Awesome / Beware of Chicken

• Jin's first onscreen fight against a cultivator results in his opponent breaking his own fingers onto Jin's chest.
• The animals of Fa Ram vs Sun Ken and his bandits. It ends in a hard fought victory for the animals.
• Lu Ri, on his quest to track down Jin and deliver his mail, very casually breaks down a dozen disparate organizations and gangs and reforms them into the Plum Blossom's Shadow, solely to make his job easier. It's implied that he's considering turning them into cultivator mailmen.
  • Shen Yu, one of the most powerful Cultivators in the world, hears that he did this in a mere three months and notes that Lu Ri's promotion to Elder is a matter of when, not if.
• Several of the "Disciples" of "Fa Ram" get moments of awesome during the fight against the Shrouded Mountain at the Dueling Peaks Tournament:
  • Yun Ren's practice with illusions of light and shadow pays off, and Nezan's spirit clone reveals that he'd swapped Yun Ren's sword with Summer Sky, an Empathic Weapon with centuries of experience and the ability to perfectly counter the Shrouded Mountain Sect's lightning techniques. As a result, he's able to make Fenxian's attempt to kidnap him into something like a fight against a ghost in a house of mirrors.
  • Likewise, Gou Ren's practice with Qi hardening comes in useful. He has basically no technique and his only weapon is a bamboo stick, but his skin becomes like stone, his stick unbreakable, and he causes miniature earthquakes with every blow. Yingwen is forced to dodge, because even though the strikes are amateurish, there's enough force behind each to make them potentially lethal anyway.
  • Liu Xianghua decides that Gou Ren, her new boyfriend, is worth fighting for, and initiates combat by hurling her bedroll at Yingwen.
  • The other younger generation of cultivators get in a variety of little moments of awesome, each deciding that even a fight against stronger opponents is worth it to protect their newfound friends.
  • Ri Zu and Xiulan manage to concoct a variety of vile poisons and deceive Lu Ban into ingesting one, in a successful attempt to cause a distraction to free Tigu.
  • Xiulan then leads the majority of the Shrouded Mountain Sect's disciples on a merry chase across the town, disabling most of them and holding out for a respectably long time against Lu Ban, whose cultivation is a whole realm above hers.
  • Bi De then shows up Just in Time to save Xiulan, and despite fighting a desperate Delaying Action against Lu Ban, he maintains his cool, gets several good hits in, and even manages to give him grief for being fought to a standstill by a chicken.
• Jin arrives and near-singlehandedly puts a stop to the fighting by killing Lu Ban and intimidating all the others into submission by merely revealing his intent.
  • Jin's "fight" consists of merely a single punch. Lu Ban sees Jin begin to chamber what is described as the absolute most simple technique a cultivator can learn and decides to just run for his life, only to die instantly as the punch tears through Lu Ban, all five of his protective talismans, and gets him launched 1000 li away into a far-off mountain. Somebody who hears about the incident doubts that there's even a corpse left.
  • On top of this is the narrative description of the punch itself. Never has so simple a technique been described so understatedly epically:
    Feet drew power from the Earth. Hips twisted to refine it in the Core. The Core stabilized and channeled energy to the Shoulder. Shoulder pulled back Arm to condense Qi. Arm lengthened to send forward a Fist.
    The Fist became a Blow.
    With all the weight of the world behind it.
• The Lord Magistrate and Jin finally clear up their misunderstandings thanks to the timely intervention of the Magistrate's wife. Jin then asks him for lessons in politics.
• Meiling and Ri Zu using a combination of acupuncture, surgery, and Qi-enhanced herbs to repair Liu Bowu's broken leg.
• The final assault upon the demonic beachhead. It is exactly what you might expect from the climactic battle of a more traditional Xianxia plot arc: legions of disciplined mortals led by entire sects of righteous cultivators pitted against an enormous horde of slavering demons, epic duels between the demonic generals and the most powerful cultivators, massive battlefield-reshaping formations, everything a grand climactic Xianxia battle should be. And it ends with the demonic forces annihilated, and the legions of the Phoenix Empire triumphant.
• While meeting and getting to know the various residents of Fa Ram, Shen Yu learns that Baowu, the only non-cultivator of the group, intends to seek immortality – not by ascending to the heavens, but by creating something so amazing that his name will live on forever. Shen Yu honestly can't help but approve of such ambition.
• The fact Bi De becoming a human is anti-climatic. He's just so powerful as a spirit beast that becoming a human is a step down for him.
• After Bi De successfully becomes a human, Ri Zu's gains the determination to be able to follow him and finds out, after looking at Chow Ji's previous attempt through the technique she remembers, that not only was Chow Ji's transformation flawed, she has gained in the knowledge necessary to make a perfect human transformation. And this ends up being part of a breakthrough for her, increasing her power!
• Xianghua decides to become the leader of the Misty Lake Sect, so she has to undergo a series of trials. The first, the Trial of Might, requires her to defeat at least three Elders. She defeats all of them. Without her Steam Furnace. The second trial needs her to enter the Hall of Meditation - actually the Lord of the Lake's bedroom - and activate the formation in the pool in the middle of the room. Her father took a week to do so. Because it is the same formation used to power her Steam Furnace, Xianghua does it in mere minutes. The third trial has her meditate in the Misty Lake. Rather than be assaulted by heart demons and the likes, Xianghua instead sees the conflict between the Water and Wood qi and, thanks to Fa Ram's lessons, gives her own qi to the land... and allows Tianlan to connect to the Misty Lake. Tianlan in turn stabilizes the conflict between Water and Wood, bringing balance to the place.
• Among the samples of plants that the Azure Jade Trading Company was able to get for Jin and Meiling is a mushroom that could cure cancer. And now Jin and Meiling will attempt to find a way to grow them en masse.
  The other things they had gotten were a bunch of edible and medicinal mushrooms—including one that blew my mind and made Meimei actually swoon. It was some kind of cordyceps mushroom growing out of a caterpillar that could apparently cure cancer. Or at least significantly reduce the effects of the disease.
  And unlike the snake oil from the Before, this cure actually worked. Because Xianxia magic.
  
  Unfortunately, they were both extremely rare and expensive as hell. Or at least they were right now.
  Because if there was one thing me and Meimei were good at… it's growing things. It may take decades, and we may need a few more to dial it in, but with luck?
  Well, cancer could go fuck itself.