Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

"Know it?" Jiu Zui let out a short, bitter bark of laughter. "Kid, I lived with it. I fought back-to-back with it for years."

He swiped his hand over the wooden table.

A faint, glowing purple aura trailed from his fingertips, leaving behind a complex, glowing diagram etched in pure Qi right onto the wood.

Ji’an looked down at the diagram. It wasn’t a standard meridian chart showing Qi gathering from the air into the dantian.

It was more like a chart of the digestive system. It showed energy entering through the stomach, being systematically broken down by the liver, purified by the spleen, circulated by the heart, and finally condensing into a multi-colored, perfectly balanced core of pure life-force.

"The modern cultivation world is obsessed with purity," Jiu Zui explained, pointing at the diagram. "They want a single element. A pure sword. A pure flame. But the universe is not pure, Ji’an. The universe is chaotic. It is made of earth, water, fire, wood, and metal, all grinding against each other."

He looked up, meeting her eyes with intense, burning seriousness.

"Your ’Chaotic Root’ isn’t broken. It is a furnace. It is the only type of spiritual root capable of taking the raw, chaotic energy of the physical world, the meat of a beast, the root of a poisonous plant, the essence of the earth itself, and refining it into absolute, harmonious power."

Jiu Zui tapped the table, dispelling the diagram.

"You are not a liability, kid. You are a Spirit Chef. It is a cultivation path that has been extinct in this sect for more than a century. The elders don’t recognize it because they don’t know what it looks like anymore. But I do."

Ji’an sat back on her stool, her mind spinning. She had assumed her cooking was just a survival mechanism, a quirky cheat she used to bribe the Protagonists into not killing her.

To hear that her very existence, her passion for food, was an actual, legendary path to godhood... it was staggering. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"You said... you lived with it," Ji’an managed to say, her voice slightly hoarse. "You knew another Spirit Chef just like me?"

Jiu Zui’s eyes immediately darkened. The vibrant amethyst dulled, clouded by a sudden, suffocating wave of grief.

He looked away from her, staring into the dying embers of the hearth.

He finally reached for his wine gourd. He didn’t drink from it; he just held it, his knuckles turning white around the worn clay.

"I did," Jiu Zui whispered. "A long time ago. It was before the demonic wars. Before Qin Changxu froze his own heart. Before I became a worthless drunk."

He let out a slow, ragged breath.

"His name was Bai Hao. He was my martial brother and my best friend." Jiu Zui’s thumb traced the rim of the gourd. "He was exactly like you. Arrogant. Stubborn. Troublemaker. He refused to touch a sword. He fought with a massive, cast-iron meat cleaver that weighed three hundred pounds. He used to complain about the grocery bill every single day."

A faint, ghostly smile touched the Sovereign’s lips as the memories surfaced.

"He could cook a meal that could bring a man back from the brink of death. He could brew a soup that would temporarily grant the drinker the strength of a dragon. During the siege of the Blood Valley, when the entire sect was starving and cut off from the leylines, Bai Hao kept three thousand disciples alive by foraging poisonous roots and purifying them in his wok."

Ji’an listened, utterly captivated. She could picture it.

A man standing amidst the carnage of a fantasy war, armed with nothing but a cleaver and a wok, keeping an entire army on its feet through the sheer, miraculous power of a hot meal.

"What happened to him?" Ji’an asked softly.

Jiu Zui’s grip on the gourd tightened until the clay cracked slightly.

"He died," the Sovereign stated, his voice devoid of emotion, a stark, terrifying contrast to his usual boisterous nature. "He died because the ’pure’ geniuses of this sect, the swordsmen and the spellcasters, deemed him a support class. They left him behind to guard the rear while they chased glory. By the time I broke through the enemy lines to reach him... There was nothing left but his broken cleaver and a mountain of demon corpses."

The silence in the kitchen grew incredibly heavy. Ji’an felt a lump form in her throat.

She looked at the Drunken Sovereign, finally understanding the man beneath the alcohol.

He wasn’t drinking for fun.

He was drinking to forget the fact that the sect he helped build had let his best friend die because they didn’t value a chef.

Jiu Zui suddenly looked up, the grief vanishing, replaced by a fierce, piercing intensity.

"That is why I chose you, Lin Ji’an," Jiu Zui declared, leaning across the table. "When I saw you on that screen, beating a Golden Core ghost to death with a spatula to protect a bunch of kids who couldn’t protect themselves... I saw him. I saw the legacy of the Glutton."

He slammed his hand on the table.

"You are not going to be a support class. You are not going to be left in the rear," Jiu Zui vowed, his aura flaring with terrifying power. "You will inherit my martial arts. You will learn the Drunken Sword of the Sovereign. But more importantly... You will inherit his."

Ji’an’s eyes widened. "His martial arts? You have a Spirit Chef’s manual?"

"I have the Dao of the Iron Wok," Jiu Zui confirmed, a fierce, proud grin breaking through his melancholy. "The complete inheritance of Bai Hao. I have guarded it for a century, refusing to give it to the sect archives because those arrogant snobs wouldn’t understand a single page of it. But it belongs to you now."

Ji’an felt a surge of adrenaline that had absolutely nothing to do with combat. A legendary, customized cultivation manual designed specifically for her constitution?