Chapter 12: This Young Master Admires Nature

“Lan Fen I don’t think this is a good idea.”

She had led him out of Clearsprings City and before he even had a chance to appreciate the surroundings led him so deep into the mountains he couldn’t see the city walls anymore. They were hunting, she had told him. For what he didn’t know until they came upon a small spring of water with three huge pigs rolling around its muddy banks.

“Why not?” she said. “The only thing a cultivator fights more than other cultivators is monsters. These Demonic Thrush Pigs have cores you can sell and are a nuisance with how quickly they breed and their tendency to uproot farmland.” Lan Fen searched the tree line as she spoke and ticked her fingers off. “Training, making money, and doing a public service, what more could you ask for?”

Chen Haoran looked at the three offending fingers in front of him, then at the waist-high hell pigs sporting seven-inch tusks, and debated the merits of bending them backward. Then he remembered seeing those same fingers stab a man through his eyes and the thought fled as quickly as it came. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance.

“My life for one?” He took a closer look at the hell pigs, they were too far away for him to sense but given how weird humans are in this crazy world he didn’t expect the wildlife to be any different. “Do monsters cultivate too?”

“Yes, they follow the same realms we do but it’s nowhere near as sophisticated.” Lan Fen’s voice sounded above him and he found as he looked up that rather than scanning the trees for hidden dangers she was looking for a good branch to lie down on. “They are however possessed of more brute force on average than human cultivators of the same realm.”

“Lovely,” he said. “And what will you be doing while I’m fighting for my life?”

Lan Fen had the audacity to pull down a branch full of nuts above her. Selecting the choicest among them she cracked their shells with her bare hands and loudly snacked on them. “Supervising.”

The hell pigs perked up having finally noticed their presence and Chen Haoran hastily drew his sword as the pigs picked themselves ups from the mud. Third Layer of the Qi realm, all of them. “What are you going to do if I die while you’re ‘supervising’?”

“Fear not, I will make sure your tomb has a suitable epitaph then,” she said, waving her finger as if writing it right then and there. “Chen Haoran, laid low by pork. He will not be missed.” She recited that ridiculous epitaph with a deep and somber voice before noticeably brightening. “What do you think?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said looking at Lan Fen with wide eyes even as the hell pigs approached.

“If I don’t erect a memorial to your death by pig then I, Lan Fen, am not human,” she said lightly. “You are not allowed to use the Canyon Carving Sword by the way.”

Chen Haoran had no time to respond as the hell pigs were upon him.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t though.

The largest of the pigs took the lead in charging at him and Chen Haoran waited until the last moment before cycling the qi in his legs and leaping high into the air. The sound of flesh hitting wood, the pigs angry squealing, and Lan Fen’s surprised yelp were music to his ears as he landed. Lan Fen had been shaken from her branch and was forced to wrap her legs around it to avoid falling. She looked at him unamused from her now upside-down position.

Chen Haoran didn’t have the time to properly appreciate the petty revenge he just risked his life for however as the other two hell pigs quickly wheeled around to gore him to death. He whipped around to the side of one pig and stabbed, his sword easily piercing through its thick flesh and into its heart. The pig dropped like a stone. Its compatriot roared and furiously charged at him. Chen Haoran considered whether he should face it head-on, he was stronger than it and his sword could easily pierce its hide.

But he had to be aware, there was still one more after all.

Chen Haoran sidestepped the hell pig and dragged his sword along its flank. The pig did most of the work of splitting itself open for him and fell to the ground once it passed. Chen Haoran looked back and searched for the largest pig but rather than fight it had escaped while he butchered the others. Back secured Lan Fen went and put the remaining pig out of its misery.

He marveled as he watched the blood slide right off the Mysterious Watersteel Sword. A Spiritual Treasure, as he later learned it was called, followed the same ranks as techniques which meant his sword wasn’t much to write home about compared to his Earth rank techniques but he definitely wouldn’t have killed these pigs so easily with a normal iron sword. He didn’t admire his sword for long though as he had more important things to do.

Like gloating.

“How was that Lan Fen?” he said. He couldn’t hide the smugness in his voice if he tried. He waited for an answer but all he received was the sound of chirping insects. He looked around the trees but didn’t see Lan Fen anywhere. “Lan Fen?”

Something small and hard smashed against the back of his head he practically flew with how far he jumped forward only to turn around and see Lan Fen on a different tree bouncing a nut in her hand another nut just like it laid on the ground where he a just been.

“You handled that fast,” she said. The underbrush around them began to rustle and squeal. “So I went and found you some more pigs.”

“Oh, you bi-” Chen Haoran’s curse was cut short as the first of the angry pigs burst out from the brush.

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This was going to be a long day.

—————

“So what did we learn?”

“That you’re a vindictive bitch.” Chen Haoran said. Picking leaves out of his hair.

“That much should have been obvious.”

After his little prank, Lan Fen had led him on a goose chase involving what felt like damn near every Demonic Thrush Pig on the mountain. He didn’t know how she was sensing them before him but she lead him straight into several groups like a GPS from hell and when he got wise to it she provoked other pigs and lead them to him instead. She didn’t leave the trees once while doing it either and the less said about his disastrous attempt to climb after her the better.

Suffice to say he was muddy, bloody, and miserable. Thankfully he wasn’t seriously injured, anytime a pig was about to maim him an accurately thrown nut struck its eyes or nostrils and gave him the opening needed to escape.

He would have been more thankful if Lan Fen didn’t hit him with twice as many nuts after every save.

Lan Fen didn’t even accept any of the hell pig’s monster cores! They were too common and low level in her words. Which begged the question of just how the hell they were going to make any money out here.

“How the hell are we supposed to be making money out here?” They had been hiking in the mountain for a while now, so much so that even Lan Fen was starting to sweat. He was starting to get a little worried about stronger monsters showing up the further they got from civilization.

“Before I lost my cultivation I had hidden a chunk of my savings here.” So either Lan Fen was paranoid or his theory she deliberately lost her cultivation had another check mark added to it. “Ordinarily it would have been difficult to reach before I reached the Second Layer but with you here the way gets cleared and you can train.”

“How was that clearing the way! You brought all those hell pigs to me!”

“Oh stop complaining, I made sure to avoid the stronger ones.” Lan Fen bent a low-hanging branch out of the way and let it loose when she passed and the branch swung sharply towards Chen Haoran’s face.

Rather than dodge, he cycled qi through his head and broke the branch on his face. He looked at Lan Fen as if her little trick was nothing. Which was a lie, his face stung like shit, but it was a matter of principle.

Eventually, they reached a clearing devoid of trees save for one large tree in the center. Lan Fen stopped dead in her tracks and Chen Haoran studied the clearing. The area was a suspiciously even circle around the central tree.

“Gee could you have picked a more obvious area to hide your stuff?” he said. His sarcasm came out tired but he needed a win today.

“It was not before,” Lan Fen whispered. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the tree ever since they got near and when Chen Haoran looked down he saw she had stopped just before the circle.

He observed the tree carefully not seeing anything wrong. His sense couldn’t extend that far either. He was just about to ask Lan Fen what she saw when it finally moved. What he thought was tree bark was instead camouflage that wrapped up to a branch that wasn’t one at all.

The giant snake opened one green eye.

“Tree Sitting Python,” Lan Fen said, her tone grave. “Ninth-Layer Qi realm.”

“Where did you say your stuff was?” He hoped it was somewhere close by. Whatever could make Lan Fen sound serious wasn’t something he wanted to mess with.

“Buried under that tree.”

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