Beware of Chicken

Jin Rou wanted to be a cultivator — a man powerful enough to defy the heavens. Unfortunately for him, he died, and now a transmigrator is stuck in his body. Arrogant masters? Heavenly tribulations? All that violence and bloodshed? No thanks. Farm life sounds great: tilling by hand is fun with the strength of ten men, the harvest is a worthy obsession, and the girl from the nearby village is unexpectedly captivating. The only concern is that feeding Spirit Herbs to a pet rooster may have been unwise. Qi makes everything a little strange.

Things in Jin's first year were admittedly hectic — he died, got reborn, fled his sect, started a farm, awakened his animals into Spirit Beasts, and got married. This year will be different. After the Spring Planting season, he's really going to relax and put down roots. Sure, the talking animals and the cultivators moving in are a bit unusual, but this year everything will be basically normal. There definitely won't be any Heavenly Tribulations, ancient formations, or cultivator drama to deal with.

Jin is a man of the earth — wielder of shovels and lord of rice and wheat — and he's starting to think the whole dying-and-reincarnating thing might have been worth it. He's finally free of cultivator bloodshed, living slowly, his only real concern the rain. Unfortunately, a shady organization is looking for him, his cat has gone off to fight in a martial arts tournament, and his chicken has uncovered an ancient crystal containing portents of doom. The usual stuff. Trouble should know better than to mess with a farmer.

Jin has managed to escape a life of cultivation and politics — until now. His talking animals have been performing heroics all over the Azure Hills, and Xiulan keeps calling him a Hidden Master. The attention was inevitable. Part of him wants to run again, but this is his home. To keep it, he'll have to navigate xianxia politics, train for battle, run his farm, and uncover an ancient cataclysm that devastated the Azure Hills long ago. And he's about to become a father.

So much happened last year: the battle at the Dueling Peaks, the revelation at the Azure Hills, the calamity that damaged them. Most importantly, Jin became a father. It's hard and stressful at times, but he has an entire family for support — some of them feathered. Spring awaits, and Jin finds himself optimistic. A long, peaceful year for everyone sounds just right. He even wrote a letter to Gramps, the cultivator who first took Rou in. He can't be that interested in Jin after all this time. Probably.