It was a rather fierce-looking pheasant, the fiercest Yun Jieshi had ever seen in his life.
Well, in all truth, that wasn't exactly saying much since the little monkey had never really been an animal lover in a way that vegetarians would approve of in his past life. He only knew as much as his education and his trips to the zoo with Jane, his mother, allowed.
The creature was standing ten meters away opposite a drooping, ice-laced tree half-buried in the snow. It took a few moments for it to parse what Yun Jieshi and the hag's intentions were; that was its metric for deciding what to do next.
When the little monkey revealed the blade in his hand, the pheasant let out a screech that made him tilt his head while grimacing. It was as though his right ear had become heavy all of a sudden; the cry was as ugly as the pheasant itself – a Greater Blight Wind Pheasant.
Standing at two and some meters in height, the creature was covered in rising white feathers that spotted dirt brown patterns. Its wings, even when folded, looked huge. Yun Jieshi imagined that the creature couldn't fly, but it likely had other uses for these wings; they probably helped it pack free, unwitty living lunches on the daily.
The pheasant's three, powerful legs – reminiscent of those of an ostrich – weren't any good for soccer, Yun Jieshi knew. One direct kick from them and he was unlikely to rise from the dirt again.
The creature's blood red eyes were on him. Its wattle danced under its beak, throbbing scarlet. It scratched the ground with its third leg, and Yun Jieshi knew it viewed him as supper just as much he wished to stick a fork in it.
'Bring it on then,' he thought and he stabbed the Elite Jade Imp's three arrows into the ground. He didn't think he'd need them here.
Qui Tian walked over to a nearby tree and sat by it, watching. The pheasant pretended as though she didn't exist.
'Like those flowers, it probably knows not to mess with her,' the little monkey thought.
His first instinct was to pull out his ruan and smack the Kentucky Fried Chicken out of the pheasant, but without knowing if it was any ordinary beast, Yun Jieshi judged that unwise. There was a Greater prefix to its name for a reason.
Like the Elite Jade Imp, perhaps it could dodge and catch him lacking after a full power swing from his ruan. There was intelligence in the pheasant's eyes, after all, however much it resembled a common broiler.
The pheasant was the first to come charging. Yun Jieshi was glad. Now, he would be the one to test its prowess while it reacted. However…
'It's quick!' he thought as his eyes focused.
The pheasant slowed considerably in his special vision, but its legs still clawed into the ground at a pace no slower than the beating of a swallow's wings. It must have been moving at sixty kilometers per hour!
When its wings unfurled, cocking up the snow, Yun Jieshi frowned and dived to the right as quickly as he could. Just as he'd guessed, the snow flushed in a wave from the beat of the pheasant's wings, pelting everything that remained where he had been standing.
And just as Yun Jieshi rolled about five meters away, he heard the shuffling of the pheasant's feet behind him. It had no trouble making sharp turns, and was upon him in a blink.
But the little monkey knew. He didn't avoid its charge immediately this time, even as it screeched loudly. There was triumph in its voice.
He leaped upward right when he felt the force behind the beak of the bird bear against his furs. He was flying over the creature's head in the next instant, his body almost tipping over into an upside-down position. The little monkey's eyes locked in on the pheasant's.
In his hand, Yun Jieshi now had in his grip a slip of hemp. Characters were written on it using his own blood. A modest amount of Xun flowed from his pit as he crushed the talisman in his hand, and granules of coarse salt filled his palm; there was a lot of them.
Without a second thought, Yun Jieshi flung them into the pheasant's eyes. The result was…
SCREEEEEEE!
Shutting its eyes, the large bird cried and shook its head violently. But that was part of the little monkey's plan. Now that it couldn't see his next move. He was free to engorge his ruan.
The instrument's belly swelled to the size of a standard satellite dish, and its neck thickened like a tie beam.
With one meaningful swing, the daruan's belly smashed into the pheasant's head and the creature flew, body roaring against the wind and snow. It spun twice and then crashed into a bunch of bowing trees in the distance.
Yun Jieshi grinned. His ruan weighed nothing to him, but to his enemies, its weight grew immensely with its size. Just now, it must have hit like three refrigerators.
As he landed on the snow, Yun Jieshi cackled. He looked at the bird's torso buried in a heap of torn trunks of trees and swelled with pride.
"Call me Colonel, you oversized—" he began, but then a sharp beak was in his face in the next instant, poised to impale him.
It only slowed once his pupils constricted, registering the view of the bird, but it was too late. Yun Jieshi couldn't have done a thing. His face would have grown pale if it had the time.
BOOM!
Right as a malevolent gust of wind carrying tree trunks and piles of snow blasted against Yun Jieshi, the large pheasant suddenly slammed into the ground in front of him. It might have been stricken by lightning just then. But that wasn't the case.
Yun Jieshi wasn't sure how it had simply fallen flat, all its momentum dying in an instant. Well, he wasn't even sure how the bird had moved so fast that even to him, it had been piled up in a heap in one instant, and then right in front of him in the next.
Everything became clear when he spotted a talisman on the pheasant's left wing, however. Qui Tian had intervened.
'I was… I was almost a goner just now.' Yun Jieshi gulped hard. But his instincts told him to shape up. He raised his ruan, aiming to crush the bird's head. It was right there, waiting to be finished off, its eyes closed shut, its neck bent, beak broken, blood spewing from it.
The little monkey would have done it, but the twitching eyelid of the bird sent a shiver down his spine.
'This flightless freak!' Yun Jieshi jumped back as far as he could. At the same time, staggering winds spun around the pheasant. They had a perfect standard of clockwise rotation, Yun Jieshi noticed.
This bird had Xun, and it used it to control the wind. It didn't need talismans to do it.
The talisman on its wing was swept away by the gusts.
SCREEEEE!
The bird was incensed, but it channelled all its rage at Yun Jieshi instead of Qui Tian.
'Shameless!' Yun Jieshi couldn't believe how much of a coward the bird was. But he was no better. He had nearly lost to said coward.
Paying close attention to the creature, Yun Jieshi noticed that it was having difficulty opening its eyes. They were swelling, red and moist with tears. It kept shaking its head.
'It's relying on the sounds I make to note my position. That explains why it almost got me just now,' Yun Jieshi thought. 'It will probably try to get me again with that same super-fast attack. Funny. I hope to do the same. I still have Xun left.'
The best way to make talismans, as Yun Jieshi had learned a few days ago, was to use fresh blood, and there was no blood fresher than your own most of the time. The fresher the blood, the more potent a talisman would be, the stronger the instruction's effect, and best of all, the lesser Xun you'd use; it was called value for your buck.
Yun Jieshi had just enough Xun for one decent play.
As the tension grew between him and the pheasant, he slowly raised his ruan, placed a slip of hemp on it and wrote a set of characters with his blood. He glanced at the pheasant. It took a step in his direction. Perhaps it could see his shadow, heavily blurred.
'Hurry,' Yun Jieshi told himself. Expending a large amount of the Xun, he turned the hemp slip into a talisman, and then with a thought, he had the neck of his ruan elongate to his right, crossing the snow, carrying it.
When it was almost five meters away from him, Yun Jieshi turned the ruan over so that the talisman fell onto the snow. As it did, water poured from the talisman as though from faucet, splashing loudly on contact with the cold ground,
The pheasant was there before Yun Jieshi could blink, a storm of snow and gusts following after it.
'You fell for it, bastard!' he cried inwardly.
The little monkey was leaping into the air in the next instant, adjusting the ruan's size for a retry of his earlier punt. This time, however, he brought the edge of the ruan's belly down with all the might he could spare, striking at the pheasant's neck.
That did the trick.