Chapter 450: Don’t Follow

Ignis declared proudly, slamming the ladle against his chest. "You threaten to sabotage my arrays if I do not feed your boys? Good! A commander who does not prioritize the caloric intake of her troops is a commander unfit to lead! Welcome to the furnace, Vanguard Leader! We like your attitude!"

Ji’an stood frozen, her silver-flecked eyes wide, processing the absolute, spectacular cultural whiplash.

’They aren’t mad,’ Ji’an’s internal monologue stuttered, the defensive walls she had built up over the last month suddenly wavering. ’They’re not offended by my lack of manners. They literally love it. They are just a bunch of heavily armed, muscle-bound culinary enthusiasts.’

For the first time since she had transmigrated into this brutal, polite, deeply passive-aggressive cultivation world, Lin Ji’an felt a sudden, overwhelming surge of genuine kinship.

She slowly lowered her spatula.

The fierce, tyrannical scowl melted off her face, replaced by a look of almost suspicious hope.

"You prioritize caloric intake?" Ji’an asked, her voice dropping the aggressive young-master baritone, sounding genuinely intrigued.

"Prioritize it? Ha! We weaponize it!" an elder named Elder Cinder, a heavily muscled woman with a burn-scar across her nose, stepped forward.

She wasn’t carrying a hammer; she was carrying a pair of iron tongs on her back. "You cannot swing a fifty-pound forging hammer for twelve hours a day on a diet of morning dew and fasting pills! That is anything but orthodox garbage! We burn thousands of calories an hour! Our cultivation method relies entirely on the rapid metabolic conversion of high-density proteins and complex carbohydrates into explosive thermal Qi!"

Ji’an’s culinary brain practically exploded with joy.

’They eat food! They actually eat real food to cultivate!’ Ji’an’s soul wept with pure, Michelin-star validation. ’I have spent weeks surrounded by idiots who think eating a plain steamed bun is a sin against the Heavens! And these glorious, soot-covered Vikings actually understand something about nutrients!’

"Our Grand Kitchens are located directly above the primary magma vents," Elder Ignis boasted, gesturing grandly toward the towering, smoke-belching citadel carved into the volcano wall.

"We do not just forge steel, little brother. We forge meals! Have you ever tasted a Magma-Seared Lava-Boar Steak, dry-rubbed in crushed fire-crystal salt, and cooked directly on the surface of a three-thousand-degree obsidian anvil?!"

"Three thousand degrees?!" Ji’an gasped, her eyes actually sparkling, completely abandoning her diplomatic posture.

She hopped off the palm leaf and bounded directly up to the towering Chief Forgemaster, ignoring the fact that he could crush her skull with two fingers. "That’s too hot! You’ll instantly carbonize the exterior before the internal fat has time to render! The Maillard reaction caps out at three hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit! If you sear it that hot, the crust will taste like ash and the center will be completely raw!"

Elder Ignis paused.

He stared down at the tiny, ethereal, silver-haired beauty aggressively lecturing him on the thermodynamics of meat-searing.

The entire welcoming committee of ancient, terrifying, bone-grinder cultivators fell silent, exchanging wide-eyed, completely mesmerized glances.

"The Maillard reaction?" Ignis repeated, his fiery eyes blowing wide with absolute culinary revelation. "Is... is that why our steaks always taste like burnt charcoal on the outside? We thought it was just the natural flavor of the Dao!"

"It’s not the Dao, you absolute brute, it’s basic chemistry!" Ji’an scolded enthusiastically, slapping the flat of her spatula against his thick forearm. "You need a buffer! If you use an anvil that hot, you have to place a barrier of kinetic stasis between the meat and the stone, or you need to wrap the boar in thick, moisture-retaining lotus leaves to steam the fat before you apply the final, direct-heat sear! Do you people not understand the concept of a reverse-sear?!"

"By the eternal flame," Elder Cinder whispered reverently, dropping her glowing tongs onto the basalt pad. "He is the chosen one. The Sovereign was right. He understands the sacred texts."

Yan Zhaoge, still lounging on the yacht, chuckled softly, swirling his wine. "I told you, Ignis. He will revolutionize your cafeteria in an afternoon."

Ji’an actually felt a pang of genuine guilt.

She had rolled into their sect screaming threats, assuming they were just another group of arrogant, stick-up-their-ass orthodox elders who wanted to measure her Qi and quote dusty poetry.

Instead, she had just walked into a heavily armed, highly enthusiastic barbecue club.

"I... I apologize for my earlier hostility, Elder Ignis," Ji’an coughed, rubbing the back of her neck, feeling her cheeks flush slightly with embarrassment. "It has been a very long week. My boys are... they are high-maintenance, apparently, that’s also partly... my fault."

"Do not apologize for the fire in your belly, Brother!" Ignis roared, clapping a hand down on her shoulder with enough force to shatter a normal mortal’s spine, though Ji’an’s Body Fusion core absorbed it effortlessly.

"We respect the aggressive temper! A cold forge yields brittle steel! Come! The banquet is prepared! We have roasted an entire herd of Desert-Oxen, and we are eager to hear more of this... what did you call it? The reverse-sear?!"

Ji’an’s smile widened into a brilliant, genuine, unfiltered beam of pure joy. Her silver hair practically glowed in the ambient light of the magma rivers.

"Elder Ignis, if you have a kitchen that can handle the heat, I am going to teach you how to make a brisket so tender it will make your ancestors weep," Ji’an promised fervently.

She was so incredibly, blissfully happy to have finally found her people that she completely, entirely forgot about the thirteen traumatized, hormone-poisoned teenagers standing behind her.

On the deck of the palm-leaf yacht, the Vanguard Retinue watched the interaction in a state of reality-breaking despair.

"He is smiling," Lu Jianheng whispered, his aristocratic voice cracking. "The Vanguard Leader is smiling. Genuinely. He is laughing with the brutes."

"He never smiles at me like that," Gu Zhiwei whimpered, clutching his holy robes, his golden retriever heart breaking into a million pieces. "I offered him flowers! I offered him my dowry! And he ignores me to talk about... about cow fat and anvils!"

"The brutes have bypassed the courtship protocols entirely," Wen Shiru analyzed, his glasses fogging over with intense jealousy. "They have targeted his primary obsession. They have offered him a kitchen. It is an unfair monopoly. We cannot compete with a volcano."

Ji’an turned back to the yacht, clapping her hands together, her demeanor shifted from a tyrannical drill sergeant to an enthusiastic camp counselor.

"Alright, boys!" Ji’an announced brightly, her silver-flecked eyes shining. "Change of plans! The Iron-Stone elders and I are going to the Grand Kitchens to discuss advanced thermal meat-rendering!"

She pointed her spatula casually toward a group of younger, incredibly sweaty, heavily muscled juniors standing near the back of the welcoming committee.

They were currently carrying anvils on their backs for basic physical conditioning.

"Since this is a diplomatic study tour," Ji’an decreed, executing the most ruthless, devastating act of abandonment in the history of the sect, "you thirteen are going to go train with the juniors! Go integrate! Go hit some rocks! I’ll come check on you tomorrow morning!"

The collective gasp of horror from the Vanguard Retinue was audible over the roaring magma.

"TOMORROW MORNING?!" Gu Zhiwei shrieked, falling to his knees on the woven fronds. "Brother Lin! You cannot abandon us to the sweaty anvil-carriers! I am a Holy Son! I require constant supervision and positive reinforcement!"

"Martial Uncle!" Lu Jianheng protested, his face pale.

"My Dao is the sword! I cannot train with men who use hammers! It will ruin the delicate kinetic alignment of my wrists! Please, allow me to accompany you to the kitchens! I can chop your vegetables! I possess unparalleled slicing speed!"

"I WANT TO EAT THE BOAR!" Hu Yanlie roared, entirely ignoring the training aspect and focusing purely on the meat.

Ji’an rolled her eyes, entirely immune to their pleading. "Jianheng, you couldn’t chop a carrot without trying to infuse it with frost-aura and ruining the cellular structure. Zhiwei, you are a walking lightbulb; go help them heat the forges. And Yanlie, since you’re an animal; go play in the coal mines. You all need to learn blunt-force impact anyway! Consider this cross-training!"

She turned her back on them, entirely dismissing the most powerful prodigies on the continent like a group of annoying toddlers being dropped off at daycare.

"Lead the way, Elder Ignis!"