Chapter 349: Canceled Order!
They were desperately trying to secure the final, remaining Sovereign Tokens required to advance to the Grand Arena back in the real world.
Ji’an stood there, watching the chaos.
She saw Gu Zhiwei, the Golden Retriever, swinging his broadsword in a sweeping arc of holy light, inadvertently protecting a group of junior novices from a coordinated strike by the Crimson Blade Sect.
She saw Wen Shiru, leaning on his jade cane at the periphery of the brawl, casually tossing explosive, gold-plated merchant coins into the fray, manipulating the battlefield to eliminate his rivals without breaking a sweat.
Then she saw Hu Yanlie and Mo Wuchen, who had apparently recovered from Xie Wangchen’s "therapeutic beatdown" in the tundra, fighting back-to-back, a whirlwind of beast-fire and shadow daggers carving through a squad of Azure Crane maidens.
’Look at them,’ Ji’an’s internal monologue mused, a slow, dark, utterly unhinged smile spreading across her lips. ’They think they are fighting for survival, fighting for the Sect Leader’s daughter, that this is a standard battle royale.’
She reached down and slowly, deliberately unclasped the heavy leather retention straps holding the Black Iron Spatula to her calf.
The secret she had been harboring since the executive boardroom summit burned in her chest.
When Sect Leader Bai Yunfei had appointed her as the Chief Architect of the Shattered Realm, he hadn’t just approved her shrinking maps and loot drops. They had held a private, secondary conversation after Master Jiu Zui had left the room.
"The disciples revere the sword, Martial Uncle Lin," the Sect Leader had murmured, his dark eyes gleaming with political cunning. "They understand fire, understand ice, but they do not understand the terrifying depth of the Dao itself. It is an unmeasured, unregistered variable. I want to shatter their arrogance, so, I want you to be the Apex Anomaly."
It was a silent, tacit agreement.
Lin Ji’an was not just a mere competitor. She was the hidden proctor.
Her true, ordained objective was not to survive the realm; it was to actively, mercilessly fail as many disciples as possible in the final phase.
"Hey, Shen Zechuan," Ji’an called out softly, keeping her eyes locked on the battlefield.
Shen Zechuan immediately stopped scrubbing his sleeve, turning his wide, innocent, dark eyes toward her. "Yes, Uncle Ji’an? Are we preparing breakfast before we join the altercation?"
Ji’an took a deep, steadying breath, filling her lungs with the crisp mountain air. She gripped her spatula tightly.
"No," Ji’an whispered.
And then, she moved.
She didn’t announce her intentions or offer a warning.
With blinding, explosive speed, Ji’an channeled a dense surge of kinetic mass into her boots, spun on her heel, and drove the flat of her heavy cast-iron spatula directly toward the side of Shen Zechuan’s head in a brutal, knockout blow.
It was a strike that would have decapitated a normal cultivator.
But Zechuan was an abyssal prodigy. His reflexes were governed by the void.
Whoosh!
Zechuan didn’t flinch, didn’t even drop his goofy smile. He simply tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the left. The heavy iron spatula whistled past his ear, missing him by a literal millimeter, the wind pressure ruffling his raven hair.
"Oh!" Zechuan blinked, looking at the spatula hovering near his face, his tone completely mild and devoid of any defensive hostility. "Are we sparring, Uncle Ji’an? Should I put the wok down? I do not wish to dent it."
"You are infuriatingly agile," Ji’an grumbled affectionately, abandoning her attempt to eliminate the airhead. "Hold the wok. And stay out of my way. Mama has to go to work!"
Before Zechuan could ask for clarification, Ji’an bent her knees and violently launched herself off the ground.
The marble tiles at the entrance archway shattered under her launch.
Ji’an rocketed high into the air above the colossal jade colosseum, her blazing Szechuan Red combat silk snapping furiously in the wind. She soared over the heads of the brawling cultivators, perfectly silhouetted against the pale morning sky.
And then, she began to laugh.
It wasn’t a cute, charming chuckle.
It was a loud, booming, maniacal, completely villainous cackle powered by the unhinged joy of a severely caffeinated Chef who had been given legal permission to commit mass assault.
"ATTENTION, VALUED CUSTOMERS!" Ji’an’s magically amplified voice roared down upon the battlefield like the wrath of a vengeful god.
The chaotic brawl instantly screeched to a halt. Ninety-seven exhausted, bloody disciples froze, their swords clashing, their spells fizzling, as they looked up at the sky in a bewildered horror.
"THE KITCHEN IS OFFICIALLY OPEN!" Ji’an bellowed, entering a steep, terminal-velocity dive directly toward the thickest cluster of fighting disciples. "AND YOUR ORDERS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED!"
KRA-BOOM!
Ji’an slammed into the jade floor like a meteor.
The concussive shockwave of her Harmonious Five-Grain Qi rippled outward in a devastating three-hundred-foot radius.
Two dozen disciples from the Crimson Blade Sect and the Celestial Sword Sect were violently thrown off their feet, tumbling backward like bowling pins.
Before the dust could even settle, Ji’an was moving.
She became a blur of blazing red silk and black iron. She didn’t use flashy elemental spells. She utilized the raw, terrifying, unadulterated physical weight of the Culinary Dao.
She swept her spatula low, catching a charging foreign swordsman behind the knees, flipping him upside down. As he fell, she didn’t strike his body. Her hand darted out with surgical, blinding speed, grabbing the heavy leather pouch tied to his belt.
She snatched his Sovereign Token.
With a simple, ruthless flick of her thumb, she snapped the jade token in half.
FLASH!
The swordsman’s escape array instantly triggered. He vanished in a pillar of white light, eliminated from the tournament.
"One down! Ninety-six to go!" Ji’an cackled, spinning away from a fireball thrown by a panicked Outer Sect mage.
She was a ghost in the kitchen. She danced through the chaotic melee, effortlessly slipping past blades and spells, and didn’t waste energy on prolonged duels as she targeted the tokens.
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