Shearing The Silver Sheep

The first yōma we encountered was a Fang Rabbit. It was a giant rabbit about one hundred twenty centimeters long, a yōma with sharp fangs.

“S-so this is a Fang Rabbit? It’s different from the rabbit I imagined.”

Seiran said that after gulping down his saliva. This yōma had rabbit in its name, but it was an omnivorous beast that ate meat too. In the eyes it turned toward us, there was killing intent that said it would kill us and eat us.

“This isn’t a rabbit at all.”

Seiran was grumbling.

“Haoxuen, you go first and fight it.”

When I gave the order, Haoxuen stepped forward holding his broadsword. Haoxuen had a serious personality, so he valued the basics. That showed in his fighting as well.

The Fang Rabbit tried several times to leap at him, but each time he thrust out the tip of his broadsword and stopped it. Then, when he deliberately created an opening and the Fang Rabbit leaped at him, he knocked it down with the broadsword and thrust into its back. It was one of the fighting patterns I had taught him.

“Good, keep it up.”

There was no major problem with Haoxuen’s way of fighting. For now, we skinned it and cut away the meat from the parts that looked tasty.

“Senior Brother Kou, do we eat Fang Rabbit meat?”

“You’ve never eaten it before? Fang Rabbit meat is delicious.”

I cut off a large leaf from a nearby tree that resembled a banana tree, wrapped the Fang Rabbit meat in it, and put it in my backpack.

“Let’s move on.”

About fifteen minutes later, we ran into another Fang Rabbit.

“This time it’s Seiran.”

Seiran had muscles suited for quick movement. He was the type who bewildered his enemy with speed and defeated them, so he was a little like me. However, he was still immature and had many openings.

When Seiran tried to finish off the Fang Rabbit, his swing became too large. The Fang Rabbit did not miss that opening and dodged the broadsword, then leaped at Seiran’s chest. Seiran hurriedly blocked with the shaft of his broadsword, but it seemed he got kicked in the stomach by its hind legs. Seiran made a pained face for just a moment after getting kicked in the stomach, but then he brought down his broadsword on the Fang Rabbit after it landed and finished it off.

“You must not show openings to a yōma. If it had been a stronger yōma, you would have died in one hit.”

Seiran’s shoulders drooped in dejection. Seeing that, I gave a light laugh.

“This too will become experience. You just need to be careful from next time on.”

Haoxuen and Seiran each brought down two Fang Rabbits. After that, we headed for the Fang Monkeys’ habitat. Back when Zengu and the others and I were hunting Fang Monkeys, there was a time when they suddenly disappeared. I had thought they ran away because we hunted too many of them, but apparently Fang Monkeys change their habitat depending on the season.

In the demon realm near Mount Gyorei, about a thousand Fang Monkeys lived there, and because their breeding power was tremendous, hunting a few of them would not make them go extinct.

At the Fang Monkey habitat, we found a group of about ten.

“If it’s about that many, we can handle it.”

When I muttered that, Haoxuen and Seiran looked surprised.

“Isn’t that too many?”

Haoxuen asked.

“That many is fine. You two protect my back.”

After giving the two of them instructions, I walked briskly toward the group of Fang Monkeys carrying the Lightning Thorn Hammer. The Lightning Thorn Hammer was a weapon made by attaching, afterward, a hammerhead containing a Thunder Bear claw to the Silver Sheep weapon called Lightning Thorn, making it a weapon that combined an ice-pick-like tip with a pointed hammerhead called a “hexagonal pyramid hammerhead.”

The reason I chose the Lightning Thorn Hammer instead of the Serpent-Sheep Broadsword was because I was thinking of going Silver Sheep hunting afterward. Once I got close enough to clearly see the Fang Monkeys, they noticed us too and started running toward us while shrieking.

I began refining Heavy Yin Qi and Floating Yang Qi inside my body and poured them into my yang meridians and yin meridians. Once the two kinds of qi began circulating inside me, my body became lighter and the Lone Awakening Eye also began working. Once that happened, I began sensing qi over a wide area, and it felt as though the world had expanded.

The lead Fang Monkey stepped in and tried to rake me with its claws, so I circled to the side and dodged those claws, then used a technique from the Demonic Horn Warhammer Art to smash the hammerhead of the Lightning Thorn Hammer into the Fang Monkey’s head and cave it in. After that, Fang Monkeys came attacking one after another, so I kept avoiding them while smashing them with the Lightning Thorn Hammer.

What had value on a Fang Monkey was its hide, so the Lightning Thorn Hammer, which did not leave large wounds, was easy to use. Haoxuen and Seiran were fighting the Fang Monkeys I had failed to finish off. When the two of them each killed one, the group was wiped out.

“This Fang Monkey hide can be made into a warm mat.”

As I said that, I taught the two of them how to skin it. Since they had watched me even when I skinned the Fang Rabbits, they seemed to roughly understand how to do it.

The hides from the ten Fang Monkeys made for a fairly large load. So we decided to go shear Silver Sheep last. When I shear Silver Sheep solo, I struggle to separate one Silver Sheep from the flock. But today there were three of us. I intended to have those two help me separate one.

We headed toward the grassland where the Silver Sheep lived.

“The Silver Sheep we’re going to hunt from here on were forbidden to be hunted by Sect Leader Wei.”

“Eh? Then that’s no good, isn’t it?”

Haoxuen said that.

“What is forbidden is killing the Silver Sheep. So I paralyze them using a Thunder Bear claw and bring back only the wool after shearing it.”

Seiran nodded.

“I see. So it’s not Silver Sheep hunting, it’s shearing Silver Sheep?”

“That’s right. But the difficult part is separating one Silver Sheep from the flock, so I want you two to do that.”

I went over the plan with the two of them. Then those two approached the flock of Silver Sheep, and the Silver Sheep noticed them and all at once stopped eating grass and turned their gaze toward them. The next instant, they cried out “Meee!” and charged toward the two.

Haoxuen and Seiran ran away at full speed. Ahead of them were two tall trees, and behind them the flock of Silver Sheep was closing in. I stayed hidden in the shade of a tree and watched. The weapon in my hand had changed from the Lightning Thorn Hammer to the Lightning Thorn with its hammerhead removed.

Then, just as the last Silver Sheep in the flock was about to pass by, I jumped out from the tree’s shadow and slammed the Lightning Thorn, infused with qi, into the Silver Sheep’s back. The ice-pick-like tip slipped into the silver wool, pierced the Silver Sheep’s flesh, and sent lightning into it.

The Silver Sheep fell over and began trembling on the ground. After confirming it was paralyzed, I quickly sheared off its wool. By the ninth one, I had gotten quite used to it, and the time it took to shear had become shorter. When I finished and looked toward Haoxuen and the others, they were waiting atop a tall tree for the Silver Sheep to disappear.

We waited for the Silver Sheep to give up and leave. As we waited, the Silver Sheep I had sheared recovered from its paralysis and returned to the flock. At first, they did not seem to recognize it as one of their own. But once they realized it was their companion, they gathered around the Silver Sheep, now utterly changed, and started making a fuss. Forgetting all about Haoxuen and the others, they began returning to where they had been before.

For some reason, the Silver Sheep whose wool had been sheared seemed to feel lighter, and it was walking at the front of the flock. Since it was already autumn, this would probably be the last shearing of the Silver Sheep. After seeing the flock off, we started back toward Gyorei Cave.