Dozens of bandits were simultaneously dismembered. Halberds were sheared in half. Spells were severed mid-cast as the cultivators channeling them were abruptly silenced.

Blood sprayed across the cobblestones, painting the cavern floor in a horrific, abstract mosaic.

"No survivors," Yichen ordered his shadow guards, his voice carrying over the screams.

He walked into the fray, his torn peach dress fluttering around his boots. He moved with the grace of a dancer, flicking his fingers, sending invisible waves of decapitating force through the remaining bandit ranks.

He was a maestro conducting a symphony of slaughter, fueled entirely by the petty, burning humiliation of having worn travel pillows as breasts.

He didn’t spare anyone.

The rogue cultivators who tried to flee were caught in the web and dragged back.

And those who begged for mercy were silenced before the words could leave their lips.

Up on the balcony overlooking the main hall, Lin Ji’an stood with her hand firmly covering Lin Xuan’s eyes, preventing the thirteen-year-old from witnessing the absolute bloodbath below.

Ji’an watched Xiao Yichen dismantle a hundred men with the ease of a chef chopping scallions.

’He is a monster,’ Ji’an thought, a profound shiver running down her spine. ’I put a monster in a dress, and now that monster is taking it out on the world.’

She realized, with a terrifying clarity, exactly how close she had come to death when she kicked the carriage door.

If Yichen hadn’t developed his bizarre, twisted infatuation with her, she would currently be in pieces on the floor right next to the bandits.

"Come on, Xuan," Ji’an whispered, turning away from the massacre, physically dragging her brother toward the winding stone path leading down to the holding cells. "Let’s go do some good before the sociopath kills everything with a pulse."

The dungeons of the Blood-Iron Syndicate were a miserable, damp reflection of human cruelty.

Rows of heavy iron cages lined the subterranean walls, packed with terrified mortals, merchants, and low-level cultivators who had been snatched from the highways.

They huddled together in the dark, shivering in the damp chill, listening to the muffled sounds of the massacre occurring above them.

When the heavy iron door of the dungeon violently burst open, the captives shrieked, pressing themselves against the back walls of their cages.

Lin Ji’an marched into the dungeon, entirely unbothered by the gloom.

Her white tunic was torn and splattered with mud, and she was carrying a heavy cast-iron spatula.

At this moment, she looked less like a savior and more like a disgruntled baker.

"Stand back from the bars!" Ji’an barked, her voice echoing in the damp stone room.

She marched up to the first cage. A heavy, intricate magical padlock secured the door.

Ji’an didn’t look for a key as she raised her spatula, channeled a surge of her hyper-dense Qi, and brought the flat edge down onto the lock.

CRUNCH!!!

The magical padlock shattered into a dozen pieces of useless scrap metal. Ji’an kicked the cage door open.

"The Syndicate is broken! The illusion array is down!" Ji’an announced to the stunned, weeping captives. "All of you! Get out! Follow the tunnel upward, take whatever supplies you can carry from the main hall, and run for the surface!"

She moved down the line, methodically shattering every single padlock with terrifying precision.

Lin Xuan, despite his trauma and his bloody nose, stepped up, the thirteen-year-old aristocratic heir didn’t cower behind his older sibling.

He ran to the open cages, offering his hands to the elderly and the weak, helping them to their feet and guiding them toward the exit.

"Hurry! My brother and the Imperial Guards have cleared the path!" Xuan urged, a hint of his father’s commanding military presence shining through his dirt-smudged face. "Stay together! Do not look back!"

Ji’an paused mid-swing, glancing over her shoulder at the boy.

A genuine, proud smile touched her lips. ’He’s going to be a good general one day. If father were here today, he would be so proud.’

Within twenty minutes, the dungeon was empty. Over a hundred captives had been freed, streaming up the stairs toward the surface and freedom.

But Lin Ji’an’s work was not done.

She was a hero, yes.

She was a protective older sibling, but above all else, she was a pragmatist, a Head Chef, and a die-hard capitalist who had just blown five million spirit stones of her Master’s money.

"Xuan, wait by the stairs," Ji’an ordered, wiping sweat from her brow.

She marched past the empty cages, heading deeper into the subterranean vault where the Syndicate stored their stolen goods.

She kicked the door off its hinges, stepping into a massive storeroom piled high with looted merchant caravans, crates of low-grade spirit stones, and heavily warded chests.

Ji’an bypassed the gold, jewelry, and standard weaponry.

Her eyes locked onto the back corner of the room, where a series of climate-controlled, enchanted jade boxes rested on a stone shelf.

Ji’an pried the first box open.

A wave of intense, earthy, incredibly spicy aroma flooded her senses. Inside the box, nestled on velvet, were bundles of extremely rare, perfectly preserved Ghost-Fire Cumin and Abyssal Star-Anise.

Ingredients so potent they could literally burn a weak cultivator’s tongue off, but in the hands of a master chef, they were the key to a transcendent, meridian-clearing braise.

"Jackpot," Ji’an whispered, her eyes shining with pure, unadulterated joy.

She opened her spatial ring; she didn’t just take the spices but made sure to take the entire jade box.

She took the crates of high-grade spirit-rice, barrels of fermented spirit-soy, then moved through the vault like a locust swarm, emptying the shelves of every single culinary asset the bandits had hoarded over the last decade.

By the time she emerged from the vault, her spatial ring was practically groaning under the weight of her loot.

The Blood-Iron Syndicate’s treasury was completely, utterly barren.

When Ji’an and Xuan finally ascended the stairs back to the main cavern, the battle was over.