She stood waist-deep in the thermal spring, her wet clothes clinging to her, her own face burning with a mixture of profound embarrassment and sheer, unadulterated rage.

"Throwing myself at you?!" Ji’an yelled, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. She pointed an accusatory, dripping-wet finger right back at the cowering elder. "Are you delusional?! You are the one who pulled me in! You grabbed my collar like a drowning octopus and dragged me into the soup!"

"Lies! Slander!" Elder Qin hissed, his chest heaving, his eyes darting frantically away from Ji’an’s soaked, clinging tunic, completely scandalized by the outline of her collarbones. "I am a master of the Heartless Dao! I would never initiate such... such crude, physical entanglement! You obviously orchestrated this! First my disciple, and now me! Are you trying to seduce the entire peak to secure your position?!"

"Seduce you?! To secure my position?!" Ji’an let out a bark of incredulous, hysterical laughter. She waded toward the edge of the pool, grabbing the lip of the jade tub and hauling her soaking-wet body out of the water with a heavy, ungraceful squelch. "You’re not worth all that!"

She stood on the tiles, dripping puddles onto the pristine floor, and glared down at the shivering, blushing elder with absolute, terrifying disgust.

"Listen to me, you ancient, paranoid popsicle!" Ji’an barked, wringing out the hem of her tunic, sending a spray of water onto the floor. "I was trying to save your life! You had a Qi deviation because your fragile ego couldn’t handle being told that your Dao is depressing! I spent ten minutes acting as a human heating pad so your meridians wouldn’t shatter! And you think I want to seduce you?! Also, you are the one who pulled me in first!"

She threw her hands up in the air, gesturing wildly to her wet, miserable state.

"I am sixteen years old, in my prime of youth! You are three hundred! You are older than my grandmother’s antique wok! Nobody wants your crusty, celibate, emotionally stunted body! Where the hell did you have the delusion that I’ll lust after your body?! I’d rather date a cutting board!"

Elder Qin’s jaw dropped. The sheer, unabashed savagery of the rejection hit him harder than the Qi deviation had.

He was a Peak Master. He was considered one of the most handsome, untouchable immortals of his generation.

Countless female cultivators had wept over his portrait. And this soot-stained, foul-mouthed cook was looking at him like he was a moldy piece of cheese.

"You... you..." Elder Qin sputtered, his mind completely unable to formulate a comeback to the brutal reality of the ’cutting board’ comment.

Before the argument could escalate into actual violence, the heavy oak doors of the bathing chamber were violently kicked open.

BANG!

Xie Wangchen stood in the doorway.

He was panting heavily, having sprinted from the Medicine Peak and back in record time.

In his hands, he held a glowing jade box containing the requested herbs: the Fire Ginseng, the Yang-beast core, and the Dragon-Breath peppercorns.

"I have the ingredients," Wangchen announced, his dark eyes scanning the room.

The scene he walked into was a masterpiece of absolute, catastrophic misinterpretation.

His master, Elder Qin, was cowering in the far corner of the tub, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his face flushed a brilliant, scandalous crimson, looking thoroughly violated.

And standing on the edge of the pool, looking down at the elder, was Lin Ji’an.

Ji’an’s white inner tunic was completely, transparently soaked, clinging tightly to the lean, agile curves of her torso.

Her dark hair was plastered to her neck, water dripping heavily onto the tiles. She looked incredibly flustered, her chest heaving, her cheeks flushed bright red.

The air in the room was thick with steam and undeniable, screaming tension.

The jade box in Wangchen’s hands suddenly cracked under the pressure of his grip.

Wangchen’s dark, bottomless eyes slowly shifted from the cowering, blushing elder in the tub to the soaking wet, flustered cook standing above him.

The temperature in the room, which Ji’an had fought so hard to boil, instantly and violently plummeted back to sub-zero.

The steam hanging in the air crystallized, turning into a shower of sharp, falling snowflakes.

Wangchen’s expression didn’t change, but the aura radiating from his body was the most terrifying, apocalyptic manifestation of pure, yandere jealousy that Ji’an had ever witnessed.

’He left him alone with him for five minutes,’ Wangchen’s mind fractured, a dark, murderous whisper echoing in his skull. ’And now he is wet. And my master is blushing like this...’

"Wangchen!" Ji’an squeaked, instinctively taking a step backward, recognizing the sheer, unadulterated murder in the boy’s eyes. "It’s not what it looks like! I swear to the culinary gods, it’s not what it looks like! He is the one who pulled me in! I didn’t do anything!"

"Master... pulled you in," Wangchen repeated softly. His voice was completely devoid of inflection, a hollow, terrifying sound.

Wangchen slowly turned his head, his pitch-black, lifeless eyes locking onto his master, who was still shivering in the tub.

The Ice Demon didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t need to.

The look on his face clearly, undeniably communicated that he was actively calculating the exact amount of Flawless Ice Qi required to permanently freeze a Golden Core elder into an unbreakable block of glacier ice, patricide be damned.

"Master," Wangchen whispered, the cold air cracking around the syllables.

"Wangchen, stop! Don’t look at me like that!" Elder Qin panicked, scrambling backward until his back hit the jade wall, completely terrified of his own disciple. "The wretch is lying! He threw himself at me! He straddled me in the water! He is trying to corrupt us both!"

Ji’an slapped a hand over her own face, letting out a groan of pure despair.

’That’s it,’ Ji’an thought, sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the wet tiles, utterly defeated. ’Did this elder just confirm the straddling thing? Does this old man have no sense of crisis?!’