Tu’s head snapped up, sensing the sudden, catastrophic shift in the atmosphere. "Wait, what are—"

WHA-BOOM!

Ji’an brought the flat of the heavy cast-iron spatula down directly onto the absolute center of Blood-Hand Tu’s forehead.

It did not sound like a metallic clang. It sounded like a massive, iron church bell being struck by a meteor.

The sheer, absurd kinetic force of the blow bypassed his passive Qi defenses entirely.

The impact was so severe that the obsidian pillars of the bed actually cracked, and the stone floor beneath the dais shuddered.

Blood hand Tu didn’t even have time to scream.

The Golden Core master’s brain violently ricocheted inside his skull.

His body went entirely, rigidly stiff for a split second, before instantly going limp, his head lolling to the side, completely and utterly unconscious.

Ji’an sat straddling the unconscious bandit lord, panting heavily.

She looked at his slumped head.

"That was for the kidnapping," Ji’an muttered.

She raised the spatula again.

WHA-BOOM!

"That was for ruining my outfit."

She raised the spatula a third time.

WHA-BOOM!

"And that," Ji’an panted, wiping sweat from her brow, "is for making me act like a submissive little concubine. You disgusting, perverted piece of garbage. I hope you enjoy eating through a straw in prison."

Satisfied that the Golden Core threat was thoroughly neutralized, Ji’an climbed off the unconscious bandit’s lap.

She hastily pulled her torn white tunic back over her shoulder, feeling deeply, profoundly in need of a shower.

She turned around to face the bedpost where her little brother was chained.

"Alright, Xuan," Ji’an sighed, casually twirling the heavy iron spatula in her hand like a baton. "The perimeter is secure. I’ll break those chains right now, and we can go find the psycho prince and get out of this—"

Ji’an stopped dead in her tracks.

Lin Xuan, the thirteen-year-old aristocratic heir, was pressed as far back against the obsidian pillar as his chains would allow.

His silver-flecked eyes were wide, completely traumatized, staring at his older sibling as if he were looking at an entirely new, terrifying species of alien.

But it wasn’t the fear that made Ji’an freeze.

It was the blood.

Two thick, bright red streams of blood were steadily flowing from both of Lin Xuan’s nostrils, dripping down his chin and staining his torn silk collar.

The sheer, overwhelming, unapologetic shamelessness of what he had just witnessed, his supposed "Third Brother" seductively stripping, swaying his hips, straddling a grown man, and whispering incredibly explicit promises of "bed tricks", had been too much for the naive, sheltered boy’s system to handle.

The severe psychological overstimulation had triggered a massive, textbook anime nosebleed.

Xuan stared at Ji’an, his face burning a brilliant, feverish crimson, entirely unable to process the dichotomy of the sultry seductress and the spatula-wielding berserker.

"Third Brother," Xuan whispered, his voice trembling, blood dripping from his chin. "What... what did you do to him on that lap? What are... bed tricks?"

Lin Ji’an, the terrifying Martial Uncle, the chef who had just single-handedly incapacitated a Golden Core demon, stood in the center of the opulent bedroom.

She looked at her bleeding, traumatised little brother.

She slowly raised a hand, covering her own face in absolute, profound despair.

"Xuan," Ji’an groaned, her voice muffled behind her palm. "If you ever speak of this to anyone, if you ever mention the word ’tricks’ in my presence again, I will personally lock you in a flour barrel and roll you off a cliff." 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

***

At the same time, Eternal Ice Peak.

The heavy, monolithic stone door of the deepest meditation cavern on the Eternal Cloud Peak had been sealed for nearly three weeks.

Behind three feet of solid, rune-inscribed granite, absolute, terrifying isolation reigned.

The air inside the cavern was entirely devoid of light, sound, or natural warmth, and the ambient temperature hovered at a staggering, unnatural absolute zero, sustained by the ten-thousand-year-old slab of Glacial Marrow that served as the room’s sole furnishing.

It was an environment designed to strip away the mortal senses, to force a cultivator’s consciousness to turn entirely inward, abandoning the distractions of the flesh to commune with the profound, unyielding emptiness of the Great Dao.

For a practitioner of the Heartless Dao, it should have been a sanctuary, a place to purify the soul and sever the lingering threads of earthly attachment.

But for Xie Wangchen, the supreme Flawless Ice Root of the Celestial Sword Sect, the cavern was a suffocating, agonizing purgatory.

He sat in the lotus position atop the Glacial Marrow, his pristine white inner robes perfectly arranged. His face was a mask of carved, pale jade, completely immobile in the suffocating darkness.

Frost had gathered on his long, dark eyelashes, and a thin layer of rime coated his cheekbones.

To any outside observer, he would appear to have successfully entered a state of profound, immortal suspended animation.

Internally, however, a catastrophic war was raging.

The Flawless Ice Qi circulating through his meridians was meant to freeze his emotions, to deaden his heart until it beat with the slow, clinical rhythm of a glacier.

But deep within the core of his spiritual sea, a fire was burning.

It was a dark, obsessive, terrifyingly resilient inferno that simply refused to be extinguished, that was fueled by a single, inescapable memory.

A smile, the scent of spices, sweat, and the phantom warmth of a hand resting on his shoulder.

Lin Ji’an.

The name echoed through the hollow, freezing caverns of his mind, a relentless, agonizing drumbeat that shattered his concentration.

He had locked himself in this tomb to escape the madness of his own jealousy.

He had believed that the absolute sensory deprivation of the ice would numb the agonizing, desperate hunger that clawed at his throat every time he looked at his ’sworn brother.’

He had believed he could forge chains strong enough to hold his own monster at bay.

He had been arrogant and a fool.

Because the ice didn’t do anything to numb the growing hunger.