"But you?" Ji’an smiled, her dark eyes shining with absolute, unwavering sincerity. "I like you the most. No matter what."

Wangchen’s breath hitched. The faint pink on the tips of his ears flared into a brilliant, undeniable crimson.

"You were the first person I met in this crazy sect," Ji’an declared, her tone carrying the absolute certainty of a chef declaring their favorite knife. "You sat in the dirt and ate my leftover pork. You blocked Lu Jianheng’s sword for me. You are my first companion, Wangchen. And you will always be my first companion. Nobody, not the Holy Son, not the Young Sword Lord, not a Demon Lord, is ever going to replace you in my kitchen."

She lifted the lunchbox, shoving it gently against his chest.

"Now, take the pork belly before the crackling gets soggy. I didn’t slave over a hot wok for three hours just to watch you pout."

Wangchen took the jade lunchbox. His fingers brushed against hers, the warmth lingering on his skin long after she pulled away.

He looked down at the box, and a slow, profound, deeply terrifying smile bloomed across his face.

It wasn’t the fragile, puppy-dog smile he had just weaponized. It was a smile of absolute, possessive victory.

’I like you the most,’ her words echoed in his mind, carving themselves into his very soul.

The jealousy that had been tearing him apart was instantly extinguished, replaced by a cold, calculating, and intensely dark devotion.

He had won.

He had secured the highest rank in her heart, and she had admitted it out loud.

But as Wangchen looked at her bright, completely oblivious face, a tiny, dark whisper slithered through the back of his mind.

’You are my first companion,’ she had said.

Wangchen’s grip on the lunchbox tightened slightly.

’A circumstantial victory,’ the dark, obsessive part of his soul analyzed. ’She favors me because I was first. Because I met her before the others did.’

His dark eyes narrowed, a microscopic flash of demonic blue light flickering in the depths of his pupils.

’If I had not been first... would she have looked at Zhiwei with that same smile? Would she have cooked for him? Would she have let him touch her head?’

The thought was unacceptable.

It was a variable that needed to be permanently eliminated.

Wangchen made a silent, unbreakable vow to the frozen heavens.

It didn’t matter who was first, or second, or third. He was going to ensure that he was the only one.

He was going to build an impenetrable fortress of ice around her.

He would let her play at being a Martial Uncle; he would let her cook for the sect, but he would systematically, ruthlessly sever any emotional tether she tried to form with anyone else.

Gu Zhiwei, Lu Jianheng, Xiao Yichen... he would freeze them all out, one by one, until Lin Ji’an looked out at the world and saw absolutely no one but him.

"Thank you, Brother Lin," Wangchen murmured softly, looking up at her with an expression of pure, angelic innocence that completely masked the tyrannical, yandere plotting occurring in his head. "I will eat every bite."

Ji’an watched him open the box, a feeling of overwhelming domestic satisfaction washing over her as he took the first bite of the crispy pork. The crunch was audible in the quiet courtyard.

’Look at him,’ Ji’an thought, her heart doing another dangerous flutter as Wangchen’s eyes closed in culinary bliss. ’He is so incredibly cute when he eats. How is he the villain of the story? He’s basically a giant, lethal, emotionally fragile cinnamon roll!’

She crossed her arms, a sudden, bizarre protective instinct flaring up.

’If he keeps acting this cute in public, someone is going to kidnap him! I swear, if anyone tries to snatch my premium dishwasher for his cuteness overload, they’ll have to answer to my spatula!’

And thus, the absolute irony of the Celestial Sword Sect was perfected: The most dangerous, manipulative, bloodthirsty Ice Demon in a generation was currently being fiercely protected by a cook who thought he was a helpless puppy, while the puppy was actively plotting the total, dictatorial monopoly of her entire existence.

***

High above the pristine, orderly courtyards of the Celestial Sword Sect, the Drunken Peak was currently experiencing an event so incredibly rare it practically defied the laws of cultivation: Spring cleaning.

Jiu Zui, the Drunken Sovereign, was sober.

Well, relatively sober.

He was operating on the kind of functional, buzzing baseline that most mortals would consider legally intoxicated, but for a man who hadn’t seen the world without a heavy blur in a century, it was a terrifyingly sharp state of clarity.

"Where did I put it?" Jiu Zui grunted, violently tossing a stack of empty, thousand-year-old wine clay jugs over his shoulder. They shattered against the wall of his dilapidated main hall, adding to the mounting pile of debris. "I know I didn’t pawn it. I would never pawn the wok. The swords, maybe, but not the wok."

He waded through a knee-deep sea of discarded scrolls, forgotten legendary manuals, and empty gourds.

For the first time since his martial brother, Bai Hao, had perished on the demonic battlefields, Jiu Zui had a reason to give a damn.

He now had an apprentice. And not just any apprentice, he had a sixteen-year-old, foul-mouthed, spatula-wielding chef who had just painted a massive target on her own back by ascending to the rank of Martial Uncle and acquiring the terrifyingly obsessive attention of the Flawless Ice Root.

’That Qin Changxu,’ Jiu Zui thought, his amethyst eyes narrowing as he kicked aside a rusted suit of armor. ’He’s going to try something. He looks at my kid like he’s a weed growing in his pristine garden. If he thinks he can quietly dispose of Ji’an to keep his little ice-demon disciple focused on the Heartless Dao, he has another thing coming.’

Jiu Zui stopped, his hands planted on his hips. He looked at the absolute disaster zone of his peak.