Chapter 339: Extra Egg
"We need to find the center of the map before the real monsters show up."
Zechuan grumbled, his ears still burning red, obediently hoisting the massive iron pan onto his shoulder and trudging after her.
As they walked deeper into the labyrinth, leaving the shattered spider behind, Lin Ji’an felt a renewed sense of purpose.
The dream of Earth was gone.
She missed the bakery.
She missed the simple life.
But as she looked at the clueless, overpowered, snot-bubbling abyssal prince walking behind her, and thought of the fiercely devoted, silver-haired immortal currently tearing the realm apart to find her... she realized that perhaps the chaotic, lethal, ridiculous reality she had transmigrated into wasn’t so bad after all.
"Hey, Shen Zechuan," Ji’an called over her shoulder, a fond smile touching her lips. "When we clear this section... I’ll make you some fried rice."
"With extra egg?!" Zechuan gasped, his brooding mask entirely forgotten, his eyes lighting up like a kid on Christmas.
"Yeah," Ji’an chuckled. "With extra egg."
***
Shen Zechuan was having the time of his life, eating all this delicious food and having fun with the person he loved so much, the person for whom he gave up many things, back then...
The Middle Zone of the Illusory Shattered Realm, colloquially designated by Lin Ji’an as the "Pearlescent Purgatory", was a labyrinth designed to test the absolute limits of a cultivator’s psychological endurance.
The walls were constructed of shifting, semi-translucent spirit glass that reflected delayed, distorted echoes of the physical world.
The mist that clung to the polished obsidian floor was thick and heavy, carrying the faint, hallucinatory whispers of long-lost loved ones, buried regrets, and deeply suppressed desires.
For the average orthodox disciple, navigating this biome was an exercise in mental fortitude.
It required constant, grueling meditation, the continuous chanting of heart-clearing sutras, and an iron grip on one’s own sanity.
For Shen Zechuan, however, the Illusory Labyrinth was essentially a leisurely, mildly entertaining stroll through a rather drafty indoor garden.
The Sect Leader’s Senior Apprentice was currently having the absolute, undisputed time of his life.
Zechuan walked with a relaxed, ambling gait, ignoring the mist.
In his left hand, he effortlessly balanced Lin Ji’an’s massive, four-hundred-pound cast-iron wok, carrying it with the casual ease of a man holding a bamboo parasol, while in his right hand, he held a freshly roasted, perfectly glazed skewer of Rank 6 Mud-Serpent meat, taking happy, contented bites that smeared sweet chili sauce across his otherwise pristine, tragic-prince features.
He chewed happily, his dark, bottomless eyes tracking the small, fiercely energetic figure in blazing Szechuan Red darting through the mist a few dozen paces ahead of him.
Ji’an was currently engaged in a killing frenzy.
A pack of Mirror-Scaled Leopards, illusory beasts designed to perfectly mimic the combat styles of their prey, had ambushed them from the reflective walls.
But the beasts’ algorithms had critically failed to account for a combat style based entirely on high-stress commercial kitchen management.
"Order up, you translucent trash cats!" Ji’an roared, her voice echoing through the glass corridors.
She vaulted off a pristine glass wall, twisting mid-air, and brought her heavy Black Iron Spatula down in a devastating, sweeping arc.
The kinetic mass of her Dao of the Iron Wok collided with the lead leopard’s skull, and the illusory beast didn’t even have an opportunity to shatter into pixels; it was instantly tenderized into a glowing, formless puddle of ambient Qi, leaving behind a perfectly crystallized, high-tier monster core.
Zechuan watched her land gracefully, her red combat boots clicking against the obsidian, her dark ponytail whipping behind her.
As he took another bite of the spicy, mouth-watering serpent meat, a heavy, ancient wave of melancholy and overwhelming adoration washed over the abyssal prodigy’s soul.
He stopped walking, allowing the mist to swirl around his boots.
The goofy, airheaded smile faded from his lips, replaced by a look of such intense devotion that it seemed to briefly illuminate the dark, bottomless voids of his eyes.
Shen Zechuan was an anomaly.
He was a paradox wrapped in a void.
He wore the flawless, unblemished face of Lin Feng, but he lacked the Vanguard Commander’s booming resonance.
Yet, beneath the hollow shell, the foundational core of his existence, the singular, unbreakable motivation that had allowed him to survive countless agonizing years in the demonic rifts, was rooted in the girl currently beating an illusory leopard to death with cooking utensils.
’She is so fierce,’ Zechuan’s internal voice murmured, devoid of the tragic, brooding cadence the sect expected of him. ’She is so bright. So loud. So undeniably, wonderfully alive.’
He remembered the abyss, remembered the crushing, suffocating darkness, the endless hunger, and the maddening voices of the void that had tried to tear his sanity to shreds.
He had willingly stepped into that hell and surrendered his normal life, fracturing his own existence, all to obtain the power to shatter the boundaries of the cosmos.
He had done it so he would never have to lose his loved ones again, to reach across the void and earn the greatest power existing.
Ji’an was disguised as an arrogant, foul-mouthed boy.
She hid behind a gray apron and a wall of sarcastic humor, but Zechuan didn’t see the disguise, because he knew that he would recognize her even if she turned to ashes... just as she did before.
When he looked at her, his eyes pierced the veil, seeing the chaotic, blazing, fierce soul of the person he had sacrificed everything to protect.
Without breaking his adoring stare, Zechuan casually raised his left index finger.
A massive, stealth-oriented Crystal-Winged Mantis had dropped from the ceiling, attempting to ambush him while he was distracted.
Zechuan didn’t even look up or even blink.
The Void-Devouring Mantra passively flared, creating a singularity directly above his head, and the massive mantis fell into the invisible vacuum and was instantly compressed into a marble-sized sphere of pure spiritual energy, dropping neatly into his waiting palm with a soft plink.
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