“The sword is sharpened through combat. It dulls and rusts if it’s kept in its sheathe,” Xun said as he watched Zeran study her opponent.

She nodded in acknowledgement to his words and steadied her breath. When her opponent twitched, she twitched with it, keeping her spirit sword in front of her as a warning.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” To the side, Pengzi was looking between Zeran and her opponent with sweat on his forehead. “Someone’s going to get hurt.”

Xun smiled as he turned to face his friend. “Who do you think is going to get hurt? Zeran or Rice Four?”

“I think… Rice Four is the equivalent of a Wood Skin cultivator. She isn’t very aggressive, but after being starved for the past two days, all of the chickens are a bit antsy. I know that Sister Zeran used to be quite talented, but is this perhaps too soon for her? Maybe we should —”

Before Pengzi could finish his thought, Zeran moved. With a quick step forward, she thrust her sword and pivoted away before the hen could counterattack. Rice Four gave chase, flapping its wings and aiming a peck at Zeran’s trailing leg. Zeran twisted her wrist, swinging the sword in a full arc and bringing it into a defensive position. The hen backed off when it saw that it was heading right into the metal blade.

“Peng, I’m sure that Brother Xun is sure of things. And we can always step in before anything happens,” Zhanghao said from the side. “Besides, this is a good idea. We haven’t really fought in a tournament setting yet and your chickens are pretty good opponents.”

Xun ignored the comments as he watched Zeran’s movements. They were slow, and out of rhythm. As time went on, she was being led by her opponent's speed. When Rice Four pecked, she defended. When it flew, she hesitated. When it tried to scratch her with its spurs, she retreated.

“At the core of sword cultivation is a belief. With a sword in my hand, I can split open the world. It doesn’t matter if you have a single enemy or if you’re facing an army of hundreds. Nor does it matter if you’re fighting someone with a higher cultivation. The path of the sword cultivator is simple. Advance, or die.”

Zeran stopped her retreat and sprung forward with strength from her hind leg. Her face was a mask, devoid of emotion, as she met the chicken. In seconds, she was scratched multiple times but its spurs. But she didn’t waste her injuries. Her sword was raised high and she slashed down.

Now, it was Rice Four’s turn to hesitate. It didn’t know whether to retreat, defend, or continue its assault. Soon, it didn’t the time to choose. The sword was right on top of its head. Right as it was about to make contact, a great mound of earth rose to meet the strike and bounced it aside.

“The Sword out of the North Mountain,” Xun chuckled. “Well done Zeran, you’ve won.”

Zeran brought her sword back to her side and bowed to her opponent. Rice Four made a noise that was something in between a cluck and a squeak before running back to the chicken coop.

“Peng? Could you send out Rice Five?”

“Huh, oh, sure.” Pengzi snapped out of his shock as he quickly ran to the coop to find the right chicken.

“The best way for a sword cultivator to get stronger is through combat. To fight and keep fighting when your body can no longer take the strain. And finding a way to extract even the energy from your sword for one extra swing,” Xun said.

Unlike Rice Four, Rice Five flew out from the coop with blood in its eyes. The chicken quickly locked onto Zeran and began running forward. Xun waited to see if Zeran would show fear. She didn’t. In fact, if anything, she learned her lesson from before and rushed forward to meet the chicken’s charge.

From the first attack, Xun knew that this second fight was going to be entirely different from the first one. Both sides disregarded defense as they tried to maximize their offensive output. Zeran traded a scratch on her arm for a strike onto the chicken’s neck. But even with zhen powering her sword, she couldn’t break the defense of the bird’s feathers.

As the wounds accumulated on both sides, Zeran began to slow down first. Her strikes became less precise and slower. On the other hand, Rice Five, buoyed by its success, began to take more and more risks. And thanks to Zeran’s waning morale, these risks went unpunished.

After a few more exchanges like that, Rice Five went in for the kill. Xun glanced at Pengzi and saw that he looked pale, as if he never imagined that his chickens would hurt those close to him. That was a lesson better learned earlier rather than later.

Zeran clumsily blocked the attack and was rewarded with a peck to her sword hand. She almost dropped the sword as blood spilled out of her new wound.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Do you want to quit?” Xun asked, using zhen to amplify his voice.

She showed her answer through her actions. Instead of backing up to safety, she switched her sword to her left hand and rushed forward. She swung, slashed, and thrust. Under the barrage of attacks, Rice Five began to retreat. It tried to block some of the attacks with its wings, but more often than not, it simply dodged out of the way.

Soon, Zeran lost her momentum. Her swings once again slowed as her breath became ragged. Even her zhen output began to wobble.

Seeing that as an opportunity, Rice Five went back on the offensive. It ducked under a loose sword swing and flew to about face height and aimed a peck at Zeran’s face.

Xun was about to cast a technique to stop the fight when Zeran suddenly smiled. She grasped her sword with both hands and did the reverse of her previous winning strike. Before Rice Five could land its attack, it found itself in the path of a sword that was speeding toward its chest. Abandoning its strike, it flapped its wings and found purchase against a gust of wind. But that was too little, too late.

Zeran’s strike landed against the chicken without any buffer from Xun and proceeded to make a giant gash against the front of its chest. Rice Five flew back down to the ground, wounded, and Zeran paused, waiting for her victory to be acknowledged.

That never came. The chicken sped to the side and began beating her with its wings, careful to stay far away from the sword. Caught off guard, Zeran was forced into a defensive posture as each subsequent attack from the chicken came closer and closer.

She found a small gap in the blows to force Rice Five back and raised her sword high, hoping to repeat her previous move of The Sword out of the North Mountain. She had the desperation aspect down pretty well and the attack was genuinely dangerous. But Rice Five was more desperate than her. Instead of blocking the attack or hesitating like Rice Four did, it went straight for Zeran’s throat with its beak.

A wall of water appeared out of thin air and slammed into the chicken. For Zeran, she found herself stuck in the attacking position with branches tangled around her arms.

“That’s enough, I think,” Xun said as the two struggled against their restraints. “I think we can call this one a draw.”

Pengzi went over to Rice Five to look at its wounds. And Zhanghao began to walk towards Zeran when Xun stopped her.

“Zeran, what do you think you did wrong there?” Xun asked as he released the wood-technique he had used to stop her.

Zeran sheathed her blade back into its sheath and turned back to Xun while still bloody from the fight. “I think that I could have struck quicker. Or I could have retreated back into the distance after the initial blow landed. I thought that it would stop after taking a wound so serious.”

Xun shook his head. “Those are the symptoms, not the cause. You lost because you weren’t desperate enough.”

“Lost?” Emotion surfaced on Zeran’s face. “I would have sliced Rice Five in two if the strike went through.”

“And you would have died with your throat missing. Death is the same as defeat. It doesn’t matter if your opponent dies with you.”

“But isn’t that the whole point of The Sword out of the North Mountain?” Zeran argued. “It leaves me full of openings. Anyone who attacks me then will be able to take my life. Then wouldn’t I have lost?”

Xun nodded before shaking his head. “Your thoughts are right, but there’s something missing. When you think about a strike like that, your first thought should be simple. If you’re going to hurt me, I’m going to hurt you back. You should show that you’re desperate enough to do something crazy like that. But you used it when Rice Five was already wounded. It had nothing to lose by trading blows with you. More than that, it was starting to win with its flurry of blows. Its only logical decision in a situation like that was to attack. But if you had used it earlier when it was still healthy? It would have retreated.”

“I think… I understand,” Zeran said.

“Good.” Xun began walking away. “Peng, when you’re done with Rice Five, send out Rice Six for Zeran to fight. Don’t interfere in their fight unless they’ve done something stupid. We'll have our own tournament of chickens. And Zhanghao, could you follow me?”

—

A couple of months after the Nine Thunder siege, a person had to look extremely closely to see the remaining vestiges of the fights that had occurred around the spirit farm. Plants had grown over the land that Xun’s fire Talismans had burned, and the chunky squirrels that Xun saw back when he was just a laborer had also returned.

Walking among the bamboo trees, Xun found a rather secluded spot as he gestured for Zhanghao to sit.

“What kind of cultivator do you want to be?” Xun asked.

“I’m not too sure,” Zhanghao answered. “I like working with plants, and the poison seemed well suited for me. But I don’t know if I truly enjoy fighting the same way that you or even Pengzi might.”

“Why not?” Xun probed. “Do you think poison’s beneath you?”

“Oh no, nothing like that.” Zhanghao waved her hands in protest. “I guess I’m just not too sure if there’s a future in poison. The most that I can cultivate is something that’s effective against someone at the Wood Skin stage. At the Water Lungs Stage, someone can just hold their breath which means that I need to either poison them without their knowledge or I need to get close enough to inject it into them. Neither of which sound too possible as I go up in cultivation.”

Xun rubbed his chin. That was indeed one of the problems that he noticed with her False Lavender powder. It was rather easy to spot once someone knew what they were looking for and any cultivator with half a mind working would know to dodge away from a cloud of purple mist.

“What did you do before this?” Xun asked. “I remember that during our planning, Pengzi could barely keep up with what was going on. But you could almost see the moves that each sect would make before they made them.”

Zhanghao nodded. “My father, he was a general of a mortal army. When he saw that I had cultivation talent, he made the sacrifice and left his post, spending the next ten years teaching me everything he knew before…”

“I see,” Xun said quickly. The Nine Thunder Sect’s way of cutting off a cultivator’s mortal attachments by killing their parents was brutal and barbaric. “Well then, maybe I might have a path for you.”