, hidden beneath the overhang of a massive boulder, Ji’an pulled out her portable cooking supplies.
She didn’t make him suffer through dry rations.
She cooked a sizzling, perfectly seasoned slab of the Rank 6 Mud-Serpent they had killed earlier, glazing it with wild honey and chili.
She handed the larger half of the meat to Zechuan.
He took it, took one bite, and his dark eyes widened to the size of saucers.
He chewed rapidly, swallowing it down, and looked at her as if she had just handed him the secrets of the universe.
"This is the greatest thing I have ever consumed in my entire existence!" Zechuan declared solemnly, a smudge of honey on his cheek. "In the abyss, I only ate glowing rocks and occasionally, a very angry bat. You are a deity of sustenance, Uncle Ji’aaaan!"
Ji’an snorted, handing him a napkin. "Wipe your face, you disaster. And stop calling me a deity. I’m just a cook who knows how to use salt properly."
She watched him eat, her guilt softening into affection.
He was so simple. So uncomplicated.
He didn’t have Wangchen’s suffocating, dark possessiveness.
He didn’t have Shiru’s manipulative edge.
He was just... a very lethal, very sweet, incredibly oblivious airhead.
’But why did Wangchen say he was so terrifying?’ Ji’an wondered, sipping her water skin. ’Why did the Sect Leader introduce him like he was this brooding, tragic prince of darkness? He acts like a toddler. How did he fool the entire sect?’
The answer to her question arrived exactly two hours later.
As the sky above the Illusory Shattered Realm darkened into a deep twilight, a booming sound echoed across the map.
A colossal pillar of brilliant, blinding golden light struck the earth about a mile from their position, illuminating the sky.
"The Heavenly Supply Drop," Ji’an announced, leaping to her feet. "The loot crate I designed! It’s dropping in the Sunken Ruins biome. There are going to be dozens of Sovereign Tokens in there, plus high-tier healing pills. We need to move, Zechuan. Every try-hard on this side of the map is going to rush that beacon."
"I will carry the wok!" Zechuan cheered, happily hoisting the cast-iron pan and jogging after her.
They reached the perimeter of the Sunken Ruins, a vast maze of crumbling, ancient stone temples half-submerged in shallow, glowing water, just as the golden pillar began to fade.
Sitting in the center of a ruined courtyard was a heavily ornate golden chest.
But they were not the first to arrive.
Standing around the chest, their weapons drawn, was a full squad of elite disciples from the Crimson Blade Sect, the foreign, hyper-aggressive sword-brawlers who had identified Ji’an as a subterranean assassin during the opening ceremony.
The leader of the squad, a heavily scarred brute wielding two jagged axes, spotted them immediately.
"Halt!" the brute barked, turning to face them, his squad fanning out into a defensive arc.
His eyes swept over Ji’an, recognizing her Szechuan Red robes, before landing on Shen Zechuan holding the wok.
A cruel, mocking sneer spread across the brute’s face.
"Well, well. If it isn’t the infamous Iron Wok Demon, and the Sect Leader’s precious little pet," the brute laughed loudly, his men joining in. "We heard the rumors! The great Senior Apprentice, returning from the abyss, only to act as a pack mule for a glorified chef! How pathetic. Did the dark break your mind so thoroughly that you enjoy playing the servant, pretty boy?"
Ji’an’s blood boiled.
She stepped forward, her hand dropping to her spatula, fully prepared to verbally roast the arrogant punk until he cried.
"Listen here, you unwashed, over-muscled troglodyte—" Ji’an began furiously.
But before she could finish the sentence, the ambient temperature of the ruins dropped.
The air itself died.
The light in the courtyard seemed to dim, sucked into an unseen, suffocating vacuum.
The cheerful, bouncing, puppy energy radiating from Shen Zechuan completely vanished.
Ji’an paused, looking back at him.
Shen Zechuan was no longer smiling.
The goofy, innocent light in his dark eyes was gone, replaced by a pair of bottomless, infinite, terrifying voids.
His posture straightened, shifting from a relaxed slouch into a stance of untouchable, aristocratic supremacy.
The white silk of his robes stopped fluttering in the wind, hanging unnaturally still as the Void-Devouring Mantra flared to life around him.
He didn’t look like an airhead anymore.
He looked like the god of death.
"You speak of the abyss," Zechuan murmured.
His voice was no longer the soft, slightly hollow baritone.
It was a freezing, resonant, echoing whisper that seemed to come from everywhere at once, sliding into the ears of the Crimson Blade disciples like ice water.
Zechuan slowly lifted his hand.
He didn’t set the wok down.
He just raised two fingers.
The terrifying, imposing leader of the Crimson Blade Sect didn’t even have time to swing his axes.
The immense, crushing gravity of the Void-Devouring Mantra slammed down upon the entire squad.
The stone courtyard literally cracked beneath their boots.
The brute choked, his eyes bugging out of his head as the air was violently sucked from his lungs.
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