Beware of Chicken 4: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel recap

Jin expands Fa Ram while preparing for the political consequences of the Dueling Peaks conflict. Meiling restores Liu Bowu's leg, Jin learns politics and a less destructive approach to combat, and the household strengthens its ties to Hong Yaowu and Verdant Hill. An ancient crystal shows Bi De how a farmer bonded with the earth spirit Tianlan, overthrew a tyrant, and became emperor before demonic sabotage shattered the Azure Hills. Bi De refuses to inherit solitary rule and instead seeks shared stewardship. As an imperial force narrowly defeats a major demon incursion, Meiling safely gives birth to a son. After a severe winter storm, Tianlan wakes substantially healed by Fa Ram's freely given labor and chi. A recovered recording proves that the ruler she remembered as a betrayer destroyed the fatal formation to save her. She grieves, joins the household, and begins moving forward, while demons, ancient damage, and Fa Ram's growing public importance remain unresolved.

Previously: Jin left the Cloudy Sword Sect and made a new life as a farmer at Fa Ram with Meiling. Their household grew to include human companions and awakened animals, among them his first disciple Bi De, the fighters Tigu and Cai Xiulan, the healer Ri Zu, the brothers Gou Ren and Yun Ren, and many others. The household's peace was tested by conflict at the Dueling Peaks. Tigu was attacked by the Shrouded Mountain Sect, Cai Xiulan suffered a severe cultivation injury while protecting her companions, and Yun Ren survived a near-fatal encounter. Jin intervened with overwhelming force but prevented the dispute from becoming a wider war. He secured a promise that the Shrouded Mountain Sect would not enter the Azure Hills without his permission. The aftermath left Jin responsible for consequences he had never wanted. Fa Ram also took in Liu Bowu, a gifted young maker whose sect had treated his inventions as a resource and whose leg remained badly damaged. As the new volume begins, the household is safe and productive, Meiling is pregnant, and Jin is trying to protect his family without becoming the kind of cultivator he rejected.

Fa Ram completes a second wheat harvest and expands into machinery, glassmaking, and distillation. Meiling and Ri Zu plan a difficult operation for Liu Bowu's damaged knee, while Liu Bowu finds purpose developing steam-powered equipment and apprenticing with Hong Yaowu's blacksmith. Miantiao resumes glassmaking with Yin's controlled flame, and the new still gives Meiling a source of disinfecting alcohol. Jin attempts sword practice but finds offensive intent deeply uncomfortable. Bi De and the other disciples recognize his distress and prepare to help him. Meanwhile, Gou Ren organizes Fa Ram's elaborate contribution to Hong Yaowu's Mid-Autumn Festival, demonstrating skill in design and leadership. Liu Xianghua arrives after gaining permission from Gou Ren's parents to court him, and the village publicly acknowledges their match without setting a wedding date. The festival confirms Jin's place within Hong Yaowu, but it also clarifies that he cannot ignore the consequences of the Dueling Peaks. He decides to visit Verdant Hill with Meiling and seek guidance about regional sect politics and his agreement with the Shrouded Mountain Sect.

Jin and Meiling travel to Verdant Hill, where the Azure Jade Trading Company is establishing a major new outpost because of Jin's business. Lady Wu confronts Jin about the pressure his roads, visitors, and influence place on the town. Jin accepts the criticism and privately explains the Shrouded Mountain conflict to the Lord Magistrate. Admitting that he lacks political experience, he asks the magistrate to teach him rhetoric, decorum, and nonviolent problem-solving. Meiling begins parallel instruction with Lady Wu. Bi De helps Jin discover that his combat block comes from treating skill at violence as a betrayal of his values. Through playful sparring and practice with trusted companions, Jin finds a less destructive intent that lets him fight without abandoning himself. Cai Xiulan continues rebuilding the cultivation she lost at the Dueling Peaks. Verdant Hill's leaders bring the trading company under local terms rather than allowing it to dominate the town. At Fa Ram, Meiling, Ri Zu, and their assistants complete Liu Bowu's operation. They reconstruct his damaged knee with surgery and spiritual medicine, and he wakes free of chronic pain, able to stand and walk normally.

Jin continues political and martial study while Fa Ram deepens its commercial ties. The Azure Jade Trading Company buys a large rice shipment and begins planning a possible southern voyage for cacao, vanilla, spices, and other rare foods. Lu Ri reports to the Cloudy Sword Sect that he found Jin, respected his refusal to return, and preserved a peaceful contact route. Liu Bowu adapts to his restored mobility, while Gou Ren chooses to remain at Fa Ram and learn before establishing an independent home with Liu Xianghua. The household completes a heated greenhouse with Miantiao's glass and Yin's fire. Miantiao, burdened by his former treatment of Yin, offers chi to the land as a step toward atonement. That offering joins the energy sustaining Tianlan, the damaged earth spirit connected to Fa Ram's golden network. Jin and Meiling answer Tianlan in a shared vision, and the household builds her a warm refuge so she can sleep safely through winter. The greenhouse also shelters Fa Ram's bee colony. As the first snow arrives, Jin tells Meiling that he carries memories of a life before his present body. She accepts his disclosure and continues to trust him. Their child is expected near winter's end.

Winter at Fa Ram brings construction, training, and preparation for the solstice. Pipa recalls Chun Ke's lasting injuries and keeps her own destructive protective impulses under control. Hua Tan maintains the transferred ancient memory crystal beneath the farm, begins teaching Yin to mine, and discovers light crystals and an enormous buried bone. Tigu develops carving as a way to preserve her friendships, while the disciples prepare gifts for one another. At Hong Yaowu's solstice, the village chief's young son completes the Rite of Fire through the entire night without cultivation. Bi De sees the rite connect with distant villages as part of a province-wide elemental pattern. At dawn, sunlight finally stabilizes the transferred crystal. After the household returns to Fa Ram, a white fox avatar appears and identifies Yun Ren as his nephew. He recognizes Jin's cultivation as an ancient earth-bound path that may bring prosperity and kinship with the land while ending in mortal death rather than immortality. Bi De then enters the memory crystal. Its first vision leads him into the distant past, where an injured girl's history is waiting to be seen.

The crystal shows Bi De the ancient history of Tianlan and the Azure Hills. An exploited cultivator abandons his former life to farm. His selfless bond with the land awakens Tianlan, who becomes his friend and shares her power with him. After imperial soldiers massacre villagers, the pair shelter survivors, free captives, and build a rebellion against the Azure Emperor. The farmer defeats the tyrant, then reluctantly accepts the throne when he learns that demons threaten the mist wall. As ruler, he governs through consultation, protects spirit beasts, and works with Tianlan to reshape the land's dragon veins. Their allies adapt the old emperor's formation into a defense for the province. Yet demonic corruption enters the court and seizes the formation through the emperor's prime minister. The hijacked system begins consuming Tianlan and the population. The emperor destroys a critical component to stop it, unleashing an elemental disaster that devastates the region and fractures survivors' memories. Maimed and dying, the emperor records the truth and orders the crystal hidden. Tianlan survives shattered and is later exploited by cultivators stripping her exposed dragon veins. In the present, the crystal's guardian offers Bi De the dead ruler's succession, knowledge, and power.

Bi De refuses to decide alone what to do with the crystal. He tells Jin and the household about Tianlan, the ancient catastrophe, and the surviving demon danger. Cai Xiulan warns that the crystal's knowledge could command sect allegiance but might also provoke conflict with the empire. Jin instead proposes sharing useful cultivation teaching without using it to rule. A retired diviner in Verdant Hill explains that visions led her to send Bi De to the crystal. She also confirms that mist walls once protected isolated human realms and that the weakened Azure Hills were later absorbed into the Crimson Phoenix Empire. Bi De formally rejects the idea of becoming a solitary emperor. The unstable crystal spirit accepts his request to teach several caretakers, although it continues to regard him as the intended heir. Jin and Cai Xiulan also refuse offers of rule. Daily life and political planning continue. The Lord Magistrate advises Jin to proceed cautiously with sharing the crystal's knowledge. Liu Bowu befriends Bi De's student Zheng Fei, while Loud Boy nears the end of his cultivation repair. Lu Ri develops a mail system as the Cloudy Sword Sect renews itself. Beyond the region, imperial forces prepare a massive assault on an exposed demon network whose surviving agents still have contingency plans.

Fa Ram celebrates the New Year in Verdant Hill and returns to a secure winter farm with a productive greenhouse. Yun Ren's fox-spirit relative briefly considers using Jin against the Shrouded Mountain Sect, but abandons the plan rather than exploit people who welcomed him. Summer's Sky discovers a weakened but living blade spirit within Sun Ken's plow. Cai Xiulan and Tigu refine their individual martial paths, while Jin adopts a shovel as a weapon better suited to him. Loud Boy uses the Shrouded Mountain reparations to restore his dantian and becomes a cultivator again. In Tianlan's dream realm, Chun Ke helps remove the impurities released by her injured form, and the combined chi of Fa Ram begins purifying them. Tianlan starts to stir. Meiling enters labor with Ri Zu, her father, Cai Xiulan, and other experienced helpers prepared. At the same time, the imperial force enters a demonic realm and finds an unfinished war construct guarded by demonic generals. The defenders win after a costly battle, leaving their leaders wounded. Meiling's labor proceeds without the feared cultivation complications, and she gives birth to a healthy son. Jin takes the unnamed newborn in his arms as the empire's greatest demon assault in centuries ends in victory.

Jin and Meiling settle into parenthood with help from the entire household. Their son's formal name is deferred to his hundred-day celebration, though his imitation of Big D earns him the nickname Little D. Bi De works through his grief that his own offspring did not awaken, then accepts that awakened animals may be rare. He decides that his future will combine travel with returning to protect Fa Ram. A rare devil storm strikes the region, but Verdant Hill's preparations, Hong Yaowu's drainage, and its animated snow guardians limit the damage. The household stores an altered crystal recovered from the destroyed guardian. Spring begins with expanded fields, a strong bee colony, and renewed work across Fa Ram. The empire publicly celebrates victory over the demons, although its strongest defenders know the battle nearly became a catastrophe. Jin's wounded grandfather is released from imperial service and plans to visit him. Tianlan finally wakes with her body and domain substantially restored by the household's freely given chi. Jin gives her the ancient ruler's recovered recording, proving that he destroyed the corrupted formation to save her. After grieving, Tianlan accepts Meiling as an elder sister, joins Fa Ram openly, and begins moving forward. The old catastrophe, surviving demons, and the political danger of the crystal remain unresolved.

Fa Ram enters spring intact after the devil storm, with Jin and Meiling raising their healthy but formally unnamed son, nicknamed Little D. Their household continues its farming, medicine, machinery, glassmaking, mining, and greenhouse work. Liu Bowu is fully mobile, Gou Ren and Liu Xianghua remain together without settled marriage plans, and Bi De intends to travel while continuing to defend the farm. Tianlan awakens with much of her body restored and a domain extending across Hong Yaowu toward Verdant Hill. She learns that the ancient farmer-emperor broke the corrupted formation to save her, not to betray her, and begins recovering with the household's shared chi. Bi De remains the crystal spirit's preferred heir but has rejected one-person rule in favor of teaching several caretakers. The empire has defeated the exposed demon force at severe cost, although surviving infiltration and future attacks remain possible. The Cloudy Sword Sect has renewed imperial service, Lu Ri keeps peaceful contact with Jin, and Jin's wounded grandfather plans to visit. The southern trade expedition, Shrouded Mountain scrutiny, Tianlan's ancient injuries, and the unidentified snow-guardian crystal remain open.