A normal cultivator would set up tents, curl into a sleeping roll, and pray to the Heavens that nothing else found them in the dark.

But Lin Ji’an was not a normal cultivator.

She was a Michelin-star Head Chef whose biological clock had just reset, armed with a spatial ring full of spices and an insatiable greed.

As the final light of the sun vanished beneath the murky horizon of the Eastern Coastal Wastes, plunging the swamp into an eerie, bioluminescent twilight, Ji’an stood up.

She stretched her arms over her head, her spine popping in a satisfying symphony of realigned cartilage.

The lethargic misery of her menstrual cramps had been entirely banished by the ginger syrup given by her brother and the adrenaline, leaving her meridians buzzing with excess kinetic energy.

She turned to Blue.

The red-haired rogue was sitting calmly on the log, polishing a small, unadorned hunting knife.

Ji’an reached into her spatial ring and pulled out a heavy, clinking velvet pouch.

She tossed it through the air.

Blue caught it effortlessly with one hand, his dark eyes rising to meet hers in silent question.

"Your cut," Ji’an stated, adjusting the heavy leather straps of her traveling pack. "There are twenty Rank 5 Iron-Bristle Boar cores in there, plus a few assorted Rank 4 venom-sacs I harvested earlier. That should fetch a small fortune in the capital’s Black Market."

Blue looked down at the bag of highly sought-after, incredibly valuable monster cores.

His expression remained a flawless, unreadable mask of placid indifference.

From Ji’an’s perspective, the rogue cultivator was simply a man of supreme professional composure.

She assumed his calm demeanor was the result of a hefty payday. ’He’s just happy he got paid,’ Ji’an rationalized, smiling to herself. ’Mercenaries love a generous boss. I’ve secured his loyalty with capitalism!’

She had no idea that, beneath the rugged, red-haired exterior, the entity known as Xie Wangchen could not have cared less about the monster cores if they had been made of mud.

To say that Blue was "calm" was the greatest deception in the history of the Azure Empire.

Beneath the illusion of the rogue cultivator, his spiritual sea was a chaotic, roaring stadium of joy.

If one could peel back the layers of his mind, they would not find a stoic mercenary; they would find the psychological equivalent of a crazed, obsessed fanboy, violently waving glowing light tubes, weeping tears of joy, and screaming praises for his favorite idol.

She had fed him, fought beside him.

And now, she was casually tossing him a fortune without a second thought.

The perfection of her existence was actively threatening to short-circuit his Qi.

But because he was committed to the role of the mysterious rogue, Blue merely offered a polite, shallow nod, tucking the bag of cores into his own robes. "You are generous, Young Master. I am in your debt."

"Don’t thank me yet," Ji’an grinned, a feral, hyper-focused glint igniting in her silver-flecked eyes.

She reached down to her calf, drawing her heavy, cast-iron Black Iron Spatula.

She gave it a whistling twirl in the humid air.

"The sun is down, Blue," Ji’an announced, pointing the spatula toward the impenetrable, glowing darkness of the deeper swamp. "And everyone knows the highest-grade ingredients— the ones with the most tender meat and the most concentrated spiritual energy are nocturnal. The giant crabs are waking up. We are going to do some grocery shopping today!"

A normal rogue would have balked at the idea of deliberately marching into the deepest, most lethal zones of a Class-A forbidden region at midnight.

Blue stood up, sheathed his knife, and stepped into place half a pace behind her right shoulder, the perfect covering position.

"Lead the way," Blue murmured smoothly.

***

The midnight of the Eastern Coastal Wastes was a breathtaking spectacle.

The mud flats gave way to deep, stagnant pools of black water, illuminated only by the ghostly, neon-blue glow of bioluminescent lotus flowers and the erratic, drifting lights of will-o’-the-wisps.

It took them less than twenty minutes to find their first target.

Or rather, the target found them.

The black water of a nearby lagoon suddenly erupted in a geyser of foul-smelling mud.

A massive, horrifying creature hauled itself onto the muddy bank.

It was an Obsidian-Shelled Acid Crab, a pinnacle Rank 6 beast.

It was the size of a small tavern, its armor plating gleaming with a dark, impenetrable luster.

Its two massive pincers snapped the air with the force of a hydraulic press, and thick, corrosive green acid bubbled at its mandibles, dropping onto the mud and instantly melting it into hissing craters.

"Oh, sweet merciful heavens, look at the size of those claws!" Ji’an gasped, her eyes turning into literal stars. "The meat inside those pincers must be unbelievable! We could do a garlic-butter steam, or a spicy chili stir-fry!"

The giant crab, entirely unappreciative of being menu-planned, let out a clicking, chittering roar and lunged forward, unleashing a high-pressure stream of corrosive acid directly at Ji’an’s head.

"Don’t damage the claws!" Ji’an yelled, ducking under the stream of acid with a fraction of an inch to spare.

What followed was a display of combat synergy so flawless and synchronized that it defied logic.

They had never formally trained together or discussed tactics.

But the moment the battle began, it was as if an invisible, telepathic tether connected their minds.

Blue didn’t waste any movement.

He understood her parameters instantly.

He blurred to the left, his boots completely silent on the mud.

He raised his hand, channeling his kinetic needles.

He didn’t aim for the beast’s impenetrable shell.

He aimed for the micro-fissures in the crab’s joints, the tiny, unarmored gaps between the carapace and the legs.

Thwip-thwip-thwip! 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

The invisible kinetic needles struck with surgical precision.

The crab shrieked, its front three legs violently buckling as the targeted strikes instantly paralyzed the joints.

The massive beast crashed into the mud, its momentum carrying it forward, directly into Ji’an’s path.