Beware Of Chicken-Novel

Liao Yushang’s sword cut through the air in a heavy diagonal slash as her opponent, Bi De in his human form, dodged.

Victory for Yushang! Heavy Sword Supremacy!

Yushang kept her small smile on her face as she refocused on the fight and cut off most of the Qi flow when the blade nearly touched the ground, leaving only the bare amount of reinforcement a metal as durable as Lode Iron needed. The blade’s weight reduced itself by ten times. She slid one hand down slightly onto the enormous blade to give her a bit more leverage and forced it back up so that she could slam the sword’s pommel into the kick that Bi De had fired at her. The impact jarred her arms, but she stopped the blow with her rooted stance and heavy blade. Yushang continued the motion, using the pommel as a lever, and twisted into a close range slice upwards. Bi De disengaged, and Yushang immediately launched herself after him.

That was how one used a Heavy Sword.

She looked into his pretty green eyes and sucked in a deep breath. She chambered her sword and unleashed herself fully. The air roared in protest as her sword began to cut through it.

Yushang stomped her foot, lowered her shoulder, and leapt forward. The [Horn of the Mountain Ram] caught Bi De for a brief moment in the gut, marking the first tduring this sparring session that Yushang had ever really hit Bi De.

At first she had thought the sword manual was joking when it had instructed her to shoulder-check her way through boulders. It had taken her five years to be able to do it perfectly, but hey, it worked!

It wasn’t a telling blow, but Bi De looked quite pleased. He gave her a minute nod… and then buried his knee into her chest, twisted, and kicked.

Snow that fell off the tree and onto her, burying her.

“A fine blow, Yushang,” Bi De called out. “I think that is a fine stopping point for today. Please cool down and resyour meditations.”

She thrust her arm up from under the snow covering her, her thumb pointing up like Yun Ren did, before she pushed herself out of the pile, making sure to have a smug grin on her face.

Everybody was looking at her with varying levels of amusement. Yun Ren, Spooks, and Fenxian were laughing, Han and Uncle Sheng looked fondly exasperated. Ri Zu snorted, and even the ever-serious Yingwen had the corner of his lip quirk up.

Good! It was no good if you were all grim and serious all the time! Even when things were bad, Grandpa always said it was best to smile!

They were kinda in the shit, about to go fight demons and all, so smiling was more important now than ever. Smiling was better than being a grump like Yingwen all the time.

And everybody was smiling, so mission accomplished!

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Heh. Forest Sweeper was a really apt name.

“Have a nice flight, Yushang?” Han ribbed.

“Yup, it was great! Lovely scenery!” she agreed. “I’ll show it to you again the next twe spar!”

Han huffed and she stuck her tongue out at him. He turned back to his own work, trying to refine his formula to make their blades better and stronger. She squinted at him to make sure he was really alright, but this whole mission had mostly fixed the lost look in the other man’s eyes. He was focused and determined. Swith Uncle Heng, who was standing taller and prouder day by day.

Yushang stood and stretched, then blinked as she felt Ri Zu’s fingers ghost along her back, checking for any injuries. Satisfied that Yushang wasn’t hurt, Ri Zu’s hands transitioned to getting sdebris out of Yushang’s hair.

“You’ve done well,” the shorter woman told her, smiling, while Yun Ren walked up to ruffle her hair. She could see Bi De standing off to the side. The man nodded to her before, with a pop, he turned into a chicken again and started to walk over to the special tree in the middle of the clearing, the Everbloom.

…honestly, that was still kind of weird, that he was a chicken and Ri Zu was a rat. But as she looked at him and her little quirk, the ability that told her who was trustworthy and who wasn’t, didn’t change at all.

Probably why she took them changing forms so well, if she was honest. They still ‘looked’ like the people who had helped and protected her.

“You mess up my hair and poke my back instead of giving this pretty sister comforting hugs,” she complained to Ri Zu and Yun Ren, who just looked more amused… but they obliged her.

Yushang practically skipped off and settled down beside Bi De before she took a deep breath, preparing herself to cultivate.

She was beneath a massive tree made of ice, its blossoms stunningly beautiful. In her vision, powerful cultivators bettered themselves as they cultivated within a Spirit Beast’s domain.

And it had just been one quirk of fate after another, hadn’t it? A girl from a village, through a quirk of fate ignited her dantian. A girl from a backwater village who, through a quirk of fate, managed to navigate the Howling Sword Arts Academy and cout stronger, rather than chewed up and spat out like most of the other commoners.

Who through a quirk of fate, chose to take the entrance exam to the Shrouded Mountain Sect in the syear that Bi De, Ri Zu, and Yun Ren had arrived.

When she said it like that, it kind of sounded like she was a character in a story!

But that was fine. All that mattered was that Yushang didn’t screw up and she got a happy ending—maybe she’d be popular enough that there would be a Yushang in every book, like how every good protagonist has a fat friend like Han!

Yushang smiled and began to cultivate.

==============

Six hours later and they were done for the day. Yushang rose and yawned, ready to eat. She was getting quite close to breaking through to the Third Stage of the Profound Realm!

The others had also finished, and Yuhang looked down to see if Bi De was ready to go when she paused.

He was doing something strange. She had never been so close to him before; in the Sect he had meditated and cultivated back in the Inner Sect, and….

“Are you pushing your Qi into the earth?” she asked, confused. Han, Uncle Heng, Spooks, Yingwen, and Fenxian all stopped too, looking at Bi De, while Ri Zu and Yun Ren just nodded.

Bi De nodded, his eyes closed. “‘Tis part of my Master’s teachings. ‘We give to the earth, and the earth gives back.’ I am merely returning sof the favour the land has done for us.”

Yushang blinked. Yingwen looked baffled.

“Won’t that just make you weaker?” Fenxian asked, confused.

“He's the strongest out of all of us,” Han replied, looking contemplative.

“And his Master is an expert of the Cloudy Sword Sect,” Yingwen replied. “Of course this serves spurpose. Senior Bi De, how does one do this?”

The rooster opened his eyes and cocked his head to the side. “It serves no greater purpose than giving thanks to the world,” Bi De stated simply. “I can show you. But for your offering to be accepted, your intent for thanks must be pure and your Qi clean of impurity.”

Yingwen and Fenxian looked at each other, before they sat down once more.

And then, the vision disappeared. Her Qi entered the earth.

…and nothing happened, really.

Yushang shrugged and clapped her hands together before bowing her head.

They gave their thanks to the earth, had their evening meal… and then Spooks flinched and looked up at the sky.

===========================

Yushang puffed hot air into her hands. She was perched on the bough of one of the massive trees, staring up into the sky and into its perpetual darkness. In the village where she was from, they got one day like this, on the winter solstice, where the sun never rose—they had been here for nearly two weeks and had never yet seen even a glimmer of the sun… but it hadn’t exactly been dark before.

The sky was, in fact, oddly bright. The dancing colours of the aurora, the shining stars, and cold light of the moon provided plenty of light to see by. It was a pretty, almost ethereal light.

Tonight, however, that light was fading.

The silver moon and rainbow aurora were both being swallowed up by the blackest clouds Yushang had ever seen, and she had seen spretty bad mountain storms. They seemed almost lazy, slowly but surely coming in from the south and consuming everything in their path. They were so dark they looked just like a kind of black wall, but when the lightning within them illuminated their underbelly one would learn the truth.

Yun Ren, sitting slightly below her, let out a low whistle, and his memory crystal chimed. “Damn. I’d hate to be on Master Forest Sweeper’s bad side.”

There were several chuckles.

“Spooks was right. Where the storm travels to, our foe lies,” Bi De mused. He was in human form again, his eyes fixed on the sky. His voice was full of conviction, and the rest stopped chuckling as they once more acknowledged that they were about to fight the demonic forces. The air beccharged.

Yushang sucked in a breath and then smirked.

“Damn straight a storm is coming. We’re on the way, aren’t we?” she asked, elbowing Bi De.

The tension broke, as Fenxian and Hen barked out laughs; Bi De smiled, turning his pretty green eyes on Yushang.

Then he smiled.