Beware Of Chicken / Tropes G to N

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

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G

• Gardening-Variety Weapon: When called upon to defend his farm from predators, Jin most often uses his shovel. He's so casually lethal with it that Big D calls it "a Command of Death". Later his disciples gift him a specially crafted artifact shovel.
• Gargle Blaster: Jin's experiments in distilling alcohol eventually pay off, but most of it is fairly standard if somewhat strong vodka and mead. However, mead fermented from honey produced by Vajra's hive of spirit bees is both incredibly potent in an alcoholic sense and filled with Qi, making it doubly strong for cultivators. The first test of it leads to a wild night for humans and spirit beasts alike, after narrowly preventing Washy from diving into the barrel, and Jin decides to lock the stuff away because it's dangerously good.
  Jin: I think… we might keep this one to ourselves.
• Gathering Steam: A literal example when Liu Xianghua starts up a boiler of qi-infused water to empower her during the Dueling Peaks tournament. Tigu remembers having heard about the figurative term, just as Xianghua's eyes light up orange.
• Genius Loci: Near the end of the first volume, it's revealed that the farm/Fa Ram is developing a consciousness of its own. Bi De's investigation with Miantiao and Yin revealed that this used to be the case for all of the Azure Hills, until something happened that severely injured the spirit.
  • As land spirits are a thing in Chinese mythology, this isn't surprising. Later on, Bi De makes a brief connection to Jiguang, the Spirit of the Howling Fang Mountains.
• Genre Savvy: Jin informs Tigu that when cultivators gather at a restaurant, some sort of a fight will always break out. Xiulan goes to contradict him, then pauses to reflect on her past experience and realizes that he may be right. Tigu is just excited at the prospect. Her brashness and naivete do start stirring up a hostile reaction, but she's so much more powerful than the average Azure Hills cultivator that as soon as she manifests her Intent, the troublemakers immediately become quiet and apologetic. Tie Delun, upon hearing this pearl of wisdom, accepts this as well.
• Geo Effects: During the fight with the Shrouded Mountain sect's delegation, the Azure Hills cultivators have an initial advantage since they're used to the low-Qi environment of their region. Even when their opponents eventually adapt, the morale boost helps keep their spirits up.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Less about what the scars look like, and where on the body they're located. Zang Yong, the First Patriarch of the Lightning Brigade that would later become the Shrouded Mountain Sect, was a courageous hero who threw himself into battle to protect his comrades and often used his body as a shield, to the point that his front was littered with scars while his back remained unmarred. His younger brother Zang Zengsheng, however, has a back covered with scars, which the narration attributes to the treachery of his demonic foes but emphasizes more his personality as a Dirty Coward.
• Gilligan Cut: When Bi De and his companions are attacked by Blaze Bears, the scene ends with "The Bears roared, and the battle was joined." Immediately after the scene transition, the bruised and bleeding bears are kowtowing, apologising, thanking Bi De for his restraint, and in one case, half-buried in the ground head-first.
  ‘Now, such a thing will not happen again, will it?’ Bi De asked the bear with several missing teeth and a black eye.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: Jin is an Isekai protagonist from 21st-century Canada, so naturally he has some advanced knowledge compared to the society he finds himself in, but he's clearly a fairly average guy, and aside from some experience with farming and wastewater management, has no in-depth professional knowledge, so this is downplayed:
  • Jin's rice farming techniques date to the 1850s, which is old hat for someone from the 21st century but is cutting-edge to the Imperial Chinese Medieval Stasis of Xianxia-land and gives him much higher crop yields than everyone else, even before the gains from infusing the plants with his Qi. This extends to his other crops, as well – for example, he knows the optimal distance to space wheat plants from each other for best yield.
  • Jin admits he's not much of a mechanical engineer, but still has enough knowledge to help design a still for distilling liquor and a water-powered drop hammer for forging metal tools, which are both basically unknown in his region.
  • Jin builds his house and farm using techniques and designs pulled from modern and historical Japan and Canada. The insulation of the house, its size and height, and use of windows are noted to be superior to the norm.
  • Judging by everyone's reaction when Jin recognizes and points out sugar maples in the woods near his farm, the concept of tapping trees for their sap is completely unknown to them.
  • Subverted in the case of germ theory; it turns out that the combination of healing with Qi cultivation long ago clued the locals into the existence of microorganisms and their role in causing disease. (Jin is impressed that the discoverer actually shared the information with everyone, though.)
  • Jin negotiates with the Patriarch of the Verdant Hills for the right to build a Roman-style road from his house, to the village of Hong Yaowu, and on to Verdant Hills. However, he notes that there are higher-quality roads already in existence, and the only reason there aren't any nearby is that the province is too poor and unimportant to afford them.
  • Jin experiments with mixing concrete, but progress is very slow and the use of Qi allows him to cheat somewhat when building structures, so he doesn't make extensive use of it. There's a brief mention of a southern village that had something similar to concrete, only to be destroyed when the Emperor demanded the recipe and what they gave him didn't work. It's implied this is for the same reason that it took Real Life scholars millennia to recreate Roman concrete after the fall of the empire: their recipe requires saltwater to work, but the Romans (and presumably the southern villagers, located near the ocean) did not specify this in any of their records, instead assuming that this would be obvious to anyone who read their writing.
  • Being Canadian, it should be unsurprising that Jin promptly introduces ice hockey and saunas as soon as it starts to get cold out.
  • Jin's sketches of modern clothing design prove inspiring to Meiling and others, but they still need to be brought to professional clothiers for manufacture.
  • It's not clear whether local farmers are familiar with the concept of keeping bees to pollinate crops; there's some discussion of the difficulty in finding and moving a hive as well as the exorbitant cost of honey and difficulty in harvesting it, implying people have had some reason to mess with beehives in the past. However, Jin's modular beehive design and knowledge of bee behavior are clearly innovations. The queen bee is stunned — albeit in a good way — to realize that Jin is able to harvest honey and wax from her hive without destroying the whole thing.
  • The idea of a seed drill is not unknown to the other farmers in Azure Hills but Jin's design is noted to be radically different in execution and allows for multiple holes to be drilled simultaneously.
  • He introduces knitting to Meiling, who is intrigued by the possibility of creating clothes without a full loom.
  • Jin wants to build a greenhouse, which is a new concept in this world. However, it's noted that even if they had thought of it sooner, it'd be impossible for the average farmer to build one, since the quantity and quality of glass required would be prohibitively expensive. Luckily for him, the absurdly high-quality farm goods he produces — particularly gold-grade rice and maple syrup — are highly profitable, and he also has access to a spirit beast snake who is also a master glassblower so it's within his reach.
  • Jin teaches his farm animals/disciples some basic principles of physics. Washy puts this to good use and uses fluid dynamics to inform his telekinetic water manipulation techniques, manipulating the flow rate and pressure of water streams to achieve everything from creating a cutting jet to propelling himself up a waterfall.
    The Black Turtle of the North: What is flow?
    Washy: Q=V/t.
  • He does later build himself indoor plumbing and a flush toilet. Using a water crystal does mean it isn't suitable for mass production though.
• Glamour Failure: The illusions protecting Nezan's cave don't work properly on recording crystals, causing a fuzzy patch in Yun Ren's photos, where his eyes see a solid wall. When he investigates, he's able to collapse the illusion and enter.
• Glomp:
  • When Xianghua and Gou Ren see Yun Ren catch his paramour Biyu and spin her around in joy, they immediately start discussing doing that maneuver on each other. The footnotes mention that Gou Ren is mistaken that he'd be the one spinning Xianghua around.
  • Tigu quite enjoys being set upon by a small child she just saved from a cage.
    It was a good tackle-hug. Good form.
• The Gloves Come Off:
  • When Shen Yu hears about his chosen protégé being viciously beaten and leaving the Cloudy Sword Sect while he has responsibilities elsewhere, he decides it's time to finish up quickly. The mere gathering of his intent incinerates an army of demons.
    Shen Yu: Restraint? Rationing of power? What is losing a mere Ten Years of Cultivation?
  • Tigu, being the Spirited Competitor that she is, and much stronger than the rank and file cultivators of the Azure Hills, treats her initial tournament fights primarily as teaching opportunities, explaining and urging ways for her opponents to improve their combat techniques. Until one of them calls her tanned skin "ugly," and she immediately punches him out of the ring into the barrier protecting the stands.
• A God I Am Not: Jin is insanely powerful, at least in comparison to the rest of the cultivators in the Azure Hills, but is perfectly happy with working on his farm.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Zang Zhong can't seem to stop his internal deviations when he finds out that the Inner Disciple he had tried and failed to suppress is a chicken.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Downplayed, it's not all bad, but Jin probably would have been more content if his advanced growing techniques and abundant qi infusion had merely turned out to produce high Blue-grade rice, the best in the local area, instead of Gold grade, requiring him to reach out to a nationwide merchant network in order to find customers rich enough to pay a reasonable price for it, and risk drawing a spotlight to him, since Gold-grade rice hasn't been grown in the Azure Hills in the past millennium.
  • Shen Yu's plan for Jin Rou was for him, with his humble beginnings as a Street Urchin who knows the value of hard work, to build up his cultivation from a foundation made entirely by him, accept no other path other than the one he chooses, and forge a path entirely on his own until he reaches heaven through enlightenment. Jin Rou indeed does all that... except the path he ends up choosing takes him in the exact opposite direction of the heavens.
  • The Special Inspector of the Azure Hills' appointment to his post, from the perspective of the noble who manipulated events to give him the assignment. The position had been vacant for the last thirty years since the occupants kept getting assassinated and having the son of the Lord Magistrate of Verdant Hill appointed to the post was an attempt to get rid of him without being directly implicated in his death. Instead, he unexpectedly proves to be both a survivor and an incredibly effective investigator who stumbles onto and dismantles criminal conspiracy after criminal conspiracy.
  • The demonic cultivator accompanying Zang Zeng's foray into the Azure Hills to work out what really happened to his son surreptitiously stokes his anger and paranoia up so that he does something reckless. However, with Tianlan's influence eroding the demon's machinations, Zeng's paranoia instead manifests as him being slow, watchful and cautious, frustrating his demonic envoy to no end.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Jin's placement at the Cloudy Sword sect. It was supposed to let him grow on his own terms for a few years until his very powerful grandfather could come back to collect him – but he didn't realize that. Due to the inattention of the elders and the growing thuggish behavior of the Inner Disciples, he instead gets killed and replaced with an Isekai character who turns his back on the whole cultivation lifestyle. Subverted as Jin and the original Jin are shown to be connected to each other and Isekai Jin shares everything with the original Jin, leading the two to inhabit the body in harmony.
• Good Is Not Soft: Jin is a bit soft; he can kill foxes and wolves when needed, but is very hesitant about violence to other people. His animals, however, have no such compunctions. They are honorable and generous and patient, but they are also killing machines when roused.
  • Jin isn't sure what to think when he learns that they have slaughtered and eaten the Whirling Demon Blade bandits, but he settles on thanking them for defending the farm, then having more conversations about the proper usage of power.
  • Even Jin has his moments, when a wild beast must be put down, even if in human form.
    He was nothing but a rabid beast, wasn’t he? And every farmer knew what to do with one.
    
    …No farmer ever enjoyed it.
  • Bi De teaches this lesson to three disciples of the Shrouded Mountain who try to turn him into basically their slave. He refuses, then beats them all up with just his legs.
    Bi De: I am humble because I have lived and learned temperance. To mistake this for weakness is the height of foolishness.
• Graying Morality: The Shrouded Mountain Sect was first introduced as the sect that the rapist Zang Li belonged to, is described as decadent, lavish, and espousing the philosophy of Might Makes Right, and during the Dueling Peaks arc, is perfectly willing to follow their Young Master's orders to kidnap Tigu and her friends. In a later arc, Bi De, Ri Zu and Yun Ren are tasked to infiltrate it as new disciples to find out if there is any demonic corruption inside it, and while Yun Ren hates the sect's Inquisitors for leading a purge against the foxes of the Howling Fang mountains and suppressing Fat Han's entire family line for a comment their ancestor made thousands of years ago, and Bi De finds the Inner Disciples to be banal Arrogant Kung Fu Guys but not outright evil, they make genuine friends in fellow new disciples Fat Han and Yushang, Ri Zu makes friends in the Medical Pavillion and finds Master Lishu to be a fine doctor, and cannot deny that the sect as a whole does genuinely serve the surrounding villages well and actively fights against demonic forces. Instead of a simple mission to dig up the sect's secrets and crush them with impunity, Ri Zu now has to spend several complicated hours deciding what to do next. In the end, after listening to their reports, Shen Yu concludes that there's no demons in the Shrouded Mountain Sect, just a whole lot of skeletons revealed thanks to Yun Ren's illusions, so they just conclude the investigation and leave the sect to their "internal affairs".
• Green Thumb: Discussed, deconstructed, and defied by Jin, who acknowledges that he could use qi to make plants grow rapidly, but he doesn't have a comprehensive enough understanding of the full ecosystem to do that without risking a collapse. He could even cause the trees to rise up and fight for him, but that's a nightmare scenario to him. Instead, he focuses on making plants grow better, pouring his qi into them without making specific demands. It works, with the farm following the normal seasons but being fantastically productive, both in quantity and quality, at harvest time. It also turns out that while Jin isn't using his powers to directly grow plants, someone else is; by pouring his Qi into the land Jin is reviving and healing the local earth spirit, who in return uses her power to further improve the quality and yield of his crops.

H-L

• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: The Zang family of the Shrouded Mountain Sect are described as having blonde hair and blue eyes, but they normally subvert this trope due to them being varying degrees of arrogant assholes. Played straight by Zang Yong, the First Patriarch of the Lightning Brigade, who is a boisterous, chivalrous hero that fights to protect his loved ones, while sharing the same blonde hair as his family line.
• Hangover Sensitivity: Exploited by Jin, who has much faster recovery than anyone else, and delights in talking loudly about how it's a beautiful day, while everyone else except Meiling (who stayed dry) is walking like a funeral procession.
• Happiness in Slavery:
  • Jin's animals all consider themselves honored to serve the great Fa Ram. Jin eventually tries to pay them so that it isn't slavery, but they mostly seem to put their pay back in the farm savings. (From an animal's point of view, they're not exactly wrong; everyone at Fa Ram eats like kings and queens, enjoys unparalleled safety from predators of all kinds, and has access to high quality medical care.)
  • Vajra the queen bee is a particularly notable example, since she can't speak, and thus actually views herself as a vassal and Jin as an emperor. But she's very pleased with her situation nonetheless; her hive is protected from invaders and kept well fed, and she's quite happy to offer her bees' life and service in return.
• Harmony Versus Discipline: The path of cultivation can be summarized as "defying the heavens", where with constant training, meditation and self-improvement, consuming the Qi of the land in the form of herbs, slain Spirit Beasts parts and cultivation pills, you can transcend the Earthly realm, become immortal, and ascend to the heavens through enlightenment (Discipline). Jin's path is the exact opposite, staying In Harmony with Nature, cultivating the land, raising his Spirit Beasts as disciples, and making his own piece of heaven on earth (Harmony). Best embodied in a story about cultivation, where when two cultivators found a rare flower full of Qi, Jin sympathizes with the one who cultivated the flower and spread its life instead of the "correct" one who crushed it up into a Qi pill to improve himself.
• Healing Factor: Qi can be used to accelerate healing. Once Xiulan is purged of demonic qi, she's able to heal her cuts and bruises in seconds.
• Healing Herb: Hong Yaowu has records of many qi-infused plants with remarkable medicinal properties, but Jin's "Lowly Spiritual Herbs", which he quietly took with him when he left the Cloudy Sword Sect, and which have been saturated with his abundant qi, are especially potent — particularly after Meiling discovers ways to refine and concentrate them. They're a key part of the surgery to heal Bowu's crippled leg, allowing near-instant recovery without stitches.
• Heel Realization: The test of manhood in the Rumbling Earth Sect is the ability to slay a Wrecker Ball, and they make clothing and jewellery from the claws and hides of the beasts. Then they see the crystal containing Xiaoshi's memories, of how the ancestors of the Wrecker Balls were friendly gentle giants who taught the sect the origins of their fighting style and loved children.
  On Gang: All of this! Off! From everyone! We are no oathbreakers to wear such disgusting things!
• Here We Go Again!: After Lu Ri finally tracks down Jin to deliver his mail, Jin writes a reply letter and asks Lu Ri to find and deliver it to his grandfather Shen Yu, who is currently marching with the Imperial Army. Lu Ri briefly flashes back to his ordeal just finding Jin, but accepts the mission anyway.
• Hero Insurance: Defied. Cultivators actually can smash buildings and roads with impunity, since mortals can't hold them to account (and would normally be destroyed for the insult of trying). But after an encounter at the Dueling Peaks involving all the Azure Hills sects and the Shrouded Mountain sect, which resulted in a lot of collateral damage, Jin makes sure all the cultivators involved gather together to clean up and rebuild.
  Jin: If you break something, fix it.
• Hero of Another Story: There are a lot of more traditional Xianxia characters and stories going on in the background. Sometimes they encounter the Fa Ram and go Off the Rails.
• Heroic Build: Played with. Jin has a bodybuilder's physique, but the local ideal is lean and fast. (Tigu is teaching the local girls to appreciate abs, though.)
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • When the Azure Mountains were sundered, Rumblin' Yao the Roadspinner and the Lord of the Lake sacrificed themselves to, respectively, protect the people in his land and prevent his lake from being overgrown and choked off.
  • When a plague of parasites hit Hong Yaowu, Xian the Elder, his wife Fu and his eldest son Hong Xian (Meiling's late grandparents and uncle) all worked tirelessly to find a cure, purge the parasites and save the village, even as they all succumbed to the disease themselves. Their funeral was the day that the third son Hong San became Hong Xian the 77th.
• Hermit Guru: Xiulan, after observing the farm, concludes that Jin is a Hidden Master, and that's also how she describes him to her sect. When Meiling realises it, she's first amused, then realises that he actually does fit most of the criteria, although it's certainly not what he set out to do.
  Jin really was some kind of hidden master, wasn't he? Powerful, with strong "disciples", and living as to not be disturbed?
  She looked over at her intended, and he perked up, giving her a big, goofy grin.
  Meiling grinned back, for an entirely different reason.
  He would figure it out, or he wouldn't.
• Heroic Vow: Xiulan promises Jin that she'll bring his disciples back safely from the Dueling Peaks Tournament. She isn't able to do it alone, but she gets herself almost killed in a Delaying Action to protect Tigu until Jin can arrive and intervene, which Jin considers to be going above and beyond.
• High-Class Call Girl: This is essentially Guan Chyou's role in the Azure Jade Trading Company; she's both intelligent and attractive, and is assigned to highly valued clients to provide for any and all needs that they may have – business-related or otherwise. When she starts flirting with Jin, he quickly shuts her down and requests different services, but doesn't realize it's actually part of her job; he assumes it was more of an impromptu order to seduce a client.
• History Repeats: As it turns out, this is not the first time that someone has followed the Path of Shennong and connected to Tianlan Shan. Xiaoshi was in many ways a similar man to Jin, kind and friendly and wanting to build a little slice of heaven on earth. But he built a large formation to empower her, and it was eventually corrupted to destroy her instead. Tianlan is now terrified of being torn apart again.
• Hive Queen: A literal hive; spirit bee queens appear to be able to share the senses of their subordinates and remotely command them. Vajra also demonstrates the ability to dominate foreign bees and add them to the swarm.
• Holding in Laughter:
  • Lady Wu has to hold in her mirth when Meiling tells her that her husband Jin moved to the Azure Hills for peace and a quiet life, just like her beleaguered husband the Lord Magistrate.
  • Meiling realizes at her wedding that the groom has taken the boulder that they were sitting on to share their first kiss, and placed it on the farm, so they can sit there whenever they want, and wants to laugh at the absurdity, but it would be out of place. Nonetheless, they both end up in giggles.
    We were technically supposed to be calm and dignified here, but she couldn't help it. She clapped her hand over her mouth as her shoulders heaved with mirth.
  • Upon being served a "delicacy" of Gold Grade rice that he knows is from Jin's own farm, Yun Ren has so much trouble stifling his laughter that his rice goes down the wrong way and sends him into a coughing fit.
• Horse of a Different Color: Chunky the boar, after awakening as a spirit animal, grows immensely (and can alter his size), but remains extremely friendly and gentle. (Unless you've made yourself his enemy.) He frequently gives rides to everyone, especially children.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Bi De is essentially beaten by the Young Master Zang Sheng in human form — but then Shen Yu's appearance lets him know that the time for infiltration is over, and he returns to his true rooster form in front of the entire Shrouded Mountain Sect, ascending an entire cultivation realm on the spot.
• I Choose to Stay: Jin is a little surprised to learn that the fragment of Rou's soul, despite having initially wanted to remain in the Cloudy Sword Sect, doesn't want to return when offered the chance, having become attached to the farm and the family they've built up there.
  • A little earlier, Jin had ordered Bi De to abandon him for his own safety to not get him caught up in any particular altercation with the Cloudy Sword Sect, but Bi De decides to follow his choices to the end and chooses to disobey his Master and stay by his side.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Jin isn't exactly thrilled at how the clash with Zang Li and the Shrouded Mountain turned out, but he doesn't wallow in self-recrimination.
  I had killed somebody. I couldn’t say I really regretted it. Some men needed killing. Taking charge of the Azure Hills? Well, that was downright terrifying, but I think it had to be done too.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Jin really wanted peace, which is why he left the Cloudy Sword Sect, but even as a farmer, his level of power makes all sorts of waves.
  This was coming, I knew it was, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. My rice was getting too good. I was expanding the roads too much. There was no way I could have remained hidden forever.
• Immune to Fire: When Jin first tries out his idea of using qi to quickly boil water, it's an emergency situation, so he just sticks his hand in a pot of water and dumps qi into it, with immediate results. Then realizes how foolish it is to have his hand in a pot of boiling water. Then he realizes that it's not actually hurting him. He later speculates about the idea of qi-powered metalwork, being able to just reach into a forge and reshape the hot metal inside.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: Qi-enriched food is vastly superior to ordinary food, especially to Cultivators who can benefit from absorbing the qi from it, making it very valuable. Everything Jin grows is qi-enriched.
• Incest Subtext: Leading to an in-universe squick moment, a huli jing tries to seduce Yun to find out more about him, but it turns out "Fox + attractive female" looks really similar to Yun's mom, which is a huge turn off for him. (When the Fox finds out, it remarks that many nobles don't seem to care.)
• Inconsistent Spelling: Jin gives all his animals English names, but all of these names are changed when pronounced by others (Big D becomes Bi De, Tigger becomes Tigu'er, etc). Curiously, Chunky (Chun Ke) is the only one who seems to be aware of what the original names are.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Upon hearing that Jin single-handedly forbade the Shrouded Mountain from entering the Azure Hills again, the magistrate seizes a bottle of wine, but only allows himself a single sip, though he desperately wants more — so he hands the bottle to his wife to remove the temptation.
  She obliged him, draining the rest.
• The Infiltration: One of the arcs of Volume 4 is this: Bi De, Ri Zu and Yun Ren are tasked by Shen Yu to infiltrate the Shrouded Mountain Sect in human form/under illusory disguise as new disciples to see if they have actually been infiltrated by demons, like Zang Li had been.
• Insatiable Newlyweds:
  • Shortly after getting married to Meihua, Zhuge Tingfeng is contemplating how good his life is, including the fact that, "His wonderful bride was as enthusiastic about their marriage as he was, and he was the envy of all of his colleagues."
  • After their marriage, Jin and Meiling are quite active both by day and by night, leading Gou Ren to stay in Jin's old shack and Xiulan to sleep outside.
    Meiling: And Jin… No slacking on your duties, husband.
    Jin: [chuckling] Lewd woman.
    Meiling: I am not lewd, I am a proper wife, attentive to her duties!
    Jin: You're the one who got the recording crystal out. You're lewd.
• Insult Backfire:
  • After Yun Ren refers to Meiling as "our flower", Gou Ren snorts that she could only be a bunch of thistles. She takes this in stride, though threatening revenge – but when Jin hears of it, he's impressed.
    Jin: A thistle, huh? I can see it. Medicinal. Tough enough to grow anywhere. And really, they are truly beautiful flowers, the same colour as her eyes.
  • Ty An disparagingly calls Tigger in human form "Muscles" – which she takes as a compliment, and returns the favour, referring to Ty An by her beautiful "Freckles".^note Freckles, in Xianxia-land, are generally seen as blemishes, though Jin doesn't think so.
• Interesting Situation Duel: To help them set aside their regrets, Bi De offers to fight Miantiao and Liang Yin as a stand in for the deceased target of their ire, Sun Ken. He matches his power and abilities to best emulate how that fight might have gone so that the snake and rabbit don't feel that their efforts to grow stronger were wasted.
• Internal Reveal:
  • At the end of book 2, Xiulan finally learns about Jin's history with the Cloudy Sword sect, realizing why he prefers a First-Name Basis to being called "Master". She decides he's worthy of the title, anyway.
  • The Lord Magistrate finally learns that Jin is young and inexperienced and really did look up to him all along, and is stunned.
  • In volume 3, Meiling asks how Jin knows so much, and he tells her about his reincarnation.
  • It takes a long time before Jin learns that Vajra the queen bee has awakened as a spirit beast, although Meiling suspected it sooner.
• Interrupted Intimacy:
  • Things are heating up on Jin and Meiling's favourite rock, when Bi De calls them to attend the pregnant cows.
  • Xianghua's evening with Gou Ren is going perfectly, until they're disturbed by a Shrouded Mountain disciple intending to essentially kidnap Gou Ren. An extremely upset Xianghua opens hostilities by striking the intruder with the perfumed bedroll she had secretly prepared.
    Xianghua: This night was going as planned. Things were just getting good. You have ruined it.
• Interspecies Romance: Bi De and Ri Zu have some chemistry and show interest in each other. They don't seem to regard species as a barrier; it's more about Ri Zu developing her self-confidence.
• Intimate Healing: Just working in close proximity to Jin seems to result in his friends benefiting from his qi, and after sleeping next to him (chastely, no more than cuddling) at the end of a strenuous day of work, Meiling wakes up without muscle soreness.
• I Owe You My Life:
  • After Jin and Meiling treat Xiulan's wounds and bring her back from the brink of death, she declares that she owes them her life and will repay them a hundredfold. Jin tries to assure her that no debt is necessary, but ultimately finds it easier to just accept her promise and then largely ignore it.
  • Shao Heng declares this to Ri Zu after she not only saves his life and helps rebuild his cultivation, but also after she swears to defend him after one of his old squadmates tries to kill him.
• Ironic Echo: Pi Pa acts as a mediator between Ti Gu and Ri Zu on multiple occasions, reminding them that there is to be no fighting in the house. She freezes when Ti Gu repeats it back to her to stop her taking revenge on Washy for slapping her butt.
• Ironic Nickname: When Elder Shou of the Cloudy Sword Sect emerges from a century of closed-door cultivation, he is irritated that the Seven Fragrance Jewel Herbs he loves are known commonly as "Lowly Spiritual Herbs". It turns out they received that name because Shou's contemporaries were so fed up with Elder Shou waxing lyrical about the herbs that they named them ironically.
  Shou: The Seven Fragrance Jewel Herbs are a marvel! The best herbs for any cultivator in the Spiritual Realm, and he called them 'Lowly Spiritual Herbs'?!
• I Shall Taunt You: When defending Xiulan from Zang Li/Lu Ban, Big D realizes that while he can hold off the enemy cultivator in the short term, in the long term he's outclassed. However he also notices his opponent, already enraged at being challenged by a chicken, responds poorly to references to Jin, and begins to criticize his adversary's technique and compare him to Jin.
  Big D: Hmph, your power is far below that of my Master's. You are beneath his notice. Look at you, struggling so greatly against just his chicken.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That:
  • Lu Ri doesn't think he's done anything truly impressive by building a highly efficient spying and information gathering network in three months, he just taught the wisdom of the Honoured Founders. Shen Yu barely stops himself from breaking into laughter when he learns about it.
    This boy—he thought what he had done was unimpressive. That it was merely the work of the Founders of the sect, rather than his own skill, not realizing that he had replicated in months what the Founders had taken centuries to refine.
  • Zhang Fei, unlike most cultivators in the Azure Hills, believes that Spirit Beasts are commonplace and every cultivating elder can do awesome things. Understandable, considering his first master was the cultivating rooster Bi De, who'd just saved his village from a wolf pack.
• Joke and Receive: Xiulan encounters a rooster that's a stronger cultivator than herself, a rat learning the healing arts, and wonders if she'll next encounter pigs that shake the earth.
  There was a happy squeal from outside, and the thunder of trotters.
  Her eyebrow twitched.
• Just Following Orders: A disciple of the Shrouded Mountain sect says that he helped his Young Master Zang Li kidnap Tigu and hurt her friends out of sect loyalty. Jin is not impressed in the least, confusing the disciple.
• Just in Time: A minor example, when Xiulan visits for Jin and Meiling's wedding, having travelled for weeks and dodged her minders, and arrives during the bridal procession.
• "Just So" Story: The story of why the village known as "The Eighth Correct Place" is named that. Supposedly, the founders were commanded to build the village in its current location by some great lord. However, the area was subject to great floods, and all the buildings were washed away, seven times. Still, the founder, the first Zhang Fei, was determined to comply with his lord's command, and rebuilt the village after every flood. At the beginning, he placed a sign by the entrance of the village that read "The Correct Place" and it miraculously was the only thing that survived every flood. His brother, making fun of Zhang Fei's stubbornness, secretly added the word "Eighth" to the sign. When the great lord came to inspect, he asked about the name of the village, and learning of its hardships, turned the ground to silver, which is how the village both got its name and its silver-mining livelihood. Besides explaining the local mythology, the story may also hint at the nature and the reason for creation of the province-spanning formation Bi De is investigating. It's later revealed, interestingly, to be completely accurate: The founder was obsessed with complying with the Azure Emperor's command to build the village there, which was in service of a grand formation used to keep demons out of the province. And the silver in the ground was actually put there by Xiaoshi, with help from the earth spirit Tianlan Shan, after having a good laugh at the founder's stubbornness. What's even more interesting is that this information survived to the present day, given that the later disaster involving that same formation wiped most people's memories of the Azure Empire in the first place.
• Karmic Jackpot: Happens to Tie Delan, sectmaster of the Hermetic Iron sect. He was negotiating with a noble in Grass Sea City to buy Spirit Iron (to help with his son's cultivation) from a vein he owned, when the noble's estate was attacked by intruding cultivators. While his honor would ask him to defend his host him against intruders, when it turns out that one of the intruders is his own son and that the noble is suspected of slave trading, he allows them to arrest the noble, helps clear out Grass Sea City afterwards, and even build new cages for all the arrested slavers. The outcome of this is that for services rendered to the city, his sect gets to own the Spirit Iron vein outright (which the noble was going to use slave labor to mine).
• Kayfabe: At the Azure Hills tournament the contestants, Liu Xianghua in particular, engage in the typical Xianxia threats and posturing, but it's mostly good natured play-acting. The organizer of the tournament sells dolls of the competitors and tries to turn the fights into a dramatic story.
• Killing Intent: A powerful cultivator can terrify weaker enemies into submission merely by flaring their Qi.
  • Tigu does this by accident at a noodle shop.
  • Jin ends a battle involving Profound Realm cultivators just by turning up.
    His intent.
    It was like the Dueling Peaks had decided to lean in from their positions. That the entire mountain was directly over his head, looking down upon him, and finding him wanting.
    ...
    Yingwen tried to take another step, and then realised he couldn't lift his feet. It was as if there was a great weight upon his shoulders.
    ...
    And then he was in front of Yingwen. He was merely head and shoulders taller, yet it felt like if Yingwen wished to look at the man's face, he would have to crane his neck to look up at the Heavens.
  • Shen Yu lets out just a flash of his intent, and a bird falls dead from a nearby tree, its heart stopped.
• Killed Off for Real: A senior disciple of Lu Ban's Master is astounded to find that Lu Ban is actually dead after Jin's blow; the Twilight Cuckoo's Triumph should have allowed him to survive his body's death. She assumes he never bothered to learn the technique properly, but as the narrative shows that he did, his death is probably the result of the earth spirit empowering Jin.
• Ki Manipulation: Qi is the life energy that flows through all plants, animals, people, and the land. Cultivators and Spirit Beasts can use this to perform Supernatural Martial Arts. Qi can also be aligned to an element.
• King Incognito: Rou first met "Gramps" sitting on the street in threadbare clothing, looking like a homeless vagabond. He's actually one of the most powerful cultivators in the world, who beats demon armies with a mere fraction of his power (because using all of it would be wasteful).
• Klatchian Coffee: The Hong family has an energy drink that helps them work through long, busy nights. Jin and Meiling use it for especially passionate nights, and when Wa Shi filches a cup, he is so energized he swims right down the river into a hidden grotto with an ancient tortoise, with no clue how he got there or how to get back.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • The start of Jin's journey is deciding to walk away from the Cloudy Sword Sect. Possibly even run.
    Arrogant young masters? Heavenly tribulations? Cultivating for days on end, then getting into life or death battles?
    Yeah, no thanks. I'm getting out of here.
  • The group from the Shrouded Mountain sect were already on the back foot when their attempt to kidnap Rou Tigu on the Dueling Peaks is interrupted by Tigu's master/father Rou Jin, who is powerful enough to cow them all with his mere presence and kill Young Master Zang Li with one punch, but then they are confronted with the fact that Master Rou has the backing of the Cloudy Sword sect, which is more than capable of crushing the entire Shrouded Mountain sect if things escalate further, whereupon they immediately throw themselves onto his mercy.
• Kuudere: Xiao Su Ge, grandaughter of Elder Xiao Ge and Lu Ri's betrothed, acts like a coldly rational Young Mistress in public, but once on her own, she immediately falls to her knees, blushing and gushing to herself about how handsome and passionate Lu Ri is.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Bi De considers this to be a pillar of "the Great Master's" philosophy. "One who cheats the earth shall be cheated by it. One who gives to the earth, shall surely be rewarded."
  • Bi De rescues Ri Zu the rat from a bird of prey. When Chow Ji's malice is exposed, Ri Zu contains the corruption in Bi De's body so he can end the rat.
  • The Cloudy Sword inner disciples who had been bullying the outer disciples, leading to Rou's death, are called up to face a sect elder and "trade pointers" in turn.
    Elder Ge: Fear not, I, Your Grandfather, shall treat you exactly as you have treated your juniors.
• Last-Second Chance: When Jin finally corners Zang Li/Lu Ban, he simply offers, "One chance to surrender." When that's turned down, he follows up with a Megaton Punch.
• Laugh Themselves Sick:
  • When Jin brings the Xong brothers and Yao Che back to his farm, the first thing they see are an array of statues carved by Tigu - all depicting her very muscular master in the nude. Jin's visitors instantly break down cackling, with Gou Ren practically falling off the cart with laughter.
  • After Jin's Innocent Innuendo about having fun after her bath, Xiulan is on edge, despite his clarification that he's talking about a board game. When she then finds her clothes prepared and sitting next to a go board, she breaks down laughing until she cries.
• Lazy Alias: Jin Rou reverses his name on official documents (Jin Rou -> Rou Jin) and alters the characters to keep the Cloudy Sword Sect off his trail.
• Level-Locked Loot: Jin's adoptive grandfather, not knowing that he left the Cloudy Sword sect, sends him a letter with a seal attached, designed to unlock a gift when his cultivation has reached the second stage of the Profound realm.
• Life/Death Juxtaposition: Vol. 3 Chap. 40 is titled "The Battle", and has two interwoven scenes: the scenes of Shen Yu and the Imperial Army's grand battle against a demonic incursion, with death and destruction everywhere, and Meiling giving birth to her and Jin's son.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Meiling accidentally discovers that exposure to electricity can cause spiritual herbs to become more potent. So she performs a series of experiments with Wa Shi blasting them with lightning over and over, then testing and recording the effects.
• Lightworlder: The Azure Hills have very little ambient Qi as compared to the rest of the Empire (due to the sundering of its native earth spirit) and as such the cultivators there are much weaker, which makes it a good place to get away from all the cultivator and sect madness. Cultivators coming in from outside the Azure Hills have to adjust to not being able to breathe in Qi from the air, and Azure Hills cultivators leaving for other regions get Qi shock when they breathe in the Qi-rich air.
• Literal Disarming: A bandit seizes Bi De by the throat — and Bi De, unimpressed, tears his arm off. The bandit doesn't have time to even finish screaming, though, before he's decapitated.
• A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll": Jin manages to get a hold of a Pipa, a traditional Chinese string instrument, and starts using it like a banjo to play modern North American folk music. Downplayed in that by his own admission, he's not very good at it, and he's not taking the musical world by storm. However, it's enough for a good time with friends and family, and for wooing Meiling. Later he carves his own banjo.
• Locked Out of the Loop: When Shen Yu sent his grandson Jin Rou to study at the Cloudy Sword sect, he made sure that Jin didn't know of his real identity to keep him humble during his training, and that no-one other than a few key elders of the sect knew about Jin's connection to him, so as to not influence their treatment of him. This Went Horribly Wrong as over the years, the Cloudy Sword elders had retreated into seclusion to cultivate themselves and the disciples had become Arrogant Kung Fu Guys from the lack of supervision, and one of the Inner Disciples, not knowing of Rou's identity, beat him practically to death for fun. Rou, after recovering and seeing no compassion for him or repercussions for the bully anywhere, decided to leave the sect and abandon the path of cultivation altogether.
• Logical Weakness: The Shrouded Mountain Sect has a series of techniques for detecting and defeating the illusions used by their traditional enemies, the fox spirits. These illusions are generally created by manipulating shadows, and the sect's techniques are all focused on detecting and dispelling mystical shadows. Unfortunately for them, the illusion concealing Nezan's cave is rendered completely undetectable by those techniques since it was woven using light, not shadow, inspired as it was by Yun Ren and Nezan's experiments in projecting and preserving images from Yun Ren's recording crystal on solid objects using light. Also, the techniques actually have to be used on a target, which is part of why Lu Ban was able to sneak around so easily- while the Shrouded Mountain tested Zang Li, he was only lightly tested, which allowed the demonic cultivator to get around unmolested. It's telling that after Lu Ban was revealed, multiple Shrouded Mountain cultivators mention that everyone is getting deeper testing, and the Demonic Cultivators have admitted that they can't sneak into the Mountain anymore due to said deeper testing.
• Lost Technology:
  • The Earthly Arena at the Dueling Peaks was constructed thousands of years ago, with mechanisms to lift it toward the top of the mountains as each tournament progressed, but has since broken down, requiring contestants and sect elders to lift it manually. Until the earth spirit reconnects to it, and it reactivates, revealing that it was constructed on a scale that the current sects would be unable to replicate.
  • In Pale Moon Lake City, there is some kind of ancient Qi-powered distilling rig. It is said to have been able to distill any liquid into a purer solution, but it no longer works correctly, producing a kind of sludge and nothing else. Nobody knows who built it or how it works, so no one is bold enough to attempt to repair or dismantle it, and it remains a stationary curiosity, just sitting there and glowing. In keeping with the story's usual subversion of xianxia plotlines, Jin checks it out and decides that there's nothing he can do about it, so he just leaves it there.
• Lunacy: Big D can project Laser Blades formed out of moonlight, which are the basis of most of his combat techniques. He later develops Twin Faces of the Half Moon, a Doppelgänger Attack, and Aegis of the Full Moon, an energy shield.

M-N

• Magic Dance:
  • Throughout the Azure Hills, there is a very old traditional dance, with five variations for the five qi elements. It's part of feeding power to the earth spirit, but its purpose has been forgotten, and the great formation of dancing villages is incomplete.
  • Part of Xiulan's Character Development is rediscovering the dance at the heart of the Verdant Blade's sword techniques. And it's how the earth spirit helps her to recover from the destruction of her cultivation. Once she witnesses her ancestor performing the original theatrical dances, she studies them along with the sect's martial derivatives, and fuses the two to create the Dance of Silk and Steel.
• Magical Weapon: Fat Han's "Spirit Sword Formation" is designed to create artificial meridians in an object, allowing more effective qi reinforcement. Over time, it theoretically could cause a blade spirit to form.
• Magitek: There are magic equivalents to modern technology.
  • Recording crystals are basically magical cameras.
  • There are also transmission stones, which work like a radio, although the transmission quality is generally too poor to actually speak through them.
  • The world has knowledge of modern germ theory, due to a cultivator discovering that a technique for seeing long distances could also be used as a microscope.
  • The Earthly Arena, site of the Dueling Peaks Tournament, contains a bunch of magitek equipment, including a recording system, voice amplification, and special lighting. It also used to rise to the top of the peaks by itself, but that system stopped working ages ago and it is now lifted by rope and pulley hauled on by teams made up of defeated competitors and sect elders. Until Jin comes to town with the earth spirit Tianlan Shan in tow, inadvertently reactivating the lift mechanism... and many other internal systems long dead and forgotten. Like the security system which locks the elders inside the mountain.
  • Grass Sea City has a qi-powered citywide announcing system that now only works here and there locally. Until Tie Delun reactivates it so that the Special Inspector can announce the defeat of the city's massive slaving conspiracy.
• Make Sure He's Dead: Yingwen sends the Shrouded Mountain disciples on a three-day trip over more than 500km to find Zang Li's body, including hiring a local guide to lead them to the point where the body's impact caused an avalanche. When they find the very dead corpse, they seal it up for delivery to the sect, and incinerate the pool of oil and blood that demonic parasite Lu Ban left behind.
• The Man Behind the Man: The Shrouded Mountain Sect Inquisitors saw through Zang Zengsheng's story as a lie, but chose to prop him up to increase their own power.
• Man-Eating Plant: The Misty Lake is really more of a swamp, home to spirit plants like the Carnivine, which can grow large enough to eat entire villages if not culled.
• Man Hug:
  • Jin makes plans to give the Xong Brothers their "allotment" after subduing the Shrouded Mountain sect and rescuing Tigu.
    It would of course be manly, with lots of back thumping, but they were totally getting it later.
  • Shen Yu internally reflects that hugs, in his experience, are, "Something rarely done between men. It left you too open." Nonetheless, when he and Jin are reunited, there is a hug with back-slapping involved.
• Man of Kryptonite: As shown in Xiaoshi's battle against the Azure Emperor, the techniques provided by the Path of Shennong are tailored to counter other cultivators and their Qi techniques. [Till the Land] clears away the domains that a cultivator can impose on the world through pure Killing Intent. [Divert the Waters] redirects the Qi in the air around a cultivator away so that they can't replenish Qi through their breath, and is even able to redirect Qi-based attacks. [Fell the Trees] allows the user to destroy weapons, armor and artifacts more ancient and powerful than themself, and [Break the Rocks] is an Armor-Piercing Attack specifically designed to smash through Qi-based protections and defenses. Basically, when a cultivator tries to defy the heavens and the natural order, the Path of Shennong rejects that defiance and imposes the natural order right back.
• Martial Arts and Crafts: It turns out that the Verdant Blade Sect's core combat technique, the Blades of Grass, originated as a theatrical device.
  Tianlan Shan: Just don’t make the mistake of having people think you can actually fight, now.
  Ruolan: Who would dare sully the thirty-two Fans of Grass with something as base as combat?
• Martial Arts for Mundane Purposes:
  • Tigger uses her claw arts to carve sculptures (mostly of Jin, in the accurately depicted nude, triumphing over a pile of enemies), or harvest with qi blades.
    Tigger: This Rou Tigu shall harvest the most! I shall surpass all others!
  • As Xiulan begins to adapt to the peaceful and gentle use of qi, Jin finds her in a kitchen, "at the center of a storm," using her qi to telekinetically chop vegetables in mid air on their way to the pot, mash garlic in seconds, cut through roots in a single slice, and catch items thrown to her by the other women present (many of whom are just watching the show).
  • Lin's techniques that mimic the power of the sun and produce enormous amounts of heat and light are very useful for anything that requires a heat source, like cooking, or powering a furnace. And conveniently, it's way easier to keep her "fueled" with qi and literal rabbit food than to acquire coal or firewood.
• Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: Gou Ren (masculine), Meiling (feminine), and Yun Ren (androgyne) particularly after his first encounter with Nezan.
• Master-Apprentice Chain: There is Master Cao Ci -> Shen Yu -> Jin -> Bi De -> Zhang Fei. Bi De later becomes Shen Yu's disciple to learn from him directly.
• Master of the Levitating Blades: Xiulan has two heirloom swords, which she can multiply with the Blades of Grass technique, forming spectral copies, which she then wields with telekinesis. When she first meets Jin, she's able to form eight blades, but she later goes up to thirty-two and more.
• Master Poisoner:
  • Meiling is an expert healer, with a focus on herbalism. Which is to say, she knows exactly what all the plants growing nearby can do to the human body, and in what doses. Amongst friends and family, this is generally limited to minor revenges like itching powder and turning skin different colours, but she also has nastier recipes for effects like rapid and violent diarrhoea.
    There were some things in the medicine house I wasn’t touching with a ten foot pole, thank you very much. It was a little freaky how Meimei could cheerfully describe how exactly a poison could kill somebody, along with her efforts to make it even deadlier.
  • Ri Zu becomes Meiling's student, and bases her combat style primarily on throwing pepper powder in people's eyes, slipping paralytics into drinks, and so forth.
• The Medic: Medicine is the Hong family business, and Meiling excels at it. When she repairs Bowu's ruined knee, her father admits that she has entirely surpassed him. Ri Zu in turn becomes her protégé.
• Medieval Stasis: It's clear that, while the political makeup of the world has changed over time, the technology level and general state of society has remained the same for longer than history records.
• Megaton Punch: Jin doesn't really keep up any martial arts, but he does make sure to exercise regularly and ensure he still knows how to throw a punch, just in case. When that case comes up and he uses his full power, he sends Zang Li/Lu Ban, or rather, his corpse flying clear out of the province at speeds so great that to the naked eye, the target just vanishes. The impact on a mountain about 1400 Li away^note 700 km or 430 mi is energetic enough to cause a landslide, and the Qi released by this attack causes a bumper crop at farms for hundreds of Li around the flight path and impact point.
• The Merch: In-Universe. The master of ceremonies for the Dueling Peaks Tournament has a flourishing side business merchandising the tournament, such as selling dolls of the competitors and sensationalised books of the events. Not that he's giving the competitors themselves a cut of the profits... until the Azure Jade Trading Company warns him that in Tigu's case, he'd better ensure she gets her due, since her presumed father Jin is a very valued client.
• Merger of Souls: The transmigrator arrives in Jin Rou's body, with access to his memories. It's later revealed that the original Rou still exists as part of him, but they're normally fused together under the newcomer's control; they partially separate, enough to talk to each other, during his dreams, but forget while awake.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: A recurring theme of animals that attain human form is that they tend to be more mellow and lack certain traits that their animal form had. Tigu was a prime example of Cats Are Mean until she became human, at which point she became notably nicer, and later said that she didn't feel the urge to try and eat Ri Zu while human. Ri Zu, meanwhile, feels less nervous and no instinctual fear of the sky or predators while human, gazing at a hawk as she says this.
• Mistaken for Betrayal: Tianlan has spent thousands of years believing that her Connected One, Xiaoshi, betrayed and broke her. Turns out, he nearly did, building a formation to let him draw her power into himself to fight the demons, but he realized at the last moment that it would be wrong to turn on her like that. Unfortunately, the demon possessing his vizier chose that moment to show its hand and had no such compunctions; Xiaoshi had to break the formation, which shattered Tianlan, to stop the demon from simply consuming her and everyone else. After connecting to Jin, Tianlan finally sees the memory crystal Xiaoshi left behind and learns the truth.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Guan Chyou is assigned by the Azure Jade Trading Company to fulfill any need Jin has. He chooses not to take that as far as he could, since he is faithful to Meiling, but everyone else who knows about Chyou's assignment assumes that he's bedding her (which would be socially accepted since he's a powerful cultivator). This is actually helpful to Chyou, on balance, because it protects her from men who might otherwise refuse to take "No" for an answer, but who don't dare cross Jin, and so she deliberately encourages the misconception.
  Indeed, it was a mighty weapon she could use. She told no lie. She was just Master Jin’s personal assistant and liaison, but her robe, tied in such a manner to signify that she was a taken woman, made people jump to all sorts of conclusions.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • The Whirling Demon Sword Gang is quite pleased to discover that someone has built a farmstead near their old hideout. A prosperous one, too, and the scout can even hear a woman inside. Time to Rape, Pillage, and Burn! Except that the farm animals include five powerful spirit beasts, who proceed to wreak havoc and slaughter upon the intruders.
  • At the Dueling Peaks tournament, Zang Li a.k.a. Lu Ban and his Shrouded Mountain lackeys throw their weight around, confident in the knowledge that if it came to a fight a single Shrouded Mountain elder could very possibly beat every cultivator in the Azure Hills at once. And then they discover that one of the people they've been bullying is under the protection of the Cloudy Sword sect, one of the foremost sects in the Empire and at least as far above the Shrouded Mountain as the Shrouded Mountain is above the sects of the Azure Hills.
  • The patriarch of the Shrouded Mountain, a cultivator in the Sky Realm, is taken aback to be interrupted by an unwashed old man in tattered clothes, incensed by the man taking his chair and drinking his wine, and furious that he has insulted the wine's quality. Surely this old man courts a slow and painful death! Except that it's Shen Yu, quite possibly the most powerful man in the world, at least four and possibly five entire cultivation realms above anyone else present, who gently snuffs out the patriarch's gathered power with a thought and admonishes him to be quiet so Shen Yu can watch the tournament final.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • The spirit beasts who awaken on Jin's farm treat everything that happens there with the kind of drama and gravitas that is typical of the xianxia genre. It isn't Jin's farm; it is the Great Sect of Fa Ram, presided over by Great Master Rou Jin. The gate and fence at the front are the Great Pillars of Fa Ram. He's not Big D the rooster, he's Fa Bi De, First Disciple of Fa Ram. They aren't farming, they're doing Profound and Mystical Training... and so on. (They're not exactly wrong. Jin thinking it's just a farm isn't accurate either.)
  • Many of the Xianxia names for herbs and animals are highly dramatic. Jin's "Lowly Spiritual Herbs", for example, are better known as "Seven Fragrance Jewel Herbs".
  • Jin decides to build a snowman during his first winter at the farm. It's much larger than usual, taking advantage of Jin's cultivator strength, but is otherwise a normal snowman. He names it The General who Commands the Winter.
    • Later, the villagers of Hong Yaowu decide to build their own snowman in the spirit of fun and friendly competition, and they name it The Warden that Sends Forth the Flying Ice and Snow.
    • Then subverted in that Jin built and reinforced the snowman with his Qi and acted like it was a real person, so the General starts forming a core and becoming an actual sapient snow golem with power over the winter. The Warden becomes its first subordinate commander.
• Mundane Solution:
  • Knowing that a cold room won't last all year, Jin experiments with qi reinforcement in various ways to make ice last longer, but all he manages to do is explode it — so he just digs a huge hole and fills it with several tons of ice from a nearby lake.
  • Ri Zu's way of showing she fits into the Shrouded Mountain's Healing Pavillion is a large number of these. Putting snacks and tea in the break room to help surgeons decompress, introducing the idea of a patient chart to keep track of healing progress, reorganizing surgical suites so that medicines and tools are in more sensible locations, and providing packets of nice-smelling herbs to counteract medical smells are all services she provides. Funnily enough, this leads to other healers in the pavilion nearly beating down the Head Healer's door to demand that Ri Zu serve under them directly.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Jin uses the superhuman strength and endurance of a cultivator to make the hard work on the farm easier.
    The best part about everybody you know being super humans, is the fact that you can turn mundane, back-breaking labour into games.
  • The primary seasoning in his cooking is the "Lowly Spiritual Herbs" that he quietly took with him from the Cloudy Sword Sect. Herbs that turn out to have fantastically potent healing properties, especially when stuffed with his qi, and may have been responsible for Bi De's awakening as a Spirit Beast. When the Magistrate receives a bundle of what he recognizes as Seven Fragrance Jewel Herbs as a gift, with cooking instructions attached, he doesn't know what to think.
    We had also managed to grow a cutting of the Ten Poison Resistance Herb, one of Xiulan's wedding gifts, and I couldn't wait to get more of them. Like the Lowly Spiritual Herbs they tasted pretty good. Sweet and sour, they would make a fine addition to my slowly growing collection of tasty seasonings.
  • The trophies taken from Spiritual Beasts and given to Jin as a wedding present include bones — so he turns them into fertilizer.
  • Qi-enhanced strength means that you can... carry a growing younger sibling in one arm with practically no effort.
  • One of Jin's favorite parts of being a cultivator is that "Mosquitoes couldn't get through your skin."
  • Being a supernaturally strong spirit beast rabbit allows Yin to...pull a cart that would have taken multiple normal oxen.
  • The ancient magical sword Summer's Sky has been unknowingly used (while in disguise) to chop wood and skewer meat. It actually enjoyed the new experience.
  • Gaining telekinetic power over water allows Washy to fill cups and pots, water crops without having to carry water all the way from the river, and keep surgery sites clean of blood. It's never been used in combat.
  • Since qi is energy, rapid infusions of large amounts of it will boil water immediately, which is handy for sterilising medical instruments. Jin discovers this based on earlier experiments with simply heating things, rather than producing actual flames.
    I also invented a technique! A truly frightening fire-based attack that I used to surpass the will of the heavens!
    And by that, I mean I used it to defeat rain and dry things out. It works really well for seasoning wood and to keep things from moulding.
  • Ri Zu can observe and control the spread of poison in a victim's body, which also means she's a supernaturally skilled surgical anesthetist, able to put the patient to sleep in seconds and ensure that there are no dangerous side effects.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: The Xong brothers don't make a very good first impression on Xiulan (who is, even Jin admits, very well endowed). By the time Gou Ren is able to see her deeper qualities and actually makes a serious attempt at courting her, she's already suspicious of him. She internally gives him credit for otherwise behaving himself, though.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The Rumbling Earth sect of cultivators prides itself on solitude and their ability to slay Wreckerballs, a type of Spirit Beast. Then Xiulan's sharing of knowledge of the Azure Empire happened, revealing that they were named after a powerful, friendly Wreckerball (Rumblin' Yao) and that they used to be great friends with Wreckerballs after their ancestors and the Spirit Beasts were freed from slavery together. The leader of the Sect, on finding this out, starts vomiting blood, his Qi suffers internal deviation, and he nearly tears his own liver in two over how badly their sect failed to carry on the legacy of their heroes, and by morning, any Wreckerball trophies are gone from the sect.
• Named Weapon:
  • Sun Ken's sword is widely known and feared as the Crimson Demon's Tooth. After it's turned into a plow, Jin renames it Sunny/"Su Ne".
  • The magical talking sword guarded by Nezan (and originally belonging to his old friend, now passed away) is named Summer's Sky.
• Narrative Profanity Filter:
  • Most of the story doesn't shy away from profanity, but when it switches to a child's point of view, there's a sample.
    Yun Ren said a word that Meimei always said, but threatened to stick bitterroot in Xian's mouth if she ever heard him repeat.
  • And another from Ri Zu, who is generally very civilized, but who sees the herb prices in a regular city and "squeaked something most uncharitable about the owners of this shop."
• New Baby Episode: Several chapters of volume 3 are devoted to the birth of Jin and Meiling's child, and Jin's feelings about it, in advance, during labour, and as a new parent. He admits that as cultivators, they have it relatively easy; Meiling is superhumanly strong and resilient, and they can go without sleep for days without noticing any negative effects, to say nothing of the fact that she, her father and her apprentice are all expert doctors.
  It was utterly fantastic, although it was accompanied by a feeling I couldn't describe. A paternal instinct? I don’t know, but whatever it was, I kind of liked it. The feeling was mixed with gratitude that I could be with Meimei every step of the way.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Millennia ago, Xiaoshi overthrew and killed a tyrannical and cruel emperor — whose bloodline was empowering the mist wall that keeps demons out of the world.
  • When Shen Yu and company rescue members of the Shrouded Mountain Sect from death after an ambush by demonic cultivators, the survivors pledge the totality of their sect to aiding Shen Yu in wiping out the demons, both for revenge and because Demon Cultivators are bad. This draws a wince from some of Shen Yu's party, since they just got done plunging the Sect into a civil war, unintentionally limiting loyal reinforcements.
• The Nicknamer: Tigu doesn't bother memorising most people's names, and just calls them by something descriptive, from "Smaller Blade of Grass" for one of Xiulan's junior disciples, to "Handsome Man" for the young master of the Hermetic Iron Sect.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • Being on the receiving end of one is what "killed" the original Jin Rou and allowed "our" Jin to take over his body.
  • In turn, Elder Xiao Ge of the Cloudy Sword Sect administers several to the disciple who beat Jin and his supporters once he finds out it drove Jin out of the sect.
• Noodle Implements: One of the cases that convinced Summer's Sky of Nezan's foolishness was an incident involving a swing, ropes, and a bottle of perfume.
  On second examination, that wasn’t stupid. Merely baffling.
• No OSHA Compliance: Defied by Jin, but mostly Played for Laughs. He makes everyone using the drop hammer wear safety helmets, even though they're mostly cultivators whose heads are more resilient than rock. Chunky even makes Tianlan Shan wear a helmet when building roads in her spiritual realm. He does give Bowu, who as a mortal does really need safety gear, a set of steel toed boots for the solstice.
  I didn’t need the great and powerful OSHA Sect to cross time and space and start screaming at me, thank you very much.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond:
  • Jin was a fifth-level cultivator of the Initiate Realm in his old sect, which means he was one of the weakest people there. He moves to the Azure Hills, where that makes him laughably, hilariously overpowered in a Qi-starved land. The author actually compared cultivators from Azure Hills to deep-sea extremophiles like tube worms, who are specialized to exist in such a Qi-less environment, to such a degree that outsiders who come here have a hard time dealing with how much power they have in comparison.
  • Lu Ri goes through the same thing while traveling through the Azure Hills searching for Jin. He has to constantly suppress his power, lest it overload and destroy the qi sensors routinely used by guards to detect approaching cultivators.
  • Tigu has this experience when attending the tournament — back home on the Fa Ram, she's not especially powerful. Apart from Xiulan, she's the strongest competitor in the tournament.
  • The Lord Magistrate is a skilled administrator, and if he wanted to, he could obtain a posting in a large city, where in theory he would have more power. But he prefers to be in a small, out-of-the-way town where he can get to know most of the people personally, to the point where he can be near-universally beloved.
    He could have more power in a city. He was certain his administration skills were more than capable of handling two hundred thousand souls, nay, five hundred thousand! But in those cities, could he walk around without guards, without any kind of escort, secure in the knowledge that none would even think of harming him? That those that would dare would risk the wrath of all their peers, for this simple, common-born man who had achieved greatness on his own?
• The Nose Knows: Meiling can smell qi, and especially cultivators. This lets her recognize Jin as one even when he isn't behaving like a typical cultivator. She also notices the scent changing when a cultivator is stressed, such as Jin smelling like overboiled rice, or Xiulan's blade oil smell turning rancid.
• No-Sell:
  • Jin doesn't have time to dodge or block Zang Li's "Heaven Piercing Lance" technique, he just gathers his qi — and stops it so hard that Zang's fingers break.
  • He also doesn't notice Meiling's attempts at revenge for the mud pit incident, including itching powder, blueskin dye, and coughing candy. She's eventually successful in getting him with a coffee-like energy drink, with mixed results. This is slowly averted as time goes on, as by Volume 4 Jin mentions that he can almost feel some of the revenge attempts, implying she's been using increasingly powerful attempts.
  • Xian the Younger tries to scare Xiulan by putting a grub under her nose while she's meditating, but after all the blood and death she's seen, she's not so easily spooked.
    Xiulan: A Great Horned Beetle Grub? An auspicious find, Young Master.
  • A guard tries to menace Tigu with a halberd, and she completely ignores it, causing its sharp tip to slide off her neck "with the sound of metal on metal."
• Not So Above It All: When a snowball fight breaks out between the boys, Meiling just sighs and shakes her head at their immaturity — until a snowball hits her in the head, and it is on.
  Meiling: I'm going to murder you sons of a flea-bitten whore!
• Not Worth Killing: Jin knows that the senior disciple who attacked and sort-of-killed him will be killed, but he has no interest in taking the time and effort to do it himself, or spare him, or even learn his name^note Chen Li, and says to just let the sect handle it how they normally do things.
  Jin: Quite frankly, he isn't worth any time out of my day coming up with anything to punish him with. Torture him for a thousand years and let him have a thousand years of my time? Some other resource intensive method that would prolong his suffering? A waste. I don’t even think he's fit to be fertilizer. I don't care about his life, and I don't care about his death. I have things to do—like making a new field, or knitting a hat.

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