Beware Of Chicken / Tropes A to F

Tropes A to F | Tropes G to N | Tropes O to Z

Return to Main.

---

#-A

• Abduction Is Love:
  • Jin is taken aback to hear about how Ten Ren gave up on winning over Nezin Hu Li's father, and just kidnapped her. But she seems to be happy about it, and her account implies that it was consensual, so he decides he won't judge.
  • It later turns out to be a long-standing cultural practice; Gou Ren and Xianghua encounter each other, each with a rope, and can never agree later on which of them actually abducted the other.
• Absurd Cutting Power: Imbuing qi into his tools allows Jin to saw hardwood timber like paper and plough ground like a knife through butter, without ever having to manually sharpen the metal.
• Accidental Bargaining Skills: Jin has looked around the marketplace and seen that ten silver coins is a normal price for a luxury item, so when Guan Bo offers fifty for a jar of maple syrup, he frowns in puzzlement. Guan Bo misinterprets it and promptly increases his offer to sixty. (Subverted when the rising offer clues Jin in to the worth of his goods, and he bumps the price up further on purpose.)
• Accidental Truth: When Jin declared that rather than chasing the heavens, he would make his own, he only meant that he would make a place of happiness and peace on earth. But others such as his gramps Shen Yu take it to mean that he plans to make the whole province ascend. Tianlan, who is aware of the misunderstanding, reflects that such an ascension might actually be possible.
• Achievement In Ignorance:
  • Jin sees his farming as a way to get away from the cultivation world. His Qi-powered farming techniques are driving his cultivation to untold heights. This turns out to be even more of an achievement than anyone thought: this cultivation method wouldn't have worked anywhere but the Azure Hills. When Bi De travels to the Howling Fang Mountains to infiltrate the Shrouded Mountain Sect, he offers his Qi to the land, but receives none in return. This is because the Howling Fang Mountains don't have an awakened earth spirit like Tianlan Shan, who refills the Qi offered to her by Jin and his disciples every night. Had Jin settled somewhere else, he could have become stuck at the level he was at or even lost power.
  • He knows that maple syrup is a saleable product, but he has no idea that it contains fire and earth qi in excellent balance, worth hundreds of coins a bottle, until he's actually selling it.
  • Similarly, he knows that his rice is good, grown with his Earth knowledge of proper planting techniques, but doesn't realise that it's actually of a grade not seen locally in a thousand years, too valuable to even sell to anyone nearby.
  • Fenxian desecrates the corpse of Zang Li to vent his anger and frustration, after confirming that the disciple had been killed and possessed. More specifically, he targets the puddle of oil and blood congealed under the body, repeatedly blasting the slurry with lightning until it's entirely incinerated. The puddle was actually Lu Ban's true self, and Fenxian's attack may be why Lu Ban became unrecoverably dead.
  • It turns out that one of the rules for bonds such as the one Jin initiates with the Earth Spirit is that they cannot be deliberately initiated. Only one who pours his power into the Earth without thought of reward can form the Pact of Shennong.
  • When Bi De goes to the Howling Fang Mountains to infiltrate the Shrouded Mountain Sect in human form and investigate for signs of demonic corruption he continues his custom of offering his qi to the earth every day, just as he has done since his awakening in the Azure Hills. He had no idea that this would eventually awaken the earth spirit of the Howling Fang Mountains. She recognizes the qi as partially belonging to Tianlan Shan, her sister, who she still believed was sundered. It's likely she would have remained dormant without this stimulation.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Lu Ri, upon meeting a sect member capable of manifesting an aura of oppressive Intent, took it as an opportunity, and successfully persuaded her to let him experience it randomly throughout the following month until he could keep his composure. It serves him well when dealing with upset elders about Jin's departure.
• Action Girl:
  • Jin meets one in the form of Xiulan, a more typical Xianxia heroine.
  • Tigu, the farm cat, counts as well.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Jin would have stopped his fish from bouncing after a village boy for revenge for throwing a rock for him to catch instead of food, but the villagers are just laughing, and he thinks it's funny too, so he figures all is well.
  • Meiling could have chosen to take offence at Guan Bo and Guan Chyou mistaking Xiulan for Jin's wife, but she just finds their faces hilarious when they realize their mistake, and the rest of the family soon joins in the laughter.
  • Lu Ban's master finds that the way that the now-dead demon cultivator screwed up- not just failing a technique that should make him virtually invincible via body surfing, but exposing their whole operation to the Shrouded Mountain sect, who then went on a rampage, costing them huge amounts of time, lives, and resources- is so incredible that he can't help but laugh.
• Adopt the Food: When Jin realizes that his two pigs Chunky and Peppa have absorbed enough Qi to become sapient Spirit Beasts like Big D, his first feeling is that of disgruntlement and that he wants his pork dinner eventually. He quickly gets over it and adopts them into his household.
• Again with Feeling: When the air is finally cleared between Jin and the Lord Magistrate, the magistrate finally relaxes, knowing that he's not on the verge of having his town razed to the ground, and Jin has his back. "Now all he had to do was teach the man who was apparently the new power of the Azure Hills how to deal with every other cultivator sect." And then he realizes what he just said.
  He paused.
  Now he had to teach the man who was the new power of the Azure Hills how to deal with every other cultivator sect!
  His stomach churned, as the weight of his newfound goal settled on his shoulders.
  His face was still blank with a smile.
  Inside his mind, he screamed in terror.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Zang Li/Lu Ban tells Xiulan to kowtow before him if she wants him to listen, she does, dropping to her knees and begging his generosity. However, despite his approving laughter, he still refuses her request.
• All for Nothing: Miantiao goes into a state of depression when he learns that all of his martial arts training, and turning Yin into a weapon of vengeance, were for nothing since the one he was training her to get revenge by proxy on, Sun Ken, was dead.
• Alliance with an Abomination: Although "abomination" is a bit misleading. One who follows the path of Shennong may be able to form a pact with an earth spirit. The pact grants long life, prosperity, and peace, but requires the recipient to give up striving for power and immortality; they will certainly die someday. Jin unknowingly — as is usually the case with such individuals — contracts with a very powerful earth spirit.
• And Then What?:
  • Miantiao and Yin get hit hard with this, after receiving news of Sun Ken's death. Thankfully, Bi De is there to help.
  • After winning the Dueling Peaks Tournament Xiulan begins to wonder what she is going to do with her newfound power and prestige, as her old motivations — to defy the heavens and become the strongest cultivator — no longer seem important to her.
  • This is one of the key aspects of Jin's argument against the standard Cultivation methods that his grandfather espouses - no one knows what happens once you ascend, and what happens when you finally reach the top?
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: There are celebrations across the countryside at the death of Sun Ken, the Whirling Demon Blade. Re-enactments by actors or puppets become popular, and the "Demon Slaying Orchid" is renowned far and wide. Which is why Jin gave Sun Ken's blade to Xiulan and let her take the credit; he wanted people to know of Sun Ken's death so they could stop being afraid, but he didn't want the attention.
• Anti-Climax:
  • The reaper wolf known as the Wicked Blade has been terrorizing the province for three hundred years, and then it sneaks around the village while Jin is visiting... whereupon Jin kills it with a single blow of his shovel and doesn't even realize it was anything special.
  • Jin is stunned to realize that he's spent the last year hiding fearfully away from...the mailman. Albeit with a rather significant letter.
  • After learning about the history of the Azure Hills involving an usurped empire, demonic incursions, a betrayed earth spirit and the entire region being elementally sundered, the Fa Ram's reaction is... to shrug and carry on with their work. Even when the legendary cultivator Shen Yu is informed, he says it fills in a few blanks but is ultimately not a time-pressed emergency that needs to be solved right then.
• Ant War: Vajra declares war on mosquitoes after seeing them suck blood from the inhabitants of Fa Ram, and exterminates all who come within reach. She later has her subordinates make artwork to commemorate the victory.
• Apocalypse How: Bi De finds indications of a Regional/Societal Disruption event in the distant past, with a large arrangement of shrines aligned to the five qi elements — wood, metal, water, fire, and earth — but with the elements now rotated one place in the generative cycle, the forest was burned, the metal quarry was flooded, the lake was overgrown with weeds, the volcanic area was buried, and the stone land was transmuted to iron. It appears to have been designed to feed power to the earth spirit, but something broke or corrupted it, and it shattered her.
• Apple of Discord: Shen Yu's trial of the Shrouded Mountain Sect can be seen as this, as he walks into their midst, shoves down their Patriarch, declares an Imperial investigation of the sect for demonic influence, reveals their hidden origins for all to see - namely that they were founded through the machinations of a treacherous kinslayer - and then leaves, satisfied that there isn't any demonic influence and willing to let the sect handle their "internal affairs". And as he and his disciples walk out, the Shrouded Mountain Sect devolves into an open schism behind them.
• Appeal to Force: The Shrouded Mountain junior disciples really don't want to pick a fight with Jin, because they can tell he would flatten them all, but if their conflict gets political, then the full sect would feel obligated to get involved and would be capable of annihilating any resistance in the Azure Hills. Until Jin produces evidence that he's backed by the Cloudy Sword sect, which is a far bigger fish than the Shrouded Mountain, giving them ample excuse to humbly and apologetically back down.
• Arcadia: The Azure Hills, are quiet, without the strife and drama of many other nations, and Jin's farm in particular is strongly in touch with nature. It's implied that this is largely because there isn't much Qi around, so cultivators haven't paid enough attention to wreck the place.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • As Tigu is preparing to undergo Tribulation in order to achieve human form, the land spirit tries to dissuade her, asking Tigu what is it that she she hopes to achieve by doing so. Both engage in a volley of this trope and the next, both admitting that they seek/sought human form because what they wanted was a closer connection to humans, and acknowledge that despite the inherent physical and spiritual risks, the wish to understand and be understood is ultimately Worth It.
  • Meiling asks Shen Yu how he will respond if Jin doesn't want to follow the path he intends, and he freezes up, then changes the subject. After she's left, he meditates on her question, recognising that he doesn't have an answer.
    Meiling: What if he refuses your demands? Tell me, Shen Yu. How conditional is your love for him?
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Jin is worrying about becoming like the cultivators he left behind, hungering for power and conquest, Meiling shrugs and tells him, "The answer is simple. Don't." He breaks down laughing, and recognizing the sense in her words, is able to let go of most of his worry about it.
• Arranged Marriage: Appears to be the norm here.
  • Downplayed with Meiling, whose father announces her engagement to Jin without specifically talking to her first, but only after he knows she's interested; he wants her to be happy. (She's startled by his proclamation to the village, but excited, running straight into Jin's arms.)
  • Played straight with Xiulan, who anticipates her father choosing a political match for her and is unenthusiastic but dutiful.
  • Lu Ri has been set up with the granddaughter of a sect elder, with whom he finds conversation to be awkward, and he is almost entirely without sexual desire in any case, but he is very dedicated to his duty. Unbeknownst to him, while she remains cold and dignified in public, as soon as she's alone, she swoons and gushes to herself over how wonderful he is and how glad she is of her grandfather's choice.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: As expected given the setting and genre, arrogant Young Mistresses and Masters who take offense at nearly anything and whose go-to conflict resolution method is beating the living hell out of people with magical martial arts are common.
  • Jin is a subversion as although he's both a very powerful cultivator and an Isekai protagonist, he is a Humble Hero who is unfailingly polite to everyone he meets and wants nothing more than to live peacefully on his farm with his family. He will, however, jokingly dive headfirst into the trope when he figures out a Mundane Utility for his Qi.
    Fool. This is only the first form of my cuisine! Teriyaki burgers will flow! Poutine will flourish! I will master the Dao of Cooking, and all will fear my might!
  • Bi De becomes an arrogant Young Master after defeating Basi Bu Shi but learns to be humble after he is deceived and nearly killed by Chow Ji, only to be saved by the lowly Ri Zu.
  • Xiulan, although honorable and upright, had some tendencies this way but softens up after spending time at Fa Ram.
  • Xianghua acts like one, but isn't. She has a hard time reading social cues and body language, so she defaults to this sort of behavior since it's relatively easy to do consistently and the reactions she gets from others are mostly predictable.
  • In fact, very few of the cultivators met in the Azure Hills region are really arrogant, although Meiling does recall seeing one kill a beggar child for getting in his way.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Cultivator society basically functions on this principle. The stronger you are, the more authority you have within the sect. Likewise between sects; a stronger sect can give orders to weaker ones. This is played with however in that although cultivators are generally above mortals in the social hierarchy, among mortals there is much more rule of law and power derives much more from tradition or legal authority than violence or the threat of it. This trope is part of why The Lord Magistrate was so confused by Jin; The Lord Magistrate was expecting a super-powerful cultivator to be an example of this trope, and thus saw all of Jin's actions through it, while in reality Jin was trying to behave as a mortal servant would.
• Attack Hello: When Jin's Gramps first arrives at Fa Ram, he announces his arrival by flaring his Qi, causing Jin to respond to the threat by charging in with his fist cocked. Gramps answers in kind, and the three-year reunion between them is punctuated by a powerful Punch Parry between them.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Jin's qi-infused foodstuffs are simultaneously this and Boring, but Practical. On the one hand, growing spirit herbs and refining them into pills would produce far more potent cultivation boosters for the same expenditure of qi and effort. But on the other hand, you can't take too many pills too quickly or the impurities will build up and poison you, while Jin's products can be eaten for every meal without difficulty.
• Avengers Assemble:
  • After dispatching a scout, Bi De calls the other Disciples, who turn up one by one and march together on the bandit camp.
  • The inhabitants of Fa Ram later appear in sequence in Tianlan's domain, in spirit form, to help Tianlan prepare for winter, each setting out to take up part of the task of building her a home. Jin and Bi De cut logs, Gou Ren gathers stones, Xiulan and Meiling weave reeds into a mattress, and Chunky is just the right size for Tianlan to lean against in her tired state.

B

• Badass Boast: When a cultivator asks Ri Zu what her dream is, she says it's to help people by being a good doctor. They then ask if it's not to challenge the heavens, and her answer shows just how little she cares about the rote slog of the average cultivator, if not their entire goal.
  Ri Zu: If the heavens feel challenged, they may feel challenged. Ri Zu has work to do.
• Bait-and-Switch: When it's time to head home from Hong Yaowu, Jin walks to his sleigh and whistles for Chunky and Peppa, who come trotting over — and jump into the driving seat, while Jin picks up the front of the sleigh and starts running with it, to the villagers' laughter.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment:
  • After wearing themselves out with hockey, Jin tells Xiulan that he'll run a bath for her and they'll have more fun afterward. She tenses, but doesn't want to argue with the powerful man who saved her life.
    "Yeah, we're gonna play answer-go!" he said cheerfully. "Winner gets to ask the loser one question! Dare you challenge me?"
    She paused. Wait, what?
  • On a later visit, she gets her revenge; Meiling is away, so she asks, "Perhaps I could keep you company tonight?" Jin is shocked and can't help but stare — until she brings out the Go board.
    Xiulan: Oh? Is something the matter? How else would this one keep you company, Master Jin, aside from a rousing game of Answer-Go?
  • When Tigu hears that Xiulan is helping Gou Ren to find a woman, she declares it "a monumental task," causing Gou to deflate. She then goes on to explain that there are very few women worthy of her Junior Brother, or any of Fa Ram's disciples, causing Gou to do a double take.
• Band of Brothers: After learning that the Azure Hills sects all used to be incredibly close allies instead of rivals in the far-off past, Xiulan decides to endeavor to unite them all again to prevent future threats like Sun Ken rising. She, Tigu, Xianghua, Tie Delun, Dong Chou, Zang Wei, Yin and Zhang Fei all make an Oath on the grounds of Fa Ram to be the first members of this alliance and to protect the weak from harm - an oath that is equated in the narrative to Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei's brotherhood oath in the peach garden.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Jin, natch. He does sometimes wield a shovel against wolves and foxes, but when given a ceremonial sword, he reflects that all he knows how to do with it is swing or throw it at someone, then End Them Rightly with his fists.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind:
  • After her battle against Sun Ken, where many lives were lost on both sides, Xiulan is plagued over and over by dreams where she relives the deaths of her soldiers and then gets killed by Sun Ken. With the earth spirit's tutelage, she eventually reaches a point where she wins the dream fight and vanquishes him — Just in Time, as it appears that the internal manifestation of him was gaining presence and becoming some form of demon.
  • Xiulan again experiences one of these, this time against Lu Ban's fire Qi which has ignited her wood Qi. It takes the form of a wildfire in a grass field in her mind. She is able to extinguish it with the help of Ri Zu channeling water Qi provided by Xianghua. Then, with the help of the earth spirit, plus what she has learned from Jin, Xianghua, and others, she is able to restore her ability to cultivate, in the same way that a burned-out forest will grow back stronger because of the nutrients deposited in the soil from the ashes.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Jin accidentally wins the devoted loyalty of the spirit of the Azure Hills, who has been deeply wounded by a mysterious ancient calamity, and has been essentially in a coma for untold years. Jin's devoted investment of work and qi causes her to start healing — and become very attached to him, pouring her power back into him and never wanting him to leave.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: The Lord Magistrate of the local town Verdant Hill is not happy about having someone living nearby who could probably destroy his town by accident if he went all out. And every time Jin does something generous, the magistrate drives himself to distraction worrying about the implications of being indebted to such a person. Every time he tries to repay Jin, however, Jin does something else for him in gratitude.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension:
  • Downplayed with Meiling, who is understandably wary upon sensing that Jin has powerful qi, and then incensed by him dragging her into a mudhole — in her good clothes! — to join his game with the local children, but who can't help noticing how well built he is. And the fact that he is playing with children rather than slaughtering them for getting in his way as many cultivators would. She warms up to him considerably after he kills the Reaper Wolf known as the "Wicked Blade", and then protects her best friend from being raped.
  • Gou Ren's first interaction with Liu Xianghua is him seeing her seemingly about to kill an old man for getting in her way and him moving to intervene, only for her to instead loudly and hammily berate the old man for being absent-minded and almost getting run over by a cart, and just sending him on his way. Then when she notices Gou Ren, she asks him if he would've intervened, and his Blunt "Yes" of an answer intrigues her.
• Benevolent Dictator: Thousands of years ago, a man named Xiaoshi led a rebellion against a tyrannical and cruel emperor, ultimately confronting and slaying him in a duel — and to Xiaoshi's surprise and chagrin, his followers then hailed him as the new emperor. He accepted the role, however, rather than leave a power vacuum, and led the country into a golden age of harmony with the spirit of the earth, Tianlan. Unfortunately, with the death of the old emperor, the Mist Wall that kept out demons began to decay...
• Berserk Button:
  • Wa Shi returns to his home under Jin's house — and finds that other fish have moved in. The narrative just mentions that he "saw red", before cutting to Jin's point of view, watching a carp get smacked upward out of the water and then hit five times in mid-air before being spiked back down.
  • Gou Ren is quite an even-tempered fellow, who readily recognises how much better it is to use cultivation peacefully than violently, but when he learns that the Shrouded Mountain sect has kidnapped Tigu, he quickly passes through Tranquil Fury into Unstoppable Rage. His qi manifestations, rather than elegant techniques like [Split Faces of the Half Moon], or [Verdant Blade Sword Arts: 16 Blades of Grass], are simply [Break], shattering the ground and cracking nearby buildings like a localized earthquake.
    The boy who was not a threat suddenly became one.
  • Xianghua has two: don't hurt her brother, and don't behave recklessly. Her first appearance in the story is yelling at an old man who stumbled into a street and was nearly run over, she later yells at a boy who went into a dangerous area of the marshes just to find pretty flowers to impress a girl (putting him dangerously close to deadly Carnivines), and it's well-remembered in her sect that she once made a foolish man dance around with a bowl of rice on his head singing "I'm a bowl of stupid."
• Best Served Cold:
  • Invoked by Jin after the Xong brothers spend the day laughing at Tigger's nude sculptures of him. Rather than retaliate immediately, he waits until the end of the day, when they're enjoying a sauna, then gets their father's approval to administer a massage with a bundle of sticks — including some thick branches that will leave marks.
    Jin: It's medicinal. It's supposed to feel like this.
  • Shen Yu has a reputation for never ignoring a slight, but he appears to be calm and cheerful at the Shrouded Mountain Sect, one of whose disciples attacked his grandson. Turns out he's cheerful because he is carefully plotting an absolutely epic revenge. He investigates the sect for demonic activity, and although he doesn't find demons, the investigation turns up thousands of years of dirty laundry, which gets publicly revealed and triggers a vicious civil war that shatters the sect.
• Beware of Vicious Dog:
  • Jin puts up the titular "Beware of Chicken" sign at his farm as a joke after Bi De violently kills a troublesome fox. Newcomers tend to find it funny, until they meet the chicken in question. It should be noted, however, that the chicken is scrupulously honourable; you just don't want to cross him.
  • Bi De later makes a second sign at the village of Eighth Correct Place, after saving it from wolves.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Everyone loves Chunky. He's kind, placid, endlessly patient, gets along great with all the children in Hong Yaowu. He provides invaluable counselling that helps keep the peace between Tigu and Ri Zu. Nonetheless, he absolutely wrecks the Whirling Demon Blade gang when they threaten his family.
  • Subverted for Guan Chyou, who is horrified to see the twisted screaming severed heads mounted around Jin's farm, and remembers a saying that "The softest smiles hid the most dangerous men" — until a beam of sunlight breaks through the clouds, and she realizes that they're not heads but squashes, carved for Halloween, whereupon she bursts into laughter.
• Boob-Based Gag: How does human Tigu do an imitation of the Blade of Grass? Stuff several bao down her shirt.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Bi De reaches the village of Eighth Correct Place just before it can fall to a pack of wolves, and cuts down the leader, which scares the others away.
  • Tigu bails out An Ran and the other Petals from a horde of Five-Venom Spiders on the Hill of Torment in the Dueling Peaks Tournament.
  • Bi De later comes to the rescue of Xiulan, who is locked into a desperate, slowly losing battle against Lu Ban. He blocks numerous blows aimed at finishing her off, but is slowly losing the battle himself. The battle becomes a Delaying Action, where he holds on just long enough for the arrival of Jin.
  • Jin shows up to the battle at Dueling Town just in time to save Yun Ren from Fexian, intimidate the other Shrouded Mountain disciples into a ceasefire, and end the battle with a punch that fires Lu Ban's ''corpse'' more than a thousand li into the next province over.
• Big Eater:
  • Pi Pa can eat a human body in one bite. Though depending on the body, she finds it distasteful.
  • Wa Shi is all about food. He'll eat a bowl of dinner with everyone else, then jump into the river and beg for everyone's dirty plates to scour. He's loyal to the farm because he recognises that it's his food supply. He leaves the secret garden and climbs the waterfall back home because he wants more food variety.
• Bilingual Bonus: Inverted In-Universe. Since it's xianxia-land, the native language is Chinese, but there are many names that are puns or other jokes in English.
  • Jin calls his rooster (i.e. his cock) "Big D". The natives all interpret it as "Bi De".
  • The other animals get pop culture references as names, such as Ri Zu (Rizzo) the rat, and Pi Pa (Peppa) the pig.
  • Miantiao the snake first introduces himself as "Shi Ti", as an indicator of his poor self esteem and sense that he's useless. The story makes it clear that the translation from Chinese is "corpse", but he'd probably embrace the English meaning too ("shi ti" sounds similar to "Shitty") if he knew it. His real name, Miantiao, means "Noodle" in Chinese, so Jin notes that the person who named him originally had a similar sense of humor to Jin.
  • Bonus points for Tigu: Jin names her Tigger; everyone assumes her name is Tigu because 'er as the end of a name is used as an affectionate diminutive (like calling her "little Tigu"). She even gets offended if others refer to her as Tigu'er, because they haven't earned the right to, and upset if Jin doesn't, concerned that she's offended him and he's using her formal name as a rebuke.
• Blood from the Mouth: Some cultivators literally do this when they experience something shocking. This is known as an internal deviation, where the emotional shock can literally twist one's Qi and cause internal damage.
• Brick Joke: When Guan Bo first meets Jin, shopping with Meiling and Xiulan, he mistakenly assumes that Xiulan is Jin's wife, as she's more conventionally attractive. He exultantly toasts in private about the deal they struck, "to the Cultivator, his oddly familiar looking wife, and even to their freckly maid!" Many months later (and in a later book), when Guan Bo visits Jin's home, he mentions what a pleasure it is to see Jin and his lovely wife again — nodding to Xiulan. In front of Meiling.
• Bringing Back Proof: Jin's animals kill Sun Ken, the Whirling Demon Blade bandit, ending the terror he brought to the province, and recover his intelligent sword — but Jin doesn't want the credit, he values his privacy. So he gives the blade to Xiulan, the woman who was supposed to do the job, and tells her to take it back to her sect as proof of the villain's death and the completion of her mission. She's uncomfortable with taking credit that doesn't belong to her, but since Jin also saved her life, she isn't going to argue with his request.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Well, Blaze Bears don't wear pants, but after one challenges Jin, then senses his true power and flees, it leaves behind a distinctive smell.

C

• Cain and Abel: Zang Zengsheng kills his older brother Zang Yong, along with his former lover Su Nezuha, just when it seems like they might come to an accord after they realize his treachery of getting the former to attack the latter.
• Call-Back:
  • On one encounter, Jin encounters a Blaze Bear, who can sense his true strength and instantly scrams instead of attacking. In the next volume, when Bi De enters the Blaze Bear territory of the Ash Forest, one of them flees at the mere sight of him, and the other bears joke about him going out in the world and fleeing from a monster in human skin.
  • During Jin's initial travel from the Cloudy Sword Sect to the Azure Hills, he encounters an Earth-Crushing Devil Serpent and helps a caravan to run from it, repeating to himself the mantra that the Azure Hills don't have monsters like that. Several books later, his grandfather casually beheads it on his way to his grandson's farm.
  • Jin's first interaction with Meiling involved him throwing her into a mud pit, after which they started courting and eventually married. After Bi De and Ri Zu have a Relationship Upgrade after gaining their human forms, he tells her he'll throw her into a mud pit when he gets the chance. He makes good on his promise.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • When Xianghua returns to the Misty Lake sect to take over as its sectmaster, she takes the opportunity to call out her mother Sei Fen for standing by and letting her father cripple her younger brother for not being able to cultivate and abuse her for standing by him, and only when both of them had proven themselves at the Dueling Peaks tournament, trying to call them her children again (her father by this point had been kicked to the curb by the other Elders). She tells her that during her time at Hong Yaowu, Gou Ren's parents were more parents to her than Sei Fen ever had been, before coldly dismissing her and calling her "elder".
• Call to Agriculture:
  • The premise of the story is that after practically dying and coming back to life at the hands of an arrogant disciple, Jin decides he's absolutely sick of this cultivation nonsense and leaves the Cloudy Sword sect to build himself a new life as a farmer.
  • Sun Ne is changed from a sword into a plowshare, and revels in its new and more wholesome method of cutting.
• Carnivore Confusion: Comes up on several occasions, given that eating the Lowly Spiritual Herbs causes some but by no means all of the Fa Ram livestock to develop sapience and become Spirit Beasts. The reactions of the Spirit Beasts to the sacrifice of their lesser kin varies widely, with some (like Wa Shi and Tigu) barely being bothered, while Bi De is initially startled but ends up accepting it as appropriate, and Chun Ke is upset enough that he refuses to eat meat.
• Character Catchphrase: Happens pretty much every time Bi De crows.
  Jin: You tell 'em, Big D.
• The Cavalry: Fa Ram's representatives at the Tournament put up a valiant fight and surprise their attackers with their skill, but can't actually win, and are being worn down. Until Jin and the animals he brought with him show up.
• Charged Attack: It's not intentional on Jin's part, but when he chambers a Megaton Punch, the world channels energy into it, complete with a whisper of ancient scripture into the ears of those nearby. There is enough time during the charge-up for the target to begin running away at superhuman speeds... not that it helps him any.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats: Jin's mammoth cart, so big it would be crushed under its own weight without qi reinforcement, gets pulled to Pale Moon Lake City by a small white rabbit. She does eventually trade off with him, not because it's too heavy, but just because it's awkward for her to pull it.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In the very first chapter, when clearing his land, Jin finds a root with a sense of qi, but has no idea what it is, so he just sets it aside. Much later, Meiling is able to confirm that it's so potent that it overloads her qi sense, though she still doesn't know what it actually is.
  • The sword leaning on the grave in Nezan's cave is initially used simply for a Secret Test of Character on Yun Ren. Turns out the sword is the Empathic Weapon Summer's Sky, and Nezan, being a Trickster God, secretly swaps it with Yun Ren's sword. This means the sword, with its millennia of combat experience and its ability to absorb and redirect lightning, are on hand to aid Yun Ren when fighting Fenxian.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Gou Ren practises qi manipulation by reinforcing Jin's retaining walls until they can survive Chunky hitting them at full force. When he fights Yingwen, though he is vastly lower in skill and power, his qi manifests with the solidity of stone, and his bamboo stick is as strong as a serious weapon, making him a credible threat.
  • Yun Ren starts learning how to make illusions with light and shadow in order to be able to project the images stored in his recording crystal for others to see and record them on solid objects. This pays off twice:
    • All the Shrouded Mountain Sect's fox-detecting techniques are based on detection of shadows, not light. Thus, the new illusion concealing the mouth of Nexan's cave, woven by Nezan with light after experimenting with Yun Ren, is completely undetectable by the sect expedition sent to kill him.
    • When Fenxian comes looking to kidnap Yun Ren, he uses the illusions first to disguise himself and then to mess with his attacker.
• The Chosen One: Xiaoshi left a recording crystal with a loyal spirit bound inside, to instruct and raise up a worthy successor someday. And the first one to view the memories in the crystal is... Bi De. Nonetheless, after recovering from the shock, the spirit examines him and pronounces him worthy, promising to help him ascend and become the new emperor.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • The narrative in chapter 1, when the main character finds himself in Rou's battered body and sees Rou's memories of the world, is quite profane. It's no surprise, then, that he decides to Opt Out of the whole system he's in. The language calms down considerably in later chapters.
  • Jiguang, the spirit of the Howling Fang Mountains gets a very rude reception when she attempts to tear the fragment of Tianlan's power out of Bi De, only to discover that it was given to him willingly and Tianlan is most unhappy about her interference, "spewing expletives at her".
• Coincidental Broadcast: A rare non-radio/TV example. Having lost track of time, Jin inquires at an inn what day it is and how many days there are left until the Dueling Peaks Tournament concludes. The innkeeper replies the tournament ends that very day, but they're still waiting on news of the results. Mere seconds later a messenger boy bursts into the room.
  Messenger: Cai Xiulan defeated Rou Tigu! The match of the century!
• Contrived Coincidence: Xiulan and her followers (including Tigu and Tie Delun) encounter a slave ring conspiracy operating out of Grass Sea City involving all the nobles, and the latter two go to interrogate one of them. They burst into his manor and cause the noble's guests to intervene... who turn out to be Delun's parents in a business meeting.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • While Yao Che and the Xong Brothers are in fits of laughter seeing Tigu's collection of masterly-carved nude sculptures of her master Jin, Yao Che points at one's bits and asks if the weapon is accurate. Tigu, confused, looks instead at the sword the sculpture is holding and nods, prompting the laughing fit to double in intensity.
  • After defeating Lu Ban/Zang Li and intimidating the Shrouded Mountain Sect into submission, Jin receives a scroll with poetry on it as part of the reparations for the damage, injury, and death caused by the fight in Dueling Town. The poem is a series of metaphors for what the Shrouded Mountain Sect thinks is going on and is their way of letting him know that they know and assuring him that they will help him (and the Cloudy Sword Sect) with his problem. Jin completely misses this and thinks they're just trying to apologize nicely, though he admits he's never been good at poetry.
• Counterpart Combat Coordination: A grand cultivator battle occurs between the Imperial Army and demons pouring out of a rift in the world, with three Imperial-level cultivators on one side and three demonic commanders on the other. The resulting clashes are an aerial duel between two animal-themed combatants (Tianzhe Minyan, "the Divine Falcon of the East" vs. a demonic butterfly), an elemental duel between sky and earth (Elder Xiao Ge "the Black Clouds of the Silent Sky" vs. a slavering monster spewing lava and toxic ash) and a weapon clash between light and darkness (Shen Yu "the Unconquered Blade" vs. a black warrior wielding a great axe of shadow).
• Crushing Handshake: Yao Che the blacksmith, and Huo Ten the spirit monkey, shake hands aggressively — and then both surreptitiously nurse their hurting hands as they walk away.
• Cry into Chest: Meiling makes Jin rest his head on her chest after he arrives home from the Tournament, during which he'd saved his disciples, killed another cultivator, intimidated the whole Shrouded Mountain sect into leaving him alone, and then demonstrated his authority to all the other Azure Hill sects, and then lets him break down into tears, completely spent from the stress of falling head-first into more cultivator nonsense.
• Culture Clash: The more Jin interacts with the people of this world, and particularly with other cultivators, the more it becomes clear that he represents several concepts which are utterly foreign to them and put them on the back foot with every interaction.
  • Jin's "We give to the Earth, and the Earth gives back" philosophy of living In Harmony with Nature and other people is contrary to the inherently selfish attitude of "defying the heavens" that dominates cultivator society. His generosity without ulterior motive inspires loyalty and reciprocation in those he deals with and leads to a level of cooperation between people (and animals) of different social and political standing that is unheard of.
    • It is mentioned in a book Jin reads, Contemplations of the Flame Bud, that there are some who find more value in something similar to him, with the book being about how two different men approach discovering an example of the titular extremely rare flower. While one takes the usual Cultivator path of tearing it from the ground, throwing it in a spirit furnace, and turning it into a pill to slightly improve his resistance to fire, the other finds it beautiful, and contemplates it, thinking about how its seeds must have travelled far and been carried by the currents of the world, and observing its life cycle, and thanks the flower for the experience when it finally dies. While most Cultivators view the story as being about how they should make pills out of rare flowers and think that the man who contemplated the flower is weak and didn't know how to make use of resources, Jin ponders that maybe the contemplation guys are the ones who actually ascend, rather than the cultivators.
  • Jin's belief in sharing your emotions with friends and family and maintaining good mental health by talking through problems is novel and contrary to the xianxia-world culture. Where they say "you face the heavens alone", he says "you don't have to face the heavens alone", or in some cases, "what you face right now is not the heavens". This attitude leads to his friends and disciples having much better mental health than most others, both enabling unexpectedly rapid advances in their cultivation and preventing their emotional problems from transforming into heart demons.
  • Jin's actual cultivation method of meditation through moving, and using up all your qi during hard work, building up the world rather than stripping it for resources, and in general creating "his own little slice of heaven" instead of striving to leave the earth for the heavens has enabled him to become absurdly powerful extremely rapidly, more so than anyone would have thought possible.
  • The fact that Jin is absurdly powerful but always restrains himself is another Culture Clash for the people of "Xianada". In the culture he grew up in and personal philosophy, you only ever use force, or even the threat of force, as an absolute last resort for self defense and the defense of others. Defending one's personal honor just isn't a thing, and the concept of "face" is much less strong. Here, those who have strength use force to get whatever they want, all the time, and preserving one's honorable reputation is a valid reason to attack someone. So whenever Jin allows them to see how powerful he is, but then doesn't use that power to his advantage, they assume he must be giving them a subtle threat and trip all over themselves to do whatever they think will please him.
  • Jin thinks freckles are cute rather than blemishes and that a tan and muscles are attractive, and the other members of Fa Ram follow his lead. This is in contrast with the local preference for a lean build and pale and flawless skin.
  • Jin is truly dedicated to farming, so when Xiulan brings an assortment of wedding gifts, including rare spiritual herbs and trophies taken from the bodies of spirit beasts, the thing that really catches his attention is the sample of "earth apples" (potatoes). His animals learn from his example.
    Soon, Bi De would have in his grasp all the treasures of the Shrouded Mountain Sect, thanks to that old man. Beets, berries, and fruit.
  • Jin's philosophy, which his disciples adopt, of "everyone gets one". This is to say, everyone gets at least one chance to have the benefit of the doubt, do the right thing, or cooperate peacefully as the case may be. If they reject their one chance, then they will be dealt with appropriately. This is unexpected for most inhabitants of "Xianada"; those with power usually don't give people in their way any chances. So those who take their one opportunity in good faith are stunned by the mercy and eternally grateful; those who reject the chance often do so out of arrogance or contempt and soon come to regret mistaking kindness for weakness.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The Reaper Wolf named the Wicked Blade is built up as a terrifying beast, having been preying on the Azure Hills for over a century and has even killed a cultivator. Jin bashes it over the head once with his shovel and kills it.
  • Jin runs into a cultivator who attempts to have his way with Meiling's best friend, but who breaks his hand when he tries to strike Jin.
  • A bandit seizes Bi De by the throat and squeezes, intending to cook him. Bi De is unimpressed, not to mention unharmed, and proceeds to casually tear the bandit's arm off.
  • When Elder Ge of the Cloudy Sword Sect hears about Jin and that he left the sect from being beaten almost to death, he's pissed enough to call up the entire sect and deal brutal beatdowns upon those who engaged in Young Master-style antics against their juniors, telling them he'll be "trading pointers" with them with the same respect and diligence they gave their victims.
  • Xiulan's first fight at the Dueling Peaks tournament is not close to an even matchup; she simply places a hand on his chest and gently pushes him out of the ring.
  • In the final showdown against Lu Ban, Jin only throws a single punch. A single punch so powerful that Lu Ban simply disappears, despite his own power and the five protective talismans he was wearing, and the inhabitants of Yellow Rock Plateau, over 500km away, report a mysterious impact on a nearby mountain, triggering a rockslide.
  • Shen Yu is very impressed by Tigu's skills — for a Profound Realm cultivator. He, however, is dramatically more powerful than that. When they spar, she can't touch him, and then he shatters every one of her qi blades and pins her down — with a single flick of his fingers.
• Cutting the Knot: Shen Yu insists that his honour requires him to contribute to the bride price for Meiling. However, Hong Xian cannot in good conscience accept more after the deal has been sealed, implying that what was already exchanged was lacking. The solution they strike on is for Shen Yu to pay a generous price for the village's medical knowledge (which Hong Xian had already shared with him for free).

D-F

• David vs. Goliath: Invoked by Jin the first time he sees Bi De fighting a fox, and dashes to the rescue. As time passes, Bi De no longer needs rescuing, but still encounters people who do a double-take or laugh at him. Until they see him kill bandits and bears and dire wolves without a scratch on him...
• Deader than Dead: The Twilight Cuckoo's Triumph is a technique that allows its user to possess the bodies of others — and if killed, to revert to a puddle form that can infest anyone exposed to it. But after Lu Ban is first struck by Jin wielding the power of the land, then the resulting pool of oil and blood is incinerated with lightning, he's confirmed by an expert in the technique to be properly dead and unrecoverable.
• The Dead Have Names: When Xiulan is finally able to open up and talk about the guilt of losing many soldiers under her command, she tells Meiling that she remembers every name. In book four, she visits the memorial for the battle where they died and pays her respects to them.
  Jian Yuan, loyal and true. Lie Quan, who was perpetually poor from his gambling habits. Ming Po, and his pet duck. Hi Shin, and his dream to become a great general.
• Defector from Decadence: Su Nezan relates the story of his old lover Zang Wen, a former disciple of the Shrouded Mountain Sect that found out the truth of her sect's origins and defected to the side of their greatest enemy, the foxes, to reveal the truth, and eventually died for it.
• Delaying Action: All Bi De's skill is still not enough to defeat Zang Li/Lu Ban, but even as they fight, Bi De's shadow clone is running to alert his master.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: A lot of cultivators are heroes in the classical sense, in that the only qualifier is martial expertise. They'd commit genocide if they felt slighted enough, such as Elder Song of the Soaring Heaven's Isle Sect, who utterly obliterated a tribe of people for killing her dog companion.
• Demonic Possession: An evil technique known as The Twilight Cuckoo's Triumph allows its user to take over a living or dead body, influencing or impersonating the host. Even killing the body won't automatically kill the possessor, just reduce them to a puddle of oil and blood that can take over another host.
• De-power:
  • Lu Ban sets Xiulan's cultivation on fire and burns a great deal of it, leaving her at the third stage of the Initiate's realm — which is where she was before she met Jin. Instead of being the most powerful cultivator of her generation in the Azure Hills, she's now back to average. Nonetheless, she considers it an acceptable sacrifice to stop such a vile man and she also rebuids her cultivation over the winter.
  • Similarly, "Loud Boy" Zang Wei's cultivation is broken while he was trying to protect Tigu from being abducted. Thanks to Ri Zu's skills, Xiulan giving him Qi pills and some new understanding, he eventually recovers his cultivation.
  • The consequences of the destruction of one's cultivation are discussed by Ri Zu and her instructor at the medical pavilion of the Shrouded Mountain Sect. The old master argues that given a choice between a lifesaving intervention that would destroy the patient's cultivation, or attempting to save their cultivation with a procedure that carries a high risk of killing the patient, the caregiver should choose to save the victim's cultivation every time. He argues that for a cultivator, being set back in cultivation or even being "reduced" to a mortal is a Fate Worse than Death. Ri Zu disagrees, believing that life is sacred and arguing that while the patient still lives, there is still the opportunity to recover and advance again. He gives her the chance to make this choice and put her philosophy into action when members of a patrol come back wounded and one of them has an injury that is both killing him and destroying his cultivation. She chooses to save his life, but does so in such a way that while his cultivation is gone, his meridians are intact and he will be able to start over, and offers her help in rebuilding his cultivation.
• Destructo-Nookie: Gou Ren makes the mistake of reading his fiancee's letter aloud. He cuts himself off partway through her declaring her intent to shatter their bedframe on her return — but it's too late, Meiling is already there and snatching it so she can read the rest.
• Deus Exit Machina: When the Shrouded Mountain sect begins their abduction of Tigu and her allies and the other sects intervene, such a kerfuffle would've definitely attracted the attention of the other sect leaders and Elders... except that Jin's approach to the Dueling Peaks had awakened some long lost machinery and opened a vault underground, and when practically all the Elders went to investigate it, the lock activated and sealed them in, and they didn't get out until all the excitement was over.
• Did I Say That Out Loud: Subverted when Jin watches Meiling healing someone, and thinks she looks beautiful doing that — then sees her flush. When he realises that he said it aloud? He says it again.
• Didn't See That Coming: A fox spirit finds Yun Ren examining a tomb it is supposed to protect... and runs into this trope constantly. The fox expects the young cultivator to rob the grave? No, Yun says, his parents raised him better than being a grave robber. The fox grants him a boon? No, he doesn't want incredible power, he just wants to know how to project his pictures on the walls for others to see. The fox gives him some scrolls to study and orders him to not read the others? Not five minutes later, Yun is touching the other scrolls! Time to- oh, wait, not only is Yun admitting weakness—something prideful cultivators never do—but since he couldn't understand the scrolls, he just decided to start cleaning up the fox's cave a bit as thanks. The fox is very confused by the young man by the end, but finds him endlessly entertaining.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Jin knows the correct way to grow rice, which has many extra steps but produces results head and shoulders above the farmers around him. To the point where he eventually can't sell his rice locally, because they can't afford the legally mandated price for such a high grade. He does share his techniques with his friends, though it's harder without qi.
  The funny thing is that I learned most of this from reading a manga. Thanks, Shizuko.
• Dire Beast: In addition to spirit beasts, Xianxialand also has oversized primal fauna like Wreckerballs (elephant-sized armadillos), Thunderhooves (moose, but the adults are the size of a house, and they have electrical abilities), and Keelbreakers (giant dunkleosteus fish with scissor-like jaws, but are herbivorous and live in an overgrown swamp lake).
• Dirty Cop: When looking for a missing man, Tigu comes across a group of guards, bearing apparently legitimate paperwork to show that the people they have in cages are unrepentant debtors. She can tell, though, that the situation doesn't add up — especially when she sees that some of their captives are children — and concludes that the apparently genuine paperwork simply means that a high official is as corrupt as the slavers he's hired.
• Disobey This Message: While training him, Jin Rou's "Gramps" Shen Yu imparts on him the lessons of building up your own foundations for cultivating without anyone else influencing you, and of following your own path to enlightenment. But while "Gramps" does honestly care for his grandson, he is also a Legacy Seeker whose ultimate goal is to create a successor who builds up his own path to the heavens from nothing, just like how he did himself, ultimately reaching the heavens in the same way he did and carrying on his lessons to the next generation. As such, when he finds Jin again and sees that the path that he had built led him completely away from the heavens, his train of thought goes through several somersaults about how to bring him back to the "right path".
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • The Xong brothers, especially Gou Ren, do try to behave themselves, but they find Xiulan's beauty very distracting. Which doesn't help Gou Ren make a good impression when he does make a serious attempt at courting her, even though he's sincere and actually does recognize her more meaningful good qualities.
  • When Bao and Liling make a wager about her qi-sensing talent, San doesn't participate in the conversation — because she's leaning over the table to shake hands in a way that essentially puts her backside in his face, and he's consequently not paying attention to what's being said.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength:
  • Jin has no idea that all his time investing qi in his farm has acted as highly effective training; his last reference point for his own strength was when he was a mere Outer Disciple of the Cloudy Sword sect, where he was quite mediocre. Moreover, he doesn't realize how weak the sects of the Azure Hills are compared to the average cultivator sect, nor that Cloudy Sword is considered one of the most powerful sects in the world, so even his comparatively weak starting point is still quite high. When enemies flee from him in terror, break their fingers hitting him, or immediately submit to his every whim, he just assumes that they were quite weak.
  • When Yun Ren keeps breaking bows, Jin recognizes it as an early sign of awakening qi.
• Double Entendre:
  • When one of the main characters is a cockerel named Big D, there are bound to be many of these, with him commonly described standing proud and erect.
  • Meiling has a naughty sense of humour at times, such as when Jin declares it's bathtime after checking the pregnant cows.
    Meiling: Indeed. We must clean ourselves of our effluvium, after our strenuous time penetrating the fine ladies of this establishment.
  • In a less risque example, Jin has become an extremely powerful (Qi) cultivator, not via the usual methods, but by becoming a literal (Plant) cultivator.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Xiulan informs her saviours that she has found bandit remains indicating that there is a dangerous spirit beast nearby, but she promises to drive it off and keep them safe. Jin smiles and tells her that he's sure it won't be a problem. It was his own farm animals — and yes, they are dangerous spirit beasts, but they adore him.
  • Lu Ri ponders his difficulty in finding Jin, while enjoying a new delicacy of maple syrup (which Jin produced). When he finally catches up to Jin and discovers it, he has a chuckle at the fickleness of the heavens.
  • Jin has been nervous about the Cloudy Sword sect tracking him down (ostensibly to settle a score that he'd forgotten about), so when they finally catch up, Jin spends several scenes sweating about the meeting and even tries to order his disciples away to keep them out of any fight that may ensue. Before this, several chapters are devoted to Senior Disciple Lu Ri trying to find Jin to deliver him his mail.
  • The Xong brothers attend an auction, and are startled to see just how high the bidding goes on five bags of gold grade rice.
    Yun Ren: That's some expensive rice. Bet it's not as good as Jin's.
    Gou Ren: No bet!^note It is, of course, unbeknownst to them, Jin's rice.
• Driven to Suicide: Bi De laughs along with a story about Shen Yu slapping a man's cheeks a hundred times — until he learns that the man later committed suicide due to the shame, leaving Bi De with a feeling of dissonance.
• Drugs Are Bad:
  • Jin has a lot to say about cultivators and their obsession with medicines to increase their power.
    I was extremely suspect about all the pills these people choked back. I'm half convinced the reason every cultivator is so damn nuts is because of all [the] drugs they did.
  • Bi De learns the hard way that taking the pills offered to him was doing bad things to his body. Made worse that Chow Ji, the pills' supplier, deliberately uses their impurities to nearly cripple him.
• Dying Curse: Chow Ji invokes a plague of rats on the farm with his dying breath; Tigu spends a good deal of her time after that dealing with them, so all it manages to achieve is to feed and train a dedicated rat killer. Jin later overpowers and destroys the curse, unknowingly, as his bond with the land increases.
• Eastern Zodiac: Jin seems to be gathering at least one of every animal from the zodiac: Rizzo is the Rat, Tigger is the Tiger, Washy (a carp) is the Dragon, Big D is the Rooster, and Peppa and Chunky share the role of the Pig. Later, he acquires Babe the ox, Miantiao the snake, and Yin the rabbit. Meiling identifies Gou Ren as the monkey, and Yun Ren as the dog (fox). All that's currently missing are the Horse and, to a lesser extent, the Sheep (Jin has three sheep at the farm, but so far none of them have shown signs of uplifting.)
• Eating Pet Food: Jin always shares his cooking, so Bi De tries to do the same, after smoking and drying a bunch of worm skewers as travel rations. Jin is brave enough to try one when offered, but doesn't enjoy it. Oddly, once Bi De gains human form, he still finds cooked worms delicious, and can't understand why others don't like them.
  Jin: Most humans won't like this, buddy.
• Eating the Eye Candy: The first time she visits Fa Ram with the Xong brothers, Meiling sees Jin with his shirt off and just stares.
  Gou Ren: Stop drooling, Meimei.
• Elemental Powers: Qi can be aligned to different elements. There is wood qi, fire qi, water qi, and many others. Jin's power appears to be associated with growth; his crops are fantastically productive, but infusing his qi into milk causes it to rot faster (the opposite of Meiling's qi, which is medicinal, and can sterilize surfaces and objects).
• Embarrassing Slide: Yun Ren shows off the many photos he took on his trip north, using a recording crystal, but he didn't mean to include the picture of the rather cute girl who sold him the crystal, whom he's started dating. Especially in front of his mother and Meiling, who didn't yet know about her.
  Yun Ren: And then this one is—
  Meiling: Oh?
  Yun Ren: And what I meant to say is, this one is the end of things. Time for food, everybody—!
• Emotion Bomb: The veiled demonic cultivator gathers the trace remnants of Lu Ban after his death, and uses them as a special emotional poison, pushing the father of Lu Ban's host, Zhang Zeng, toward irrational anger and vengeance over his son's death. It's a slow and subtle effect, but powerful, resulting in Zeng launching a large-scale campaign to track down Jin and his associates within the Azure Hills — except that Tianlan's qi, which is increasingly present in the Hills and is intensely opposed to demons, starts to erode the poison's effect.
• Empathic Weapon:
  • The magical sword Summer's Sky is intelligent, experienced, and can talk to its wielder, of which it has had seven. It's also capable of independently absorbing lightning attacks and returning them to sender, but it doesn't actually puppet its wielder, so Yun Ren still has difficulty.
    Summer's Sky: Ah. Eighth Wielder's abilities are low. Challenging. Interesting. Approval.
  • The Crimson Demon's Tooth, Sun Ken's sword, is sapient. However, no one realizes this until after he is killed and the captured sword is reforged into a plow and renamed Sunny (Su Ne). Perhaps unsurprisingly for a blade, it is obsessed with cutting things. Luckily for it, the only person who knows this fact is Babe (Bei Be) the ox and he enjoys working with it.
• Enemy Civil War: After the truth about the Shrouded Mountain Sect's origins are revealed to everyone - namely that the younger brother of the First Patriarch betrayed both his fox lover and his older brother for power, and that the sect's Inquisitors kill anyone who suspects the truth - the sect suffers a schism where Elder Chongyun leads the more honorable members against the Patriarch, the Inquisitors and those that follow the usurping younger brother.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Attempted by Zang Zhong, who grabs a handful of the Five Color Dew Herbs the new Inner Disciple had been cultivating and eats them right in front of him. Bi De, who eats Spirit Herbs as daily meals anyway and had been intending on feeding the lunar qi-filled herbs to the sect to detect and purify demonic influence, just asks how they taste, causing Zhong and his followers to gape at their power play falling flat.
• Enemy Mine: Xiulan is in the middle of a semi-serious spar with Tigu, when Bi De interrupts, chastises them for the noise they're making, and invites them to "trade pointers" with him instead. They quickly set aside their differences to face him together. He still trounces them both without a feather out of place, but the experience brings them closer, just as he intended.
• Enlightened Self-Interest:
  • Wa Shi is, above all else, a glutton. However, he is a highly intelligent glutton. He is willing to work hard to ensure the farm's prosperity, because it's what feeds him, and he's entrusted with managing and accounting for their food supplies because he'll do the job well.
  And while I was sure we would have some things missing, I did trust him to make sure we would all be able to last the winter eating good food.
  If only because if he ate too much now, he wouldn’t be able to eat more later.
  • The Lord Magistrate craves respect and deference, and he earns it by doing a spectacularly good job and working hard for the benefit of his citizens, even remembering everyone's names individually so they'll like him all the more. Also, honestly loyal subjects who he doesn't mistreat or screw over are less likely to turn on him in an emergency.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • Bi De feels like laughing when Chow Ji tells him that his "qi-less wretch" of a master is unworthy of the land he lives on, and that they should instead rule it together. Bi De knows full well that the land's richness is largely because Jin has immense qi and invests it all into the land.
  • When Xiulan warns Jin and Meiling about a dangerous beast nearby, which she promises to track down and protect them from, Jin just smiles. She's worried about whatever killed the Whirling Demon Blade gang — but it was Jin's own farm animals.
  • Many people, upon seeing Jin and Xiulan together, assume that the latter is the former's wife. Jin had just stopped correcting assumptions so as to divert attention away from Xiulan.
  • At the Shrouded Mountain's inquiry on Zang Li's death, Jin's first confrontation comes up, and the elders realize "the unknown cultivator" that defeated Li back then is obviously Jin. However, they think, due to his connection to the Cloudy Sword sect and their own reputation, that Jin is present in the Azure Hills because there is something there he wants, or that he is dealing with secretly. By that logic his conduct after defeating Li means he knew full well the gravity of the impersonation and gave him back to them quietly with the expectation the parasite would be dealt with, a duty they view as having grievously failed. Of course in reality, the first time Jin defeated Zang Li, he had no idea the man was possessed by a demonic cultivator, and he came to the Azure Hills specifically to get away from all the sect politics.
  • "Gramps" hears that Guan Chyou has been seen to spend several nights with Jin, and has even stayed for several days at his house, and that the Azure Jade Trading Company has stopped entertaining offers for her hand, and he comes to the obvious-but-incorrect conclusion. Seeing a (quite attractive) picture of her just seals the deal.
• Escalating Brawl: Bi De watches a snowball fight between the old crone of Verdant Hill and her old neighbor Shu turn into this, as they offer bystanders favors to assist them.
• Exact Words:
  • The Magistrate of Verdant Hill is able to honestly say that he doesn't know of anyone called Jin Rou, except the butcher. Of course, if he were inclined to be helpful, he could have mentioned that he does know someone who calls himself Rou Jin.
  • Elder Ge, upon calling up a few disciples of the Cloudy Sword Sect, tells them that he will now "trade pointers" with them exactly how they "traded pointers" with their juniors. Said disciples, who were beating up their juniors for fun under that pretense, realize to their horror that they are about to receive A Taste of Their Own Medicine.
  • The town of Eighth Correct Place. On hearing the title, people (including Bi De) think that this is the eighth place that was Correct. Not so; the name is a joke on how the first seven towns of "Correct Place" were wiped out by flooding, and this is the eighth iteration of "Correct Place" that was rebuilt in this exact spot.
• The Exile: Jin settles on this as a punishment for Yingwen of the Shrouded Mountain, passing up the option to execute him.
  Jin: Go. Take the others with you. Go, and never return.
• Explosive Results:
  • Learning to correctly infuse qi into an object takes a lot of practice, and the results of failure aren't pretty. Meiling's lessons result in her wiping off green sludge from the grass blade she melted, and even Jin, who knows how to do general infusion, exploded a lot of ice when trying to make it melt more slowly.
  • Using pill furnaces to concentrate the qi from herbs is a delicate process that takes years to master, and can lead to violent results if mismanaged. To the point that competitive pill-making is a popular event at the Dueling Peaks Tournament, mainly for the spectacular explosions.
• Faction Motto: The Shrouded Mountain Sect's is "Strength Above All". However, it's revealed that they are following an incomplete version adopted by their founder's treacherous brother, and in the past, the more heroic founder had an extra part to it: "Strength above all, to protect those we love".
• Failed a Spot Check: The Shrouded Mountain Sect, who have built their legend on unmasking and defeating Nezan's Spirit Beast fox clan, are successfully infiltrated by two disguised Spirit Beasts and one of Nezan's own descendants wielding an artifact stolen from the Shrouded Mountain Sect itself.
• Fallen Hero: The Lightning Brigade used to be one of the greatest demon-slaying forces of the Crimson Phoenix Empire during the Great War, with their heroic Patriarch Zang Yong at their forefront. Then his younger brother Zang Zengsheng, after trying to steal an artifact from the fox spirits of the Misty Fang Mountains and getting thrown out for his attempt, deceived his older brother into attacking the foxes, slew both him and his former fox lover when they realized his treachery, and coopted the remainder of the Brigade into an unending grudge against the foxes and demons, until it became the Shrouded Mountain Sect, espousing "Strength Above All".
• Family of Choice: As the various farm animals gain sapience and grow, Jin increasingly sees them as children. Eventually, he and Meiling speak with them about whether they want to take on family names; Tigu takes on "Rou", Ri Zu is adopted into the Hong family (Meiling's surname), and Bi De is honored by the offer but instead settles on "Fa" in honor of Fa Ram itself.
• Fan Disservice: Jin notes that stripping Xiulan to treat her wounds is way less sexy than it sounds, given that she is on death's door and leaking demonic pus from some of her wounds.
• Fantastic Caste System: Cultivators tend to outrank all but the richest and most powerful mortals, which has odd effects when the cultivator is an unassuming Farm Boy from the sticks visiting the big city for the first time.
• Fantastic Fallout: The breaking of the formation that Emperor Xiaoshi was using to collect Tianlan's power led to the entire Azure Mountains being sundered into the Azure Hills, with the entire elemental balance of the region thrown out of whack and the ambient Qi drastically lowered. There's a reason the Azure Hills is considered the weakest region in the entire Empire.
• Fat Bastard: An in-universe trope for petty officials. The typical small town magistrate is corpulent, corrupt and incompetent. Visiting merchants are surprised to see that the Lord Magistrate is athletic... even before they discover that he's very competent.
• Fate Worse than Death: The first time Ri Zu is able to talk with a sect doctor, he tells her that she ought to place more emphasis on saving someone's cultivation than their life. She tries to protest that as long as someone lives, they can rebuild and try again, but he explains that in practice, that doesn't work, especially in the cultivators' dog-eat-dog culture.
  Lishu: The world is not so kind. Weakness is preyed upon. I have seen it far, far too many times. I have seen the strongest of experts beg for death, when they learn how far they have fallen. I have seen the joy in their enemy’s faces, when they discover their rival is powerless.
  • Ri Zu later has to put her ideals into practice, when she chooses to destroy a patient's cultivation in order to save their life. Said patient, Shao Heng, is furious with her when he awakens, saying he'd rather die than be a cripple, but Ri Zu calmly defuses all his arguments, saying he still has the opportunity, capability, and experience to rebuild his cultivation and that she will help him do so.
• Fertile Feet: When Jin uses qi in an area, he tends to leave behind grass and flowers. Without noticing. Meiling is unsure what to think, except that she was right in believing he's overwhelmingly strong. It turns out to be caused by qi leakage, from wood-aligned qi.
• Fetch Quest: Lampshaded when Jin returns a wandering goat to an old woman and gets... a kitten.
  This… was a very strange side quest. I wonder what I trade the kitten for. The sword of +3?
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: Xianada doesn't seem to have any rules, leading Jin to note that Ri Zu, when fully equipped with Meiling's help, carries "more war crimes on her body than I was entirely comfortable with."
• Finger Poke of Doom: Shen Yu lightly slaps the Patriarch of the Shrouded Mountain sect in the face twice, and the seemingly affectionate hits almost destroy the Sky Realm-cultivator's meridians.
• Fingore: Zang Li strikes Jin with his "Heaven Piercing Lance" technique – and his fingers bend backwards, leaving him screaming in pain.
• Fire-Forged Friends:
  • The original animal disciples of Fa Ram become truly close after the defeats of Chow Ji and Sun Ken.
  • Helped largely by Tigu's post human transformation brash and disarming personality and the dedication of Yun Ren and Gou Ren to making parties, not war, the Younger Generation of the Azure Hills cultivators – both sect-affiliated and independent – become good friends over the course of the Dueling Peaks Tournament and the battle against the Shrouded Mountain Sect afterwards.
• Flash Step: The Shrouded Mountain sect has a mobility technique called Thunderous Steps that allows users to move very quickly.
• Flight: As his body is perfected by qi, Bi De becomes capable of flying, although he usually doesn't use it, and apologises to the heavens when he does.
• Fling a Light into the Future:
  • Thousands of years ago, Xiaoshi recorded his history and his failure in a crystal, and entrusted it to a Temple Dog to take somewhere safe, so that someday, a suitable heir could learn from his mistakes and do better.
  • On Liling's deathbed, her cultivation ignited and her remaining lifeforce became a protective blessing that kept her daughter Meiling safe from ill fortune and pushy matchmaking attempts, until Jin crossed her path.
  • The mist of the Howling/Misty Fang mountains remembers the treachery of Zang Zengsheng, the man who slew his brother and lover and went on to found the Shrouded Mountain Sect. When another disciple, Zang Wen, finds out the truth, she stores the memory in a crystal that eventually is found by Yun Ren.
• Flying Weapon: Downplayed; very powerful cultivators classically travel long distances on a flying sword, but most of the characters are not at that level.
  • Lu Ri wishes he could fly on a sword, so that he wouldn't end up sweaty and disheveled at his destination, but he has to settle for Super-Strength jumping instead (able to leap from one hill to the next).
  • Xiulan succeeds in using telekinesis to move a sword that she's standing on, but slower than walking pace. She is, however, a Master of the Levitating Blades in combat.
  • Shen Yu on the other hand is capable of creating a flying sword large enough to fit a small group of people quite comfortably.
• Forceful Kiss: When Meiling learns that Jin's house plans include space for her to produce medicines, and even a library, she promptly sends the Xong brothers out of the room and then kisses him hard enough to back him up against a wall. (Not that he minds.)
• Four Lines, All Waiting: Volume 4 of the story follows three storylines taking place in different locations: Jin taking care of the Fa Ram and helping Bowu with his farming inventions, Xiulan and her friends embarking on a quest to unite the Azure Hill sects, and Bi De, Ri Zu and Yun Ren infiltrating the Shrouded Mountain sect.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Jin and Meiling have only known each other for five days before her best friend is teasing her about when they're getting married, her father gives her his blessing if it's what she wants, and Jin himself is privately making plans. They only meet a handful more times before they're engaged. It's normal in the local culture, though. The engagement is actually longer than average, though still short by modern North American standards, due to Jin wanting to build a proper house first.

---