Raising the Villain in Wrong Way

"There will be no sleepover!" Ji’an barked, her voice dropping into a flat, cold baritone. "The Drunken Peak is not an inn! We do not offer bed-and-breakfast packages! If you cannot fly, you will crawl down the mountain steps on your hands and knees like respectable orthodox novices! Out! Everyone, move your asses toward the gate! Right now!"

Executing a mandatory eviction sweep on two fully grown, Golden Core-level male prodigies while entirely blindfolded required a level of brute-force physical strength that Ji’an usually reserved for butchering Rank 7 armored crustaceans.

She bypassed any gentle persuasion and channeled the maximum output of her Qi directly into her forearms, stomping across the courtyard toward the weeping Golden Retriever.

"Brother Lin, wait! My sash! I left my embroidered sash near the radishes!" Zhiwei wailed as Ji’an blindly grabbed him by the thick, bare, heavily muscled expanse of his bicep.

"You can buy a new sash from the quartermaster!" Ji’an grunted.

The physical mass of Gu Zhiwei was staggering.

Because he cultivated a body-refining orthodox technique, his bone density was roughly three times that of a mortal.

Hauling him across the dirt was like trying to drag an overturned bronze statue of a war god.

She practically had to roll his multi-ton, sweating, lobster-red frame across the courtyard like a barrel of premium spirit-ale.

"You are so strong, Brother Lin," Zhiwei hiccupped affectionately as she forcefully wedged his broad shoulders through the narrow opening of the woven bamboo perimeter gate. "Your grip... it feels like an unyielding iron band... I feel so secure when you forcefully manhandle me..."

"Stop narrating your physical eviction, Zhiwei! Step over the threshold!" Ji’an hissed, placing her boot squarely against his muscular lower back and delivering a shove that sent the Holy Son stumbling out onto the exterior stone steps.

She spun around blindly, immediately locking onto the metallic clack-clack of Wen Shiru’s cane.

The merchant heir was attempting to execute a highly covert, strategic flanking maneuver toward the shadowed sanctuary of her open-air pantry area.

"Where do you think you are going, you fox?!" Ji’an snapped, lunging forward and blindly catching the collar of his disheveled green silk robes.

Shiru gasped softly, his jade eyes darkening as her knuckles brushed against his bare collarbone.

Even while limping on a pulverized instep, the man’s calculating brain was actively searching for loopholes.

"Ji’an... listen to reason," Shiru purred roughly, leaning his weight back against her arm, deliberately making himself as difficult to move as possible. "A total eviction is highly inefficient... consider the overhead costs of individual transport... if we establish a temporary overnight joint venture... an exclusive lease on your floorboards... I can guarantee a twenty percent return on your morning Qi recovery..."

He reached blindly into his robes, attempting to press a heavy, glowing jade slip containing a blank commercial lease agreement directly into her hand.

"I do not want your lease! I do not want your conglomerate! Get your gold-embroidered aesthetic ass off my dirt!" Ji’an roared.

She didn’t try to push him.

She grabbed his jade cane, hooked it securely around his waist, and utilized a textbook, high-leverage wok-tossing maneuver to physically launch the calculating merchant heir through the air.

Shiru let out a highly unscholarly squawk as he flew through the bamboo gate, crashing into Gu Zhiwei, who was still sitting on the stone steps trying to tie his boots.

"Oof! Brother Shiru, careful! Your abacus poked my ribs!" Zhiwei’s muffled voice echoed from outside.

"Put it on your corporate expense account!" Ji’an yelled back.

She didn’t wait for them to recover.

She grabbed the heavy, reinforced spirit-wood double gates, violently slammed them shut with enough force to rattle the surrounding bamboo grove, and dropped the six-inch-thick iron locking bar into place with a definitive, earth-shaking CLACK.

She stood at the gate, wiping her sweating forehead with the back of her wrist, letting out a long, victorious sigh of relief.

"Clear," Ji’an announced to the empty night air. "The perimeter is secured. The wolves are on the exterior of the enclosure. The sheep remains un-minced."

She slowly turned around, untying the white dishcloth from her head, fully prepared to march back to her bedroom and collapse into a twelve-hour coma.

Her dishcloth dropped to the dirt.

Her silver-flecked eyes refocused in the moonlight.

And her victorious, Head Chef, instantly derailed into a smoking, burning crater of despair.

The courtyard was not empty.

Sitting on the polished wooden floorboards of the raised, open-air prep pavilion, illuminated by the soft, warm glow of the dying spirit-coals, was Xie Wangchen.

The Ice Demon had completely bypassed her eviction sweep through the terrifying mastery of his high-tier stealth arrays.

He hadn’t made a sound.

He hadn’t emitted a single fluctuation of Qi.

He had simply sat there on a silk cushion, his long legs crossed, watching her violently manhandle the other two prodigies out the door with a look of immense, smug satisfaction.

His pristine white Sovereign robes were still entirely unfastened at the sash, gaping open to reveal the pale, flawless, corded expanse of his heavily muscled chest.

His cascading silver hair fell forward over his collarbones, catching the firelight.

And his ruby-red eyes were looking down at her with a look of such unyielding, starving possessiveness that Ji’an felt her knees turn to Freon.

’He didn’t leave,’ Ji’an’s internal supercomputer blared, a continuous, deafening red-alert siren echoing in her skull. ’The hardest boss completely ignored the evacuation order. The glacier is still in the kitchen.’

Ji’an swallowed the thick lump of panic in her throat.

She forced her spine to straighten, adopting her untouchable, highly capable Senior Martial Uncle persona.

She marched over to the base of the raised wooden deck, resting her hands firmly on her hips.

"Alright, Little Puddle," Ji’an drawled, keeping her voice strictly objective, pointedly staring at the top of his silver head rather than his exposed eight-pack.

"The party is over. All of them are leaving to get back to their peaks."