To the outside world, it looked like the newly minted Martial Uncle was deeply, profoundly dedicated to her culinary cultivation.

She was a whirlwind of activity. She chopped vegetables with the speed of a Gatling gun.

She perfected the Dao of the Iron Wok, practising her swings until her muscles ached and the sheer kinetic force of her cleaver could shatter a granite boulder without her breaking a sweat.

She fed Jiu Zui until the Drunken Sovereign was practically crying tears of joy every evening.

But internally, Lin Ji’an was a mess.

She was hiding.

She was hiding from the embarrassment of the bathing chamber. She was hiding from the terrifying, unprecedented political weight of her new title.

But mostly, she was hiding from Xie Wangchen.

’I am just giving him space,’ Ji’an aggressively rationalised, furiously whisking a bowl of spirit-eggs until they frothed. ’Yes. I am a considerate, emotionally intelligent sworn brother. He just had a massive fight with his master. His master nearly died. He needs time to process his familial trauma without me hovering around, reminding him of that incredibly awkward, traumatising bath scene.’

She nodded to herself, feeling incredibly validated by her own flawless logic.

’Besides, I ran away like a complete coward. If I go back now, what do I even say? "Hey, sorry I bolted after you draped your romantically heavy cloak over my wet, shivering body?" No. Absolutely not. Let the awkwardness die a natural death.’

Yet, despite her iron-clad rationalisations, a tiny, annoying voice in the back of her head kept whispering:

Why hasn’t he come to visit you?

It was a stupid question. He was busy. But the Ice Demon had always found an excuse to seek her out before.

Whether it was standing menacingly in her kitchen doorway or mysteriously appearing on the roof, Wangchen was a constant, brooding presence in her life.

The fact that an entire week had passed without a single, terrifyingly intense glare from those dark eyes made Ji’an’s chest feel strangely, inexplicably hollow.

Her isolation, however, was not absolute.

While the villain stayed away, the golden retriever had no such reservations.

On the fifth day of her self-imposed exile, Gu Zhiwei came bounding up the overgrown stone path of the Drunken Peak.

Gu Zhiwei looked like a walking sunbeam, carrying a massive sack over his shoulder.

"Brother Liiiiin!" Zhiwei cheered, bursting into the kitchen without knocking. "I brought you a present! The logistics pavilion received a shipment of Northern Frost-Wheat flour! I know you said you wanted to try making those steamed buns again, so I used my merit points to buy the whole sack!"

Ji’an paused her aggressive dough-kneading, looking up at the beaming, ridiculously handsome protagonist.

"Zhiwei," Ji’an sighed, though a fond smile tugged at her lips despite her foul mood. "You didn’t have to spend your merit points on me. You’re supposed to use those for cultivation manuals."

"Your food is my cultivation, Brother Lin!" Zhiwei declared proudly, dumping the heavy sack onto the counter. He leaned against the prep table, watching her knead the dough with wide, fascinated eyes. "Besides, I wanted an excuse to see you. You haven’t come down from the mountain all week! Everyone in the Inner Sect is talking about you. They say the Drunken Sovereign is putting you through hellish training."

"Something like that," Ji’an muttered, punching the dough slightly harder than necessary. "What else are they saying?"

Zhiwei’s bright smile faltered slightly. He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"They’re mostly talking about Brother Xie," Zhiwei confided, a genuine shudder running through his broad shoulders. "Brother Lin... Wangchen has been terrifying lately."

Ji’an’s hands stopped moving. Her heart gave a sudden, painful lurch. "Terrifying? How? Is he okay? Did Elder Qin punish him?"

"No, Elder Qin has been bedridden. He’s refusing to see anyone, not even the healers," Zhiwei explained, shaking his head. "But Brother Xie... he’s been practicing his sword forms in the main plaza from dawn until dusk. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t sleep. The other day, a senior brother from Class 2 accidentally bumped into him, and Brother Xie froze the entire northern waterfall just by looking at it."

Zhiwei hugged his own arms, rubbing his biceps as if fighting off a phantom chill.

"His aura is so dark, Brother Lin. It feels like he’s a volcano of ice just waiting to erupt. I tried to go talk to him, to see if he wanted to spar, but he completely ignored me. It’s like... he’s punishing himself. Or waiting for something."

A heavy, suffocating wave of guilt crashed over Ji’an.

She looked down at the dough. Her flawless rationalizations crumbled into dust.

Wangchen wasn’t cooling off, or he wasn’t processing familial trauma.

Wangchen was angry. He was furious.

And Ji’an, with her terrifyingly accurate intuition regarding the Ice Demon’s emotional state, knew exactly why.

’He draped his cloak over me,’ Ji’an realised, the guilt twisting her stomach into knots. ’He offered me comfort. He offered to walk me to the gates, and I literally sprinted away from him like he was a monster. I rejected him when he was being vulnerable.’

She remembered the look in his eyes before she ran. It wasn’t the look of a cold villain. It was the look of a boy who was desperately, silently begging her to stay.

"Brother Lin? Are you okay?" Zhiwei asked, waving a hand in front of her face. "You look pale. Do you need me to use my Sun Qi again?"

"No! No Sun Qi!" Ji’an yelped, slapping his hand away, the memory of Wangchen’s apocalyptic jealousy over that exact action flashing in her mind. "I’m fine. I’m just... I just realised I left the stove on in my brain."

She turned back to the dough, attacking it with renewed, frantic energy.

’I have to fix this,’ Ji’an panicked. ’I have to go apologize. I have to go coax him out of his frozen depressive episode before he actually snaps and murders a passing disciple.’