For a normal cultivator, it was more like a purgatory.

But for Lin Ji’an, it was a Michelin-star grocery store with an attached pharmacy!

"Oh, look at this! Blue, don’t step on that!"

Ji’an practically threw herself into a patch of dense, thorny underbrush, completely ignoring the fact that she was wearing expensive yet durable, gray traveling robes.

She dropped to her knees in the mud, her silver-flecked eyes shining with the manic, terrifying glee of a mad scientist.

Standing a few paces back on the relatively solid root of a giant Mangrove tree, the red-haired rogue cultivator known as ’Blue’ paused.

He looked down at the patch of vibrant, sickly-purple foliage Ji’an was currently hovering over.

"Is it a valuable spiritual herb, Brother Ji’an?" Blue asked, his low, smooth voice cutting through the ambient hum of the swamp insects.

"Valuable? It’s magnificent!" Ji’an beamed, pulling a pair of heavy, dragon-hide gloves from her spatial ring before carefully snapping the stem of the purple plant.

A thick, viscous, neon-green sap immediately oozed from the break, hissing as a single drop hit a nearby rock and actively began to melt the stone.

"This is a Blood-Rot Lotus," Ji’an explained, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial, giddy whisper as she carefully secured the toxic flower in a specialized jade box. "In traditional alchemy, it’s considered useless because the toxicity levels are too high to refine into a pill. It literally melts meridians from the inside out. But in my kitchen? It’s a goldmine!"

Blue tilted his head, his brilliant crimson hair shifting over his shoulder.

The dark, bottomless voids of his eyes tracked her every movement with an intensity that was entirely disproportionate to a conversation about swamp weeds.

"You intend to cook with a plant that melts stone?" Blue inquired, the faint, amused curve of his lips visible beneath the dappled shadows of the jungle canopy.

"I intend to experiment!" Ji’an corrected, standing up and dusting the mud off her knees.

She tapped the jade box affectionately. "The Dao of the Iron Wok is all about breaking down and restructuring energy. If I can isolate the acidic properties of the Blood-Rot sap and neutralize the meridian-destroying toxins, I can create a marinade that tenderizes Rank 6 beast meat in seconds! And if I mess up..."

She offered a bright, entirely unhinged smile. "...I have a highly concentrated, lethal poison I can throw in someone’s face! It’s a win-win!"

.

.

.

Beneath the guise of the rugged, red-haired rogue, Xie Wangchen felt his adoration for Ji’an crash against the walls of his sanity.

’He is perfect,’ Wangchen’s internal monologue whispered, fire burning through his chest.

’He looks at a deadly toxin and sees a culinary opportunity. He is a beautiful, lethal disaster, and he is mine.’

Since he had donned the disguise of ’Blue’, utilizing a high-tier illusion artifact to alter his hair color, suppress his Flawless Ice aura, and shift the structure of his face, Wangchen had experienced a freedom he never knew that he could have.

As the Ice Demon of the Eternal Cloud Peak, he was bound by his status, his Dao, and the weight of his own reputation.

But as Blue, the nameless rogue?

He could walk beside her.

He could listen to her chatter for hours.

He could watch the way her eyes lit up when she talked about food, without having to maintain the freezing, aloof mask of a Sovereign.

He could exist in her orbit, soaking in the blinding, radiant heat of her presence.

He was fully aware that this was a temporary indulgence.

He was lying to her.

But the monster beneath didn’t care about morality; it only cared about proximity.

"Your ingenuity is... unparalleled," Blue murmured, stepping down from the root to join her on the muddy trail. "But we should keep moving. The perimeter of the deep jungle is thick with predators, and you have a quota to fill."

"Right, the mission," Ji’an sighed, stowing the jade box into her ring.

Her official sect’s mission required her to hunt and harvest the cores of twenty Grade 5 or above spiritual beasts.

It was a daunting task for a normal Inner Sect disciple, but Ji’an wasn’t hunting for cores.

The cores were just some annoying paperwork.

She was hunting for premium, high-grade ingredients!

For the next four hours, they pushed deeper into the jungle perimeter.

The teamwork between them was terrifyingly seamless.

When a Rank 5 Iron-Bristle Boar, a beast the size of a small carriage, covered in razor-sharp quills that could pierce steel, burst from the undergrowth, they didn’t even need to exchange words.

Ji’an dropped low, channeling the hyper-dense kinetic mass of her Qi into her legs.

She launched herself directly at the massive beast, not to kill it, but to manipulate its momentum.

She swung her heavy cast-iron spatula, catching the boar squarely on its armored snout.

KRA-KOOM!

The sheer, absurd physical force of the blow didn’t pierce the boar’s armor.

Still, it violently arrested the beast’s charge, throwing its multi-ton body off balance and exposing its softer, unarmored underbelly.

In that exact second of vulnerability, Blue moved.

He didn’t draw a sword or unleash a wave of freezing ice.

To maintain his cover, Wangchen had meticulously altered the manifestation of his Qi.

Instead of absolute zero cold, he condensed his spiritual energy into invisible, highly pressurized needles of pure kinetic force.

Blue raised two fingers, executing a flawless, imperceptible flick of his wrist. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

A dozen invisible, razor-sharp needles of compressed Qi shot through the air, piercing the Iron-Bristle Boar’s exposed underbelly with surgical precision.

The strikes were so sharp and devastatingly prickly that they bypassed the beast’s internal defenses entirely, shredding its heart and lungs in a fraction of a heartbeat.

The massive boar collapsed into the mud, dead before it even registered the pain.

"Beautifully done, Blue!" Ji’an cheered, jogging over to the massive carcass.

She immediately pulled out her specialized carving knives and other things, her eyes gleaming with greed.