The Birds Keep Ringing Chapter 7
byChapter 7: Who is Your Darling? Your Whole Family is the Darling…
Yun Zhen’s bird brain, this tiny, bean-sized brain that held eighteen years of life wisdom, had completely stopped working.
The taste of rust still lingered on his beak. Before him, Jiang Zhi’s eyes reflected a cold glint, staring at him motionlessly.
What was this? Attempted murder of a senior disciple-brother? How should a bird that pecks a person be sentenced? Steamed or braised?
If he were human, he would immediately slide to his knees, crying and shouting, “Second Senior Brother, spare me! I was just caught in a nightmare!” But now he could only chirp, and the sound carried no hint of remorse, sounding even a little arrogant. Yun Zhen froze in place, daring not to move, watching as Jiang Zhi slowly, slowly sat up.
As he sat up, Yun Zhen slid down the blanket and finally dropped with a plop onto Jiang Zhi’s lap.
Jiang Zhi lowered his head and looked at the ball of fluff on his leg.
The ball of fluff also looked up at him.
Jiang Zhi raised his hand again and touched his own lip; a little blood stained his fingertip.
Yun Zhen saw clearly that there wasn’t much blood. Truly, just a tiny bit.
His peck had been all thunder and no rain—he had only broken the skin slightly. Yun Zhen’s guilt instantly vanished without a trace, replaced by a strange indignation. He had used all his strength, so why was the damage so minimal? This bird’s attack power truly shamed all the fat on his body.
Jiang Zhi looked at the blood on his fingertip, then looked at Yun Zhen, and then he performed an action Yun Zhen hadn’t anticipated at all.
He didn’t throw Yun Zhen out, nor did he slap him dead with a palm strike.
He got out of bed, walked to the table, poured some water, wet a cloth, and returned.
Then, holding Yun Zhen in one hand, he used the wet cloth in the other to meticulously wipe the blood-stained beak.
Yun Zhen: “???”
This was worse than killing him.
This was a naked insult, like painstakingly stabbing your enemy, only for the enemy to survive, turn around, give you a piece of candy, and pat your head while saying, “Good boy, stop messing around.”
Jiang Zhi’s movements were light, even gentle. He wiped the bloodstain completely clean, then released him, tossed the cloth aside, lay back down, pulled up the blanket, turned over, and went to sleep.
Yun Zhen trembled with rage. He wanted to peck him again, but he was afraid that if Jiang Zhi woke up this time, he wouldn’t be wiping his mouth—he might be wiping his sword. The more Yun Zhen thought about it, the angrier he got, unable to sleep. Finally, he flew back to the soft cloth nest on the table.
The next day, when he woke up, Jiang Zhi was gone again. This man lived like a programmed puppet: working at sunrise, and at sunset… continuing to work.
As usual, millet and clean water were set out on the table. Yun Zhen grumbled as he ate breakfast, determined to continue his investigation. He had to find the mastermind and turn back into a human soon to get revenge.
His Senior Sister’s suspicion had been cleared. A person who meticulously cared for a blind wolf and a wild boar with a broken leg couldn’t possibly have such a malicious heart, unless she intended to offer herself up as a toy for that civet cat.
Yun Zhen decided he had to go see his Senior Brother, Xiao Fengzhi, who was currently the number one suspect.
Yun Zhen flapped his wings and flew to Xiao Fengzhi’s courtyard. He landed on the windowsill and peered inside. His Senior Brother was lying on the bed, sprawled out, his clothes loosely draped over him, looking exactly like he had been thoroughly ravaged all night.
Yun Zhen thought, where did Senior Brother go carousing last night?
He hopped inside and landed by the bed.
A strong mix of perfume and alcohol fumes rushed at him, nearly making him pass out on the spot.
Yun Zhen hopped onto his Senior Brother’s chest.
“Chirp! Chirp chirp!”
Xiao Fengzhi groaned twice, rolled over, but didn’t wake up.
Yun Zhen changed position, aimed for his face, and began scratching with his claws.
Xiao Fengzhi rolled over and mumbled, “Stop it… darling… just a little more sleep…”
Yun Zhen thought, who is your darling? Your whole family is the darling.
“I said stop messing around…” Xiao Fengzhi waved his hand impatiently, his eyes still closed.
Yun Zhen was furious. Using his nearly zero-attack-power beak, he aimed for Xiao Fengzhi’s eye and pecked.
“Ow!”
Xiao Fengzhi shot up, covering his eye, and looked at the bird before him.
“Where did this feathered beast come from… huh?” He recognized Yun Zhen. “Isn’t this the fat chirp Second Junior Brother keeps?”
“Why did you come running over here?” Xiao Fengzhi yawned. “Where’s Second Junior Brother? Didn’t he feed you?”
“Chirp!”
“Alright, alright, stop chirping, you’re deafening.” Xiao Fengzhi rubbed his hungover head. “What do you want with me? I don’t have any millet here.”
Yun Zhen hopped in front of him and tried hard to gesture with his wings. He pointed at himself, then at Xiao Fengzhi, and then flopped onto the blanket in a sleeping posture.
He was trying to convey: Did you cast a spell on me while I was sleeping?
Xiao Fengzhi understood.
At least, he thought he understood.
He looked at Yun Zhen with a shocked expression: “What? You want me to take action against Second Junior Brother… while he’s sleeping?”
Yun Zhen: “??? Chirp??”
“No, no,” Xiao Fengzhi waved his hands repeatedly. “Little bird, your idea is very dangerous. Asking me to provoke him is asking me to commit suicide, isn’t it? My small frame isn’t enough for him to chop with one sword stroke. Besides,” he lowered his voice, “based on my years of experience, he’s most likely the one on top. We are kindred spirits.”
Yun Zhen nearly fainted from anger.
What was all this nonsense! Was that what he meant? Couldn’t Senior Brother have a single serious thought in his head?
Yun Zhen gave up on communication and flew to Xiao Fengzhi’s bookshelf. He needed to look for evidence, like a compendium of dark cultivation curses or something similar.
Xiao Fengzhi’s bookshelf was less a bookshelf and more a junk rack. The pages of the books were dog-eared, and various trinkets were piled haphazardly. Strangest of all, a layer of soft, fine white fluff was accumulated everywhere, from the gaps between the books to the edges of the wooden shelves.
Then Yun Zhen found a stack of letters.
Yun Zhen used his beak to pull one out and unfolded it with his claws.
It read: “My dear Xiao, three months apart feels like three years…”
Mushy. Yun Zhen dropped it and pulled out another.
“You bastard Xiao! When are you going to repay the silver you owe me!”
…This one was more practical.
Yun Zhen searched for a long time without finding a single clue. Disappointed, he was about to leave when he suddenly glimpsed a dark red, palm-sized booklet tucked under Xiao Fengzhi’s pillow.
Yun Zhen’s heart raced. Could it be… He used all his strength to drag the booklet out.
Four bold characters were scrawled across the cover:
Secret Techniques of the Spring Night.
“…”
Yun Zhen flipped the booklet open. The first page was an illustration. It was drawn quite realistically, quite explicit, and depicted a movement of extremely high difficulty.
Yun Zhen blushed crimson and quickly closed the book.
“Are you interested in my treasure?” Xiao Fengzhi had crept up at some point. “This is a unique copy; it cost me five taels of silver to acquire. How about it, want to learn? Little bird, this kind of knowledge isn’t useful if you only look at it without practicing.”
“Chirp!” (Get lost!)
Yun Zhen fled in panic.
The sound of Xiao Fengzhi’s loud laughter followed him.
He flew back to Jiang Zhi’s courtyard, dejected, and froze the moment he entered. Jiang Zhi was inside; he hadn’t gone out to practice his sword today.
He was standing in front of the bookshelf, holding the Dao De Jing that Yun Zhen had pecked to shreds.
Yun Zhen thought, what must come will come; there was no escaping it.
Jiang Zhi turned around and looked at Yun Zhen.
Yun Zhen stiffened his neck, adopting the posture of “the bird takes responsibility for the bird’s actions; kill or slice, do as you please.”
Jiang Zhi didn’t speak. He walked to the table, sat down, and pulled a jar of paste and a pair of scissors from the drawer.
Then he began… repairing the book.
He picked up the shredded pieces of paper one by one, carefully matching them to the remaining pages and pasting them back.
Yun Zhen was dumbfounded. Was there something wrong with this person? The book was ruined; why not just throw it away and buy a new one? It wasn’t expensive; it cost five copper coins at the bookstalls down the mountain, and you got one free if you bought ten.
Jiang Zhi spent a long time pasting, probably finding it too slow. He looked up and glanced at Yun Zhen.
“Come here.”
Yun Zhen: “Chirp?” (What for?)
Jiang Zhi pointed to the paste on the table: “Help.”
Yun Zhen: “???”
He hadn’t misheard, had he? Jiang Zhi was asking a bird to help him repair a book? A book that this very bird had personally shredded?
Yun Zhen hesitated but hopped over anyway.
Jiang Zhi pointed to a small piece of paper, then to a gap on the page. Yun Zhen looked down, picked up the paper scrap with his beak, dabbed a little paste on it, and then clumsily pressed it into the gap.
An hour later.
The man and the bird stared silently at a pile of haphazardly pasted pages where none of the characters matched up.
This copy of the Dao De Jing was completely ruined.
Yun Zhen estimated that if Lao Zi were resurrected now, he would die again upon seeing this book, and before dying, he would beat both of them up. This was no longer “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao”; this was “The Dao is rotten, there is no Dao.”
Jiang Zhi closed the book. He suddenly reached out and stroked Yun Zhen’s head.
Yun Zhen froze, thinking: Again? Don’t touch me!
Jiang Zhi said, “Go down the mountain.”
Yun Zhen: “Chirp?” (Go down the mountain for what? To sell me?)
“To buy books.”
“…”
Yun Zhen suddenly felt that being a bird wasn’t so terrible after all; at least the two of them could coexist peacefully for the time being. Just then, Jiang Zhi’s gaze fell upon Yun Zhen’s paste-stained feathers.
He frowned.
Yun Zhen had an ominous feeling; this person seemed to be a clean freak.
Sure enough, Jiang Zhi stood up, picked up Yun Zhen, and walked toward the water vat in the courtyard.
“Chirp—!”
Help! Murder! Jiang Zhi is trying to drown me!
Yun Zhen struggled desperately, flapping his wings and splashing water everywhere. Jiang Zhi, without changing his expression, pushed him into the water and scrubbed the paste off his feathers with his fingers.
When Jiang Zhi finally pulled him out, he was a soaking wet, bedraggled bird. His feathers were all plastered to his body, making him look two sizes smaller and incredibly ugly. All his plump prosperity was gone, leaving only a shivering chick.
Jiang Zhi placed him on the table, turned, went inside, and brought out a dry cloth. He wrapped Yun Zhen up and began to rub him dry. Yun Zhen was wrapped in the cloth, flipped back and forth like a sticky rice dumpling, his chirps becoming high-pitched and frantic: “Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp—”
When he was finally released, the entire bird was dazed. He looked at Jiang Zhi, and Jiang Zhi looked back at him.
“Too noisy.”
Yun Zhen: “…”
He decided that the first thing he would do when he turned back into a human was to hold Jiang Zhi down in the water vat and wash him for three days and three nights.
No, three days wasn’t enough; it had to be seven days.
As it turned out, they didn’t make it down the mountain.
Because Master returned in a frantic rush. The old man hadn’t returned from wandering the world; he had practically fled home, missing two strands of his beard.
As soon as he arrived, he summoned all three disciples to the main hall, which was drafty on all sides.
“Something huge has happened!” Master slapped his thigh, his expression grave.
Xiao Fengzhi, fanning himself, said lazily, “Master, what have you achieved Enlightenment on this time? Whether steamed buns should be eaten hot or with pickled vegetables?”
Master glared at him. “The Martial Arts Assembly is about to start!”
The Martial Arts Assembly.
These four words circled in Yun Zhen’s bird brain, and he remembered.
In the current martial arts world, there were two powerful aristocratic families: the Lu Family, which dominated the north, and the Xie Family, which held sway in the south. These two families, whether through ancestral merit or by unearthing some secret manual, were exceptionally wealthy and influential. They took turns hosting the Martial Arts Assembly every year, inviting heroes from all corners of the land. Simply put, it was a chance for the two families to show off their military might, find partners and build connections for their younger generations, and incidentally, clean house.
This year was the Lu Family’s turn, and it was being held in the north. No wonder Young Master Xie had appeared here.
“What does the Martial Arts Assembly have to do with us?” Xiao Fengzhi asked, confused. “They didn’t send us an invitation. Besides, if they did, we’d have to send money and gifts.”
“That’s the key!” Master slapped the table and pulled a crumpled invitation from his robes. “They sent one! And,” he lowered his voice, speaking mysteriously, “it is said that a Half-Immortal will appear at this year’s Martial Arts Assembly!”
A Half-Immortal?
Yun Zhen’s bird body trembled.
In this era, cultivating immortality and seeking the Dao was a trend, a very fashionable activity. Many famous mountains and great rivers were occupied by heroes of all stripes for cultivation. But this whole business was like Senior Brother’s promises—it sounded nice, but anyone who believed it was an idiot. Everyone claimed they had received the favor of the heavens, and everyone claimed they were about to achieve the Dao and ascend. For hundreds of years, no one had truly succeeded; everyone just diligently practiced martial arts and then diligently died. Had someone actually succeeded now?
Yun Zhen, standing on Jiang Zhi’s shoulder, suddenly realized something utterly absurd.
He hadn’t fallen off a cliff, hadn’t eaten an immortal herb, hadn’t been struck by lightning, and hadn’t been visited by a white-bearded old man in a dream—he had simply gone to sleep and transformed from a living human into a bird.
Thinking about it this way, didn’t that count as successful cultivation? Although it seemed he had cultivated from a human into a bird, perhaps this was the “different paths lead to the same destination” that Master often spoke of. Yun Zhen suddenly felt the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
That person was a Half-Immortal, and he was a Bird Immortal. While it sounded like a demotion, it wasn’t. In this world lacking spiritual energy, this was already a heaven-defying level of Daoist Principle. Yun Zhen established a new identity for himself in his heart:
Yun Zhen, third-generation disciple of the Flowing Cloud Sect, Daoist name “Xuan Niao” (Mysterious Bird). He achieved the Dao in his physical body, ascended in species, and was the first and only Bird Immortal in history to cultivate from a human body into a bird body.
He puffed out his chest, deciding that once he turned back into a human, he would find a cave, put up a sign at the entrance that read: “Bird Immortal’s Cave Dwelling. Entry fee: three hundred taels. No bargaining, no credit.” As expected of a merchant’s son, Yun Zhen felt he had a great talent for business.