Chapter 5 (1/2)
Chapter 5
”Nonsense!” Mo Qingyuan muttered quietly until Gu Xiaomo grew docile. Still furrowing his brows, he turned to Old Man w.a.n.g. ”Uncle, I heard that everything started after you returned from the mountains. Just what happened up there?”
Old Man w.a.n.g's face curdled for a while before he spoke haltingly, ”There…nothing, really. All I did was see a friend. He’s a hunter, so he shot and gave me two wild chickens he caught when I left…”
Suo Ying and Gu Xiaomo both came to a sudden realization. Domestic chickens had short lives, so it was difficult for them to enlighten to a Way, but wild chickens were another matter. If you ran into a wild chicken deep in the forest, there was a chance that it was actually a chicken spirit with 1,000 years of cultivation.
”Uncle, could you take us to see the wild chickens?”
Old Man w.a.n.g agreed and brought the trio to his kitchens behind the house. There was a cage on the ground, inside which lay…
The trio grew stone-faced.
Mo Qingyuan deserved his position as eldest martial brother, because he was the first to recover. ”Uncle, who told you this was a wild chicken?”
”Hunter Li, ah. I’ve never seen such a beautiful wild chicken before…”
Gu Xiaomo was very decisive with her words. ”It’s obviously a peac.o.c.k…”
Inside the cage was a poor, pitiful bright green peac.o.c.k with its feathers all stuck up, clearly on its last breath. As if affected by the aura of cultivators, it uneasily raised its head to struggle within the cage.
”Weren’t there two peac.o.c.ks?” Suo Ying asked in an odd tone.
Old Man w.a.n.g dropped his voice. ”I lost one when I got back home… Aye, with everything else that happened, I wasn’t in the mood to look for that wild chicken.”
”It’s a peac.o.c.k,” Gu Xiaomo corrected severely.
A conflicted Mo Qingyuan muttered to himself before smiling. ”Uncle, you should set your cares aside and go rest. If things go smoothly, everything will be resolved by tomorrow.”
”Really?” Old Man w.a.n.g's joy carried hints of doubt, but when he saw Gu Xiaomo staring gloomily his way, he hurried away to urge on the preparations for dinner instead.
When the meal was finished, only Gu Xiaomo was left unsatisfied. Although there was no chicken on the table, they still had beef, pork, and lamb. But Gu Xiaomo was still unhappy because every single dish had mushrooms.
Ah, mushrooms. Velvety smooth and absolutely disgusting. Chewing on them made people feel like falling apart. Of course, these were all Gu Xiaomo's personal views and had nothing to do with the mushrooms themselves.
This family loves eating mushrooms so much, it serves them right for getting mixed up with monsters… Gu Xiaomo crouched bleakly behind the chicken coop as the night breeze carried over the scent of chicken p.o.o.p to their face. She was so hungry that it felt like her empty stomach was plastered against her back.
The weather was going to change.
The warm and tranquil evening suddenly surged with violent winds as if something was wriggling free to cause trouble in the dark. Naturally, cultivators felt something off with this wind as well. In Gu Xiaomo's sensitive view, at least, the aura of demonic qi had intensified. Even if the opponent was merely a peac.o.c.k spirit, peac.o.c.ks and large Peng were once known as the fiercest of man-eating beasts during ancient times, so this was no trifling matter.
Still, she could only stay alert for so long while enduring the stench of chicken p.o.o.p to stare at the chicken coop. After the period of time between 11PM to 1AM had pa.s.sed, her head started nodding off, and the chicken feathers she was twirling around in her fingers somehow ended up stuck in her nose.
Some time later, a voice lightly brushed by her ear. ”Hey, what are you doing?”
The voice was neither coa.r.s.e nor fine, but sounded grating to the ears. A drowsy Gu Xiaomo replied, ”Lookout duty…”
”Lookout duty?” The voice gave a start before it broke out into hoa.r.s.e laughter. The noise was so overwhelming that it startled Gu Xiaomo awake in time to hear a burst of noise in the distance. Following that, bright sparks exploded into the air.
Gu Xiaomo leapt to her feet, plucking feathers from her nose as she shouted, ”Monster? Where are you?!”
The wind suddenly stilled. The chicken coop and its chickens were still the same as before. Ahead stood Mo Qingyuan in his ethereal white robes, Suo Ying by his side.
…urk, then who was this glossy green fellow in front of her?
”Mother! It’s a monster!” In a flash, a certain someone shrank into a s.h.i.+vering ball at the corner of the walls.
All right, Mo Qingyuan felt himself wearing an expression with black lines even under such life and death circ.u.mstances. But he quickly cleared his throat as his clear, handsome eyes turned cold. ”Peac.o.c.k?”
The richly attired man in green robes raised his head to reveal a wild and charming countenance. He cast a glance at Gu Xiaomo before breaking into an elegant smile. ”Cultivators?”
His voice was a bit hoa.r.s.e and didn’t match his lovely looks at all. Everyone said that peac.o.c.ks were attractive but had grating voices; it looked like this was the truth. Mo Qingyuan knit his brows. Though this peac.o.c.k had to be connected with the happenings in the town, there wasn’t a thread of demonic qi coming from this monster. It was unimaginably queer.
”Since you’re a cultivating monster, why create such disasters for humankind?” Mo Qingyuan said, his voice even colder now that he’d figured things out.
The bewitching peac.o.c.k smoothed out his hair and laughed. ”Which eye of yours saw me causing disasters for humankind?”
Mo Qingyuan hesitated, only for Suo Ying to speak up tenderly, ”Isn’t it a crime to kill lives?”