Ji’an didn’t aim for his body. She aimed directly for the ultimate symbol of his martial pride.

She swung the cast-iron soup ladle in a devastating, horizontal arc, aiming straight for the heavy black shaft of the Azure Dragon’s Fang.

Ji’an yelled, channeling every single ounce of her stored, vibrating Dao of the Iron Wok power into her right arm.

The air around the ladle warped, screaming as the compressed mass tore through the atmosphere.

General Lin’s combat instincts, honed over decades of warfare, screamed at him to block.

He brought the heavy shaft of his halberd up, bracing it with both hands, locking his stance to absorb the impact of the kitchen utensil.

KRA-KOOM!

The collision did not sound like metal striking metal. It sounded like a meteor impacting a mountainside.

A massive, visible shockwave of pure kinetic force erupted from the point of contact, blasting outward in a perfect circle, cracking the reinforced granite walls of the arena and extinguishing half the glowing spirit-stones.

General Lin felt an astronomical, completely unreasonable amount of physical force crash into his halberd.

The shock travelled down the black spirit-iron shaft, violently jarring his wrists and sending a shockwave straight up his arms to his shoulders.

The War God of the Azure Empire gritted his teeth, his boots sliding backward through the hard-packed earth, carving two deep, parallel trenches in the dirt.

He had been pushed back.

By a sixteen-year-old with a spoon.

"Incredible," General Lin grunted, his eyes shining with absolute warrior’s delight. He twisted his wrists, using the halberd’s length for leverage to parry the ladle upward, breaking the deadlock. "But raw power is not enough! A chef must know how to defend!"

General Lin went on the offensive.

He didn’t use lethal strikes, but he unleashed the legendary Storm-Cleaving Halberd Arts.

The heavy crescent blade became a blur of blue light, raining down on Ji’an in a torrential downpour of heavy, sweeping strikes and lightning-fast thrusts.

Ji’an was entirely out of her depth in terms of martial technique. She didn’t know forms. She didn’t know footwork.

But she knew the kitchen.

’He is attacking like a chaotic grease fire,’ Ji’an analyzed, her eyes darting, tracking the massive blade. ’Do not fight the fire. Smother it. Deflect the splatter.’

Ji’an moved with the erratic, highly efficient grace of a line cook navigating a dinner rush. She didn’t try to block the heavy halberd head-on again.

She used the rounded bowl of the soup ladle to catch the flat of the crescent blade, utilizing her hyper-dense mass to forcefully redirect his strikes into the dirt.

Clang! Swish! BOOM!

"Searing Wok Deflection!" Ji’an yelled, parrying a thrust aimed at her shoulder and spinning out of the way.

"Julienne Step!" she called out, executing a rapid, stuttering retreat to avoid a sweeping leg sweep that pulverized the earth where she had just been standing.

General Lin laughed, a booming, joyous sound that echoed in the cavernous arena. He was having the time of his life.

He hadn’t faced an opponent who could physically match his raw strength without relying on magical arrays in a decade.

But the sheer thrill of the fight was blinding them both.

Ji’an, high on the adrenaline of her successful parries, grew arrogant. She saw an opening in her father’s guard as he over-committed to a heavy overhead cleave.

’I have him,’ Ji’an thought, planting her back foot.

She bypassed the deflection entirely. She gripped the handle of the ladle with both hands, pulling it back over her shoulder like a baseball bat.

She intended to deliver a full-power, unabashed strike directly to the side of the halberd’s blade, hoping to actually snap the Heaven-Tier weapon in half to prove her ultimate culinary dominance.

She launched the strike.

But she severely, catastrophically underestimated the combat experience of a man who had survived a hundred wars.

General Lin’s overhead cleave was a feint.

The moment Ji’an committed to her massive, unguarded swing, General Lin smoothly, impossibly halted the downward momentum of his halberd.

He twisted the shaft, using the sudden weight shift to bypass her sweeping ladle entirely.

The blunt, heavy iron butt of the halberd shaft snapped up, aiming directly for the center of Ji’an’s exposed chest.

It was a reflex strike. A counter-attack drilled into the General’s muscle memory over decades.

It was designed to shatter the sternum and instantly incapacitate an enemy combatant.

Time seemed to slow down.

Ji’an’s eyes widened. She had over-committed. Her momentum was entirely locked into the swing of her ladle.

She couldn’t dodge or block; the heavy iron shaft was inches from her chest.

General Lin’s eyes widened in matching horror.

The warrior’s instinct had overridden the father’s restraint.

He realized, with a sickening jolt of panic, that the strike he had just unleashed carried enough force to turn a normal cultivator into mist.

Even with her compressed mass, a direct hit to her center mass would shatter her ribs and pulverize her lungs.

"JI’AN!" General Lin roared, his voice tearing with panic.

He didn’t try to stop the weapon. The momentum was too great.

Instead, General Lin Tianzong committed an act of martial suicide.

He forcefully, violently reversed the flow of his own Golden Core Qi, ripping the energy backward through his meridians to forcefully anchor his own arms.

It was the equivalent of throwing a moving carriage into reverse without using the clutch.

The backlash was catastrophic.

General Lin coughed a mouthful of blood as his internal meridians ruptured under the paradoxical strain.

But the desperate maneuver worked. The heavy iron butt of the halberd halted with a sickening, jarring crack, freezing exactly one millimeter away from Ji’an’s chest binder.

Simultaneously, Ji’an’s own survival instincts had kicked in.

Seeing the halberd coming, she had violently wrenched her shoulders, completely abandoning her strike against his weapon, aiming her swinging ladle upward to avoid hitting him while he was vulnerable.

The heavy cast-iron bowl of the soup ladle whizzed past General Lin’s cheek, the displaced air actually cutting a thin line across his cheekbone, before stopping abruptly an inch above his temple.