“Peak Lord, when it comes to cooking, it’s all about controlling the heat.”
Lin Yue said this with a straight face as he pried Mu Qingxue’s hand off him.
“That burnt smell on you just now means you added the star anise too early. Also, for the abalone in Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, you have to simmer it in broth first. Did you just roast it directly over fire?”
Mu Qingxue froze.
She stared blankly at Lin Yue.
“Y-you… how did you know I roasted it?”
“No duh. Besides some brute who knows nothing about cooking, who would put dried abalone directly on a fire?”
Lin Yue smoothly slipped into his “chef teaching mode.”
“Go ahead, open your kitchen. Today, I’ll show you what real heavenly cuisine looks like!”
Chu Wanning, standing off to the side, was completely dumbfounded.
She looked at her master—the peak lord who usually kills without blinking, a Nascent Soul cultivator—and saw her now meekly following behind Lin Yue like an apprentice who’d made a mistake, heading toward the kitchen.
“Is this world insane?”
Chu Wanning rubbed her temples, feeling her worldview take a severe hit.
For the next hour.
From the kitchen of Lingxiao Peak came all sorts of bizarre sounds.
“Heat! Watch the heat! You’re a Nascent Soul cultivator, not a boiler operator!”
“Don’t cut sea cucumber like that! Treat it like your enemy—slice it with structure!”
Lin Yue was wearing some ragged apron he’d found somewhere, clutching a spatula, and going wild directing the strongest combat power in the Nine Heavens Sect.
And Mu Qingxue actually didn’t get angry.
She carefully controlled her spirit fire, her eyes gleaming with an extraordinarily bright light.
“So similar… so similar…”
Mu Qingxue watched Lin Yue’s serious profile, and her eyes even reddened a little.
“Even the way he scolds is exactly like that dead man.”
‘Heh, I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Lin Yue thought to himself, keeping a straight face on the outside.
His mind was completely focused on how to perfect this pot of soup, just to secure his own lazy life.
Meanwhile, Chu Wanning, still standing outside the door, was in a very bad situation.
Because the connection through the jade talisman was still open.
The excitement Lin Yue felt while stir-frying, his precise control over heat, the satisfaction when he tasted the seasoning—all of it was constantly streaming into Chu Wanning’s consciousness.
For a woman who had been in seclusion for years, abstinent and pure as ice, this was nothing short of fatal spiritual contamination.
‘It smells so good…’
Chu Wanning swallowed, feeling her stomach let out an embarrassingly loud growl.
She blushed, covering her chest.
‘Lin Yue… you bastard… what strange flavors are you thinking about!’
She felt her taste buds being forcibly taken over by Lin Yue, the rich aroma of meat giving her an urge to rush in and snatch the spatula.
By evening.
A pot of incredibly savory, simplified Buddha Jumps Over the Wall—its fragrance spreading across three mountaintops—was finally ready.
Mu Qingxue took one sip, and tears immediately fell.
“This taste… I’ve waited three thousand years…”
Crying, she drank most of the soup without any regard for dignity.
After eating her fill.
Mu Qingxue wiped her mouth and slapped her thigh.
“Kid, from today onward, you’re my closed-door disciple at Lingxiao Peak!”
“No, no, no!”
Lin Yue quickly refused.
“Let me just be an outer sect cook. Being a closed-door disciple is too exhausting—I’m not doing it!”
“It’s not up to you!”
Mu Qingxue waved her hand, and a true disciple token engraved with purple cloud patterns smacked right onto Lin Yue’s forehead.
“Wanning!”
Mu Qingxue turned to Chu Wanning, who was still swallowing.
“From now on, this kid is in your hands. If he loses even a single hair, you’ll answer to me!”
Chu Wanning looked at Lin Yue, gritted her teeth, and coldly spat out one word: “Yes.”
And so it went.
Lin Yue, a menial laborer who just wanted to lie low in the Abandoned Sword Tomb, had managed to land the most promising government position in the Nine Heavens Sect—all thanks to a single meal.
As for An Xiaoxiao?
That girl was an unreasonable prodigy.
She somehow pulled strings to enter the inner sect directly and was taken in by the eccentric, blind old woman next door at the “Ten Thousand Poison Peak”—a woman who never accepted disciples—as the first true disciple of Ten Thousand Poison Peak.
When Lin Yue heard the news, his face turned green.
But then he thought it over: at least Ten Thousand Poison Peak was three mountains away from Lingxiao Peak.
That counted as a long-distance relationship…
No, a long-distance one-sided chase.
Still better than having her sleep next door every day.
Lingxiao Peak was huge.
Covered in snow year-round, picturesque.
But few people lived there.
Including the perpetually drunk Nascent Soul cultivator Mu Qingxue, the entire peak had only three people.
Lin Yue proudly moved into the courtyard next to Chu Wanning’s.
As Mu Qingxue put it: “Wanning, this kid is full of worldly energy—perfect for warming up your block of eternal ice. You two stay close so he can get up early and cook for you.”
Chu Wanning’s hand trembled as she held her sword.
But the master’s orders were absolute.
And so, Lin Yue’s “cohabitation with pay” officially began.
Day one.
Lin Yue set up a large iron pot in the courtyard and braised a pot of red-cooked pork.
The thick meaty fragrance rode the wind, arrogantly seeping into Chu Wanning’s pure, snow-white room.
Chu Wanning, mid-meditation, swallowed humiliatingly.
Day two.
Lin Yue hummed a tuneless ditty while chopping firewood with a black iron heavy sword that weighed several thousand jin.
The deafening thump thump made Chu Wanning’s gathering formation tremble along with it.
Chu Wanning finally couldn’t take it anymore.
She grabbed her sword and kicked open the door to Lin Yue’s courtyard with zero ladylike restraint.
But what truly broke Chu Wanning wasn’t the daytime noise or the meat smell.
It was the damned, inescapable “spiritual frequency synchronization” every night.
That repaired green jade token was like a Bluetooth that couldn’t be turned off, tightening the connection between them.
In the dead of night, at the Hour of the Rat.
Lin Yue lay on a comfortable soft couch, legs crossed, replaying some demon sovereign techniques from his past life in his mind.
Suddenly, he let out a very loud sneeze.
“Ah-CHOO!”
“What’s going on? The floor heating’s on in here—why is it suddenly so cold?”
Lin Yue rubbed the goosebumps on his arms.
Then, he felt an intensely cold, even slightly moist sensation spreading from the depths of his heart.
It wasn’t just cold.
He also felt an incredibly slippery, incredibly soft touch.
Like someone was gently wiping pale skin with a warm towel.
“What the hell?”
Lin Yue shot upright, eyes wide as saucers.
He looked down at the green jade token hanging on his chest.
It was emitting an extremely faint, pinkish glow.
“This…?!”
Lin Yue swallowed.
Carefully, he closed his eyes and, following the jade token’s signal, extended his spiritual sense into it.