"Hold my hand tight!" Pef urged Gia as he rose up and drew out the upgraded Heart Ruler.

The platinum-haired beauty nodded as Pef began to glow with Sword Qi.

"Bankai." our hero whispered for old times sakes.

The blade in his hand shattered into billions of small shards of Sword Qi, looking like fragile cherry petals, and then splashed over the Zylch nest, killing countless octo-spiders.

As the petal storm drew back into its blade form, a single Zylch Hive Queen remained alive, its skin raw as the qi shards had scraped her outer skin away.

A giant scream filled the Chaos Sea, bouncing away ineffectively from Pef's Eternium necklace, while Gia stuggled to withstand the mental attack of the higher realm monster.

Pef sighed inward, then sliced once with his Universe Splitter skill, ending the scream and the Queen's life. Energy, experience and qi flew back towards him, almost recovering the expenditure. Sadly, the Legion's cultivation method didn't work as effectively anymore, not at this realm. Barely 30% of his qi was recovered from this kill.

"That was a Bronze Realm Chaosbeast..." Gia whispered in an amazed voice.

Pef just nodded and glanced at his new mount, the Iron Realm Bee Queen. The Queen moved faster than he could see, collecting the loot and shattered bits of bone and meat from the Zylch monster, as well as intact corpses of its hive.

Storing the loot, Pef set his inner selves and Avatars to work on cooking and sifting through the weapons, armor and other bits of cultivation aids formerly hidden inside the nest. If the glove was here, it would have surely laughed at the user searching through the garbage bin of a cockroach colony equivalent, but Pef was also poor right now. And he was poor exactly because the glove stole all his resources stored in the glove pocket.

A minute later, the first Chaos Burger emerged from his inner world, covered with a thin glaze of candied honey and a single line. Not his best work, but it would suffice right now.

"...Hungry?" he asked Gia with a raised eyebrow.

The girl hesitated for a second, then took the burger and ate it in a few bites. "Very good. I didn't know a Chaosbeast could taste so good..." she managed to say before Ascension caught her by surprise and pushed her into Tier 8, without pain or tribulation.

While Gia stared around with wonder in her eyes, Lady Meili came closer to observe. "So, that Divine Cook alias isn't just a brag. Or is it Alchemy disguised as Cooking?" the Wood Sect disciple asked in a soft yet curious voice.

Pef shrugged a bit childishly. To be fair, his Cooking was far beyond normal cooking, or even normal Alchemy. It was almost a new branch of Formation Dao, with cooking elements being used as code operators in a complex program that hacked the Heavens to allow Ascension. Or the other way around. It wasn't like anyone else could do it. His memories told him there were computer programs in his old world that could be cooking recipes and working code at the same time, so he wasn't the first to think about it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Maybe Zara would learn it too, one day. If she focused a shadow clone only on Cooking Dao. Zen, her Sword clone was showing remarkable progress already, getting close to the Heart of the Sword stage.

While talking with his companions, more internal cooking took place in an accelerated time field. As always, there were plenty of failures but once in a while another recipe worked, raising his Dao even further. Only it was not his Cooking Dao which had already reached 100% . This time it was Chaos Dao, another Supreme Dao mentioned by the old Fiend in his first and only Dao lecture. Probably because he was cooking a Chaosbeast.

And when Chaos Dao crossed over 1%, the Sword Soul inside of him woke up after weeks of sleep and rest. 'Oh, I thought you have already reached the Steel Realm, with you cultivating Chaos Dao already.' the seed of the World Tree said in a disappointed tone.

'Is there a problem?' Pef asked curious.

'Not at all. Finishing cultivation of Chaos and Order Dao is a pre-requisite to Ascend to Tier 13, as you know it. But before that, you need to complete Devour and Preservation to reach Tier 12. And before that...Tier 11. Which may come sooner that expected...' the World Tree Seed added in an amused tone, as the screech of a giant eagle approached rapidly.

"Jade Roc!" Lady Meili noted in warning, as the Jade House scion flew over them on the back of a mighty Tier 11 eagle.

Pef sighed and drew the girls in his inner world. Cultivation didn't have to be so hard. Why couldn't people just get along?

"There you are, you mongrel from the Lower Realms! My Jade Roc will eat your guts for that slap you gave me." the Jade House heir yelled in a victorious voice.

'Can we fight already?' the Heart Ruler asked in an eager tone.

Pef measured the giant eagle, already portioning cuts for steaks. "Old Queen, you deal with the guard." he ordered as he flew up while powering up his defensive formations.

As his Tier 11 mount flew at speed to engage the Jade House bodyguard, Pef stopped in front of the Jade scion. "Are you sure you want this, boy? You might die today." he asked in a gentle voice.

"Attack!" the boy yelled and urged his flying mount forward.

Pef's left hand burst into cold flames as Icefire erupted into a stream of freezing flames, burning through the time strands covering the Jade scion.

And his right hand slashed once with his upgraded Eternium Heart Ruler, slitting open the mighty Jade eagle and dividing its heart.

As he evaded the reflex claw of the eagle, Pef's left hand smacked the boy on the back of his head, the Icefire burning his body and leaving his face and storage rings intact.

The Old Queen was already devouring the Tier 11 bodyguard, starting with his softer guts. It was an eat or be eaten world, after all. And Pef was a great cook.

Soon after, the first meals containing Tier 11 meat from the Jade eagle arrived on a wooden table in his wooden cabin by the sea, and the girls Ascended once more without any pain.

Pef kept the first one-line Jade Burger for himself, and ate it with small bites. Ascending to Iron Realm should have been the culmination of trillions of years of hard work, and lots of costly investments.

As his eyes cleared and new senses opened, he looked up to find an orange-haired goddess dressed in an Eternium armor suit, plucking the strings of her harp with a bored face. "Well done, slow poke. Now come, I have found a herd of Chaos Whales deeper into the Chaos Sea. You need to reach the peak of Tier 11 before we return."

Pef sighed inward. Cutivation was so hard...