chapter 69 Cramps

Wang Yan had never known anyone that could have reared legendary beasts like poultry and pets but now she had come to know one; Zhang Jian.

It had taken a long time for her to come to terms with this scenario. The Black Phoenix was a descendant of the Vermillion Bird and was considered to be among the legendary beasts if not mythical and yet it was being reared for its eggs in this place.

How could she believe it even if she wanted to or even if the facts were right in front of her?

She had previously believed that the birds were just some slightly uncommon birds but lately her concepts had shattered continuously as the tussle between Cerberus and the Black Phoenix started to increase in intensity.

When the two were busy struggling against each other, Wang Yan had come upon the two and had come to know how powerful the two of them had been. Wang Yan speculated that might not even come close to the spectrum of power on which the two operated after she had seen them in action.

Of course all this had taken place away from the eyes of Zhang Jian. Both of them had taken excessive care in ensuring that they did not disturb Zhang Jian in any way. Therefore they had chosen a place away from the hut to be their battlefield.

When she had found out that the two in front of her were not only powerful demonic and spiritual beasts but were also more powerful than her, her eyes had almost dropped out from their sockets.

Even though she had known about the beasts for some time, she had decided to never let them know that fact. She decided to go about it like normal but it proved to be very hard for her to go back to the way it had been before. She made mistakes but fortunately no one called her out on them.

Wang Yan had been feeding the Phoenixes like normal since then. Every day she would bring some of the millet seeds from their crop and would spill them towards the Phoenixes.

The Black Phoenix gobbled them up as if it had seen a treasure and didn't leave a single speck of grain behind. She could never get used to the sight. A mighty Black Phoenix acting like a common pigeon feeding itself off of the grains thrown to it by the farmers.

After feeding the phoenix, Wang Yan had to feed Cerberus as well otherwise it was just a recipe for another fight between the two. Therefore Wang Yan brought some honey for Cerberus. After licking the honey, its contorted face returned back to normal. Earlier seeing that Wang Yan had been feeding the Black Phoenix King and not it, Cerberus' face had scrunched up beyond recognition.

This had become a normal routine for Wang Yan. Previously she had never cared about what the two beasts wanted since she hadn't known how powerful they were, but now she had to make sure that they did not cause a ruckus in front of Zhang Jian.

After feeding the beasts, Wang Yan meditated quietly within the hut. She had come to love this practice after Zhang Jian had suggested it to her.

This not only helped her calm down after seeing the two mighty beasts struggle against each other but also helped her cultivate with an empty mind.

The food that she had been giving to the Phoenix King and Cerberus had been strengthening them to no end. They could feel their power increasing by the day and wanted to test it against each other to finally determine which one of them was the stronger one.

Black Phoenix King had already been hostile towards Cerberus because of their rivalry of the past but now it had another reason to challenge Cerberus.

Ever since it came here, it had been living like a caged bird, counting down its days to when Zhang Jian developed a craving for Phoenix meat while Cerberus was roaming around freely.

This easily developed into jealousy that further fueled the fire of hatred in its heart. Cerberus who had been an enemy that it could rival in the past had become someone near the top of the food chain while it had fallen to the bottom of it.

Cerberus had been the de facto leader of all of them who had been living at Mount Dabie. Even the human who had caught it was respectful to Cerberus because Cerberus was the first one to follow Zhang Jian.

The Black Phoenix King wanted nothing more than to drag Cerberus through the mud and take its position at the top so as to regain its past glory and still be able to live off of the heavenly food served here at Mount Dabie.

To its advantage, the grains given to it had been making it stronger, stronger than even its wildest imaginations. In its power quest, it forgot to register one thing which could potentially come to bite it in the ass in the near future, and that was that Cerberus had been getting a similar diet and for longer than even itself. How could it have been any weaker than the Black Phoenix King?

The challenge was taking place away from Zhang Jian's eyes. Zhang Jian had been in the hut for a while now so both the competitors had been butting heads against each other at the usual place.

Normally the fight didn't escalate into a full blown death match since they both didn't want Zhang Jian to find out but today was different for both of them.

The previous fights had all been about the past rivalry to finally find the answer to who was the stronger out o the two. The fight that had been instigated by the Black Phoenix King today was a challenge to the authority of Cerberus who had been the first subordinate of Zhang Jian; someone who had followed Zhang Jian through thick and thin and was responsible for order at the household.

The Black Phoenix King wanted to encroach towards its authority and leadership which Cerberus was not willing to give up at any cost. Being by Zhang Jian's side had been a matter of pride for it which it didn't want to let go of.

As such a death match was being fought at their usual battlefield with the heavens as their witness.

At that very moment an unexpected guest had been trying to sneak past them while hiding underground.

When the Pangolin noticed the two auras that were clearly antagonistic towards each other, it wanted nothing else than to be the fisherman in the scenario.

The powerful beasts could weaken each other as much as they liked after which the Pangolin could swoop in to kill them both in order to collect their heads for their bounties. This was what was going on in the Pangolin's mind at the moment. Therefore it decided to take care of the two about to be injured and soon to be near death beasts first.

It kept on hiding underground while taking sneaky looks outside after short durations to check the status of the fight.

Zhang Jian had just spent a whole night completing a painting that had the potential to be an absolute treasure piece in the Immortal World or the Demon World.

He felt that he was in a dire need of a bath and a thorough scrubbing. He needed to splash his face with water to be able to see properly since his head had been spinning and buzzing while his eyes had become foggy for some reason. He had to focus a lot before he could see properly. As such washing up his face was the best way to alleviate his immediate problems.

It was an autumn morning and the cold winds had been blowing through the mountains. Since Zhang Jian wanted to wash his face, he had to warm up his water unless he wanted to freeze himself to the bones and end up with a numb face. He was overlooking a stove that was heating up his water to the right temperature.

He took the pot that had been the property of the previous homeowner actually. It looked much worn down and blacked at the bottom which was telling the story of how long it had been in use for.

After taking down the pot from the stove, Zhang Jian took it to the washbasin that had been placed on the chair lying nearby, and poured the steaming hot water into the washbasin.

Before he could even begin to wash up his face, a feminine shriek that seemed to be portraying pain brought clarity to his clogged senses. There could only be one feminine voice in the house and it could only be Wang Yan.

Zhang Jian got worried that something had happened to the girl and ran towards her. He had just seen her in meditation so he wondered what could have happened to her that caused her to scream in pain like that.

Thankfully he wasn't very far from her or just the worry might have given him a heart attack as was evident from the worried look on his face.

When he entered her room, he found her lying on her side with her arms around her knees like she was clutching herself due to extreme pain. Her face was all scrunched up, with tears threatening to fall out of her eyes and low groans and sobs escaping her mouth after small intervals. All were the symptoms of extreme pain or sadness. Since she had been all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns in the morning, it had to be physical pain that was causing this.

Zhang Jian thought that it was her cramps acting up again and as such he decided to give her a massage to relieve her from all the pain she was suffering from.

He carefully freed her hands that she had been clutching tightly around her knees by interlacing her fingers. As a result she let out a scream that almost tore his eardrums apart.

"Hey, it's okay. Let me help you. Can you sit up?"

Seeing how much pain she was in, Zhang Jian motivated her to sit up in as calming a voice as he could have managed.

"No need to hurry, sit up very...slowly."

Zhang Jian told her to take her time and slowly pulled her hand to support her in sitting up.

Zhang Jian slowly straightened her legs and started massaging them slowly. Wang Yan was in so much pain that she never bothered to feel shy at all.

She was relishing in the relief that was gradually coming to her along with her sanity. The immense pain had pushed her mind into a deep abyss that she was only climbing out of now.

Previously she had been meditating in the room but she had gotten greedy with the amount of pure qi she had absorbed. There was a limit to what her body could contain but she had become overly greedy in an attempt to get stronger, especially now that she knew that there were such monstrous existences like Cerberus and the Phoenix King around her.

The excess natural qi had done a number in her meridians and the acupoints. The excess qi had been pushing past the narrow meridians which had almost caused her body to crack from the inside.

If Zhang Jian hadn't come in time to draw out the excess qi from her body, her body would have blown up from the huge amount of qi.

It turned out that Zhang Jian had immediately found out the problem and had pressured her acupoints to discharge the qi from there.

Now that the crisis had been averted and her sanity was returning to her she found that Zhang Jian had been massaging her for quite a while and the places he were touching would have made her embarrassed previously. But all she could feel now was bliss and happiness since Zhang Jian was caring for her and was worried about her. At this point she had already stopped being shy.

She was stuck up in her fantasies when Zhang Jian called her out.

"Are you feeling all right now? Does it still hurt?"

Wang Yan could feel the concern in his voice which made her want to jump around. Sadly she couldn't since her meridians had suffered some damage, she needed to rest before she could do that again.

"I am okay now. Sorry for troubling you." Wang Yan replied to him with a lowered face which was slightly red by this point.

"That's good. I am going back to washing my face. You take care of yourself now."

Wang Yan was looking at Zhang Jian all misty eyed before closing her eyes and opening her lips slightly. Zhang Jian could not believe what he was seeing. Fortunately before he could decide what to do, he heard a loud thud and the washbasin on the chair fell to the ground.

The excuse he was looking for arrived right on time. He rushed out of the room and picked the fallen washbasin off the floor and put it back onto the chair.