“Think of the sword as an extension of your arm,” Xun said as he watched Zeran train. “No, not like that. You’re thinking of it as an object, as some kind of tool. That’s not what the sword was meant for. It’s your friend, something that you spend all of your attention on.”

Zeran face was flushed with concentration. She swung the sword again without using zhen to practice the move and it still had the awkwardness from before. Xun could see that she wasn’t understanding it.

“Wait, stop.” Xun waved and picked up a bamboo pole from the side. “The move is meant to be a slash from your head down to your leg. In what situation would you use such an attack?”

“When I’m trying to break someone’s defense?” Zeran replied.

“No, not at all.” Xun demonstrated the move for Zeran. He took a deep breath in, raised the pole above his head and brought it down. “What did you see?”

“You were full of openings.” If there was one thing that was true with Zeran, it was that she was honest, to the point of being brutal.

“Yes, exactly. And why would I allow myself to have all those openings where someone else could attack and hurt me?”

“Because…” Zeran struggled for an answer. She thumbed her sword absentmindedly. Xun watched with a slight smile. At least he was making progress with her. She was still a long way from becoming a true swordsman or swordswoman, but things were improving. Her bond with the sword had improved. “Because you’re desperate.”

“Correct. And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Because when you’re desperate, that means that you’re facing an opponent or opponents that are stronger. Which means that if you played it safe, you’d lose. So you want to put all of your effort into that one attack and if they hurt you during it, you’ll also make sure to hurt them back.”

Xun answered her with his action. He performed the same strike again. His mind went blank and then roaring back with just a single thought, he was going to slash through whatever was in front of him, regardless of what happened.

The pole whistled through the air as it made a downward arc. It wasn’t particularly fast. Nor was it a very strong attack. But Xun knew that it was the right one. If someone had been standing in front of him, he was sure that they’d be dodging back if they weren’t ready to trade their life for his.

Xun finished the slash and looked at the bamboo pole with a bit of regret. The same move, done in his peak, would have carried the weight of a mountain and sucked his opponents in. Forcing them to choose between trading wounds or blocking the heavy attack. Now, with the years of his previous life focusing on a different path and the fight with Fanpin, his sword resolve was nowhere close to the heights he once had.

“This move is called, The Sword out of the North Mountain. What it means is that once you begin it, there’s no looking back. You have to keep going south. There’s no return path for you back north.”

Zeran nodded. She seemed to understand.

“Good, now try it yourself.”

Xun watched as the disciple-turned-laborer practiced the slash again and again. She wasn’t a sword genius, there was no doubt about that. But she was oddly well suited for the sword path. Perhaps it was because of her experiences or maybe it was due to how she had lost her cultivation, but she took to the sword like a drowning man would take to a straw. She clutched it with all of her strength and the results were evident.

Perhaps if in my past life, my talent for the sword path wasn’t so high, I would have reached a higher realm. Cultivation was never easy, but it wasn’t so hard that I took it with the right seriousness. I wanted too many things, women, wealth, and…

Before Xun could finish that thought, he saw Zeran’s latest slash. It wasn’t exactly perfect yet but there was a ferocity that he could feel even standing a few paces away. For how new she was to the sword path, this was something worthy of praise.

“That one was good,” Xun grunted. “Do a thousand more before you sleep tonight. Make sure each one is just like that.”

Xun turned around and walked away. If Zeran did the thousand, then her understanding of the sword would increase. If she got tired, bored, or anything in between, then that was on her. That was another lesson from his previous life.

I always heard the phrase that sword cultivators have a purity that others don’t. I never understood what that meant until this life. Zeran has to want to improve herself. No one can force her to become better. Not me, and not even my old master.

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Xun’s eyes dimmed at the thought of his master. He walked through the newly grown bamboo grove, lost in thought.

“I never want to raise another chicken, ever again,” Pengzi’s voice snapped Xun out of his thoughts. He looked around and found his friend sitting on the ground. Pengzi’s back was leaning against a particularly hearty bamboo tree, but what really caught Xun’s attention was the fact that a chicken had made his hair into an impromptu nest.

“Is this one of your new ways of raising chicken?” Xun teased. The chicken looked almost smug as it perched on the nest of hair.

“I wish I hadn’t been so stupid to try and increase my chicken’s cultivations,” Pengzi said. He pointed at the chicken on his head. “Now look at what they’re doing. And the worst part is that I can’t even stop them from doing so.”

Xun’s expression turned serious. Pengzi might not have realized it, but he was finding out the hard truth that many beast tamers did. Spirit beasts, no matter how tame, always had a chance of betraying their owner. The bigger the difference in cultivation between beast and human, the higher that chance.

“Pengzi, what’s your cultivation right now?”

“Water Lungs,” Pengzi replied immediately, slightly alarmed by Xun’s sudden serious tone.

“And what would you say this chicken is at?”

“I don’t know. Maybe its at the peak of the Foundation Realm? So roughly a Fire Eyes cultivator?”

“Peak Foundation Realm,” Xun echoed. The good news was that Pengzi hadn’t yet bred a Consecration Realm spirit chicken. Though if he had indeed done that, he’d be both a genius to have done so with such a low cultivation, and also dead by now. “What have you been feeding them?”

“Nothing much. Just a couple of dishes that I found they liked. I used a lot of pretty strange ingredients in it. Like for example, the chickens are fairly heavy on both the Fire and Wood elements. And so I try to avoid water-element plants and instead feed them earthy grains or stringy vegetables.”

Although these were mostly basic facts, Xun wondered if perhaps his friend was some kind of genius at raising spirit beasts. It did suit Pengzi. He was the type of person who would always think twice about others, even spirit beasts, and Xun still remembered the raw emotion displayed on the laborer’s face all those years ago. Perhaps he could empathize more with the animals.

“And have you killed any of them?”

The chicken turned its head to stare at Xun.

“No? Why would —”

“What if I told you that I wanted to kill this one?”

“I don’t —”

“And turn it into a stew, making sure that its bones are so soft that I can crunch them with my teeth.”

Finally, the chicken moved. It clucked angrily and spread its wings, leaping from Pengzi’s head directly at Xun.

He was ready. Turning to the side, Xun pulled out a stack of Talismans. He wasn’t a sword cultivator like Zeran, nor was he focused on his body like Pengzi. The only thing that he seemed to be good at in this second life was being a production line of Talismans. In the short months after the siege of the sect, he had already replenished his supply of them.

“Rice Twelve, you little bastard. I’ll make sure that you can never mate with another chicken again.” Pengzi rushed forward and kicked at the chicken in anger. “How dare you try and attack Xun. It’s your fortune to be eaten by him. You ungrateful little chick.”

The chicken drew back from Pengzi’s kicks. It clucked at Xun again but looked at the Talismans more than the human. Then, it turned its head and wandered away. Xun waited until the chicken was out of sight before he took out a second stack of Talismans and pressed them into Pengzi’s hand.

“I’m sorry Xun. Rice Twelve is the stronger of the flock but he’s also a bit hard to tame sometimes. He seems to have a mind of his own.”

“And he can understand what I say,” Xun said.

“Yeah, I realized that too, which is why I’ve been more lenient against him than with the others. I thought that maybe I could be his friend but…”

“Maybe it’s time to try being their master,” Xun said. He pointed at the Talismans. “Stop feeding them for a few days. If any of them try to fight you, then use those Talismans or beat them up yourself. It doesn’t matter how many spirit chicken you have if you can’t control them.”

Pengzi paused. He opened his mouth to say something but deciding better and took the Talismans.

“I didn’t think that they would do such a thing. I’m sorry.”

Xun shook his head. “Not your fault. I didn’t think that you could raise such a strong chicken so quickly. I should have told you this sooner. Power is good, but strength that you can’t control is worth nothing.”

Pengzi nodded.

—

The next morning, Xun gathered the others at the spirit farm and sought their opinions.

“So the deadline for the mandatory mission is coming. There are two official choices for the mission. You can either go out and hunt for Fangqiu. Or you can fight the Twin Beast and Purple Flower Sect and bring back one of their heads.”

“Both aren’t great choices,” Zhanghao said. “But if I had to choose one, I’d pick the second. We can go out in a group, which should lower the chances of us encountering someone that we can’t handle. There’s strength in numbers. Plus, it’s better for us to act now, when things are still settling down here at the Sacred Gate Sect.”

Xun nodded. “But there’s also a third option. I heard a rumor that the sect is going to host a tournament against the other two sects. And participation counts as completing the mission.”

“Then we should do that,” Pengzi said. His eyes were dark circles, likely from a night of being harassed by his chickens. But with how the flock was angrily eyeing the group of cultivators, it seemed that he hadn’t given in to their demands yet.

“Right,” Xun said. “But there’s a catch. It’ll be fine for us, since we’re at the higher end of the Foundation Realm but for Zeran, she’ll be at a disadvantage.”

“Please don’t consider me in making your decision. I’m grateful for you all taking me in, I couldn’t hold you back at a time like this,” Zeran said. She looked the others in the eye to show her sincerity.

“Well, perhaps you don’t need to hold us back. There’s a way for you to participate in the tournament safely, as long as Dashan is willing,” Xun said with a twinkle in his eyes.