"Let the youth show their spirit! The finest performance shall receive a reward from the Imperial Treasury!"

Instantly, the hall erupted into a flurry of frantic, competitive activity.

This was the ultimate chance for the noble youth to secure political favor, catch the eye of a prince, or perhaps even win the affection of the devastatingly handsome Vanguard Commander himself.

For the next hour, Ji’an endured a procession of incredibly talented, yet profoundly hollow performances.

Noble daughters played the guqin with technical perfection but no soul. Young lords recited booming, aggressive poetry about slaughtering barbarians, clearly having never seen a drop of real blood in their lives.

It felt fake. It felt performative.

"They sing of war as if it were a game," Ji’an muttered under her breath, her chest tightening with an inexplicable, rising wave of grief.

"Indeed," Yichen whispered beside her, sensing the shift in her aura. He leaned closer. "But surely, the esteemed Martial Uncle of the Celestial Sword Sect possesses a talent that outshines these pampered fledglings? Or does your Dao truly only extend to the chopping block?"

It was a blatant provocation.

Yichen wanted to see her perform. He wanted her in the center of the room, illuminated by the lanterns, dancing for him.

Ji’an turned her head. She looked at Yichen’s smug, challenging smile. She looked at Consort Rui, who was watching her with a vindictive sneer.

And then, she looked up at the primary table.

She looked at her father, General Lin, who bore the scars of a hundred battles, then looked at Lin Feng.

Her eldest brother sat quietly, nursing a cup of wine, his dark, silver-flecked eyes completely detached from the frivolous performances occurring before him.

He looked like a man who carried the ghosts of ten thousand fallen soldiers on his back.

A sudden, overwhelming resolution solidified in Ji’an’s heart.

’I’m not going to let these pampered peacocks mock the reality of loss,’ Ji’an decided, her blood running cold with absolute, solemn determination.

Ji’an stood up.

The movement caught the attention of the surrounding tables. The whispers ceased.

"Your Majesty," Ji’an called out, her voice echoing with the crystalline clarity of mountain ice.

She stepped out from behind her table, walking into the center of the vast, open floor beneath the floating lanterns.

"If Your Majesty the Emperor permits," Ji’an said, offering a deep, formal bow. "The Celestial Sword Sect would like to offer a performance to honor the Vanguard. Not with poetry or with song. But with the blade."

The Emperor’s eyes widened with delight. "A Sword Dance from a Sovereign Elder! Splendid! Splendid! Guards, bring my Royal Brother a ceremonial blade!"

A terrified palace guard sprinted forward, offering Ji’an a beautifully crafted, lightweight silver longsword.

It had no edge, designed purely for theatrical performances.

Ji’an took the hilt.

The balance was terrible compared to her spatula, but it would serve.

She stood in the center of the room. The thousands of eyes pressing down on her vanished.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t think about the political maneuvering. She didn’t think about Xiao Yichen.

She thought of Master Jiu Zui, forcing her to hold a horse stance until her muscles screamed, drilling the foundational footwork of martial arts into her body under the guise of the Dao of the Iron Wok. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

She silently thanked the drunken old man for giving her the physical vessel capable of expressing what she was about to do.

But the emotion, the soul of the dance, did not come from the Celestial Sword Sect.

It came from a life she had lost forever.

She tapped into the deepest, most carefully guarded vault of her mind, and remembered the towering glass skyscrapers of Earth.

She remembered the smell of rain on asphalt.

She remembered the faces of her friends, her real family, the life she had been ripped away from by the transmigration.

She would never go back; she would never see them again.

She was trapped in this beautiful, terrifying, blood-soaked world, playing the role of a young master, fighting sociopaths and demons just to survive another day.

The profound grief of a transmigrator, a sorrow that no one in this room could comprehend, flooded her meridians.

Ji’an opened her eyes, but they didn’t shine with arrogant confidence.

They were dark, swimming with unshed tears, burning with sorrow.

She moved.

The opening of the Sword Dance was very slow. It was not a display of aggressive martial prowess. It was a lament.

Her footwork, honed by the compressed Qi, was entirely silent.

She glided across the polished mahogany floor like a ghost.

The silver blade moved in slow, heavy arcs, as if she were dragging the weight of the sky itself upon the steel.

The hall went dead silent.

The noble lords and ladies, who had been preparing to critique her technique, found the breath stolen from their lungs.

Ji’an’s face was a mask of pure, devastating tragedy.

She lunged, a slow, desperate reach toward an invisible enemy, only to pull the blade back, wrapping her empty arm around her own chest as if catching a falling comrade.

The silver sword caught the light of the floating lanterns, shimmering like falling tears.

It was a dance that spoke of the horrific, silent aftermath of a battlefield. It spoke of the cold snow burying the dead.

It spoke of the mothers who would never see their sons, and the warriors who returned home with hollow eyes.

But more than that, it spoke of an alien isolation. The loneliness of a soul trapped in the wrong world.

At the head table, General Lin Tianzong stopped breathing.

The War God’s eyes filled with tears, completely overwhelmed by the empathy radiating from his child.

In the crowd, veteran soldiers who had served in the Vanguard began to weep openly, their hands covering their faces, the dance validating the horrors they could not voice.

Xiao Yichen, who was sitting at his table in silence, felt his heart ache.