My Disciple Is Crazy! Chapter 19: Jade-Eyed Moss-Crane

"Looking" wasn't the right word for it.

It was glaring.

Ma Yuanyuan had been mid-laugh when she noticed Chen Xi's attention had snagged on sothing across the market lane. Her chuckles faded. She followed Chen Xi's gaze, tracking it past the spirit herb stalls and the stacked cages of song-quails, until she landed on a familiar shape tucked against the base of a splintered post.

The creature stood knee-high, compact and sturdy, built like sothing between a pheasant and a small crane. Its plumage was unremarkable, a dull, dusty green that bled into the shadows of the stalls, underparts gone to a washed-out khaki. Useful for camouflage. Useless for beauty. But the eyes gave it away every ti: large, liquid-black, holding a sheen of sothing ancient and knowing. Too intelligent for a bird. Too patient.

A young Jade-Eyed Moss-Crane.

And it was glaring at Chen Xi with the kind of vacant, simring hatred that had probably been burning for weeks.

Chen Xi tilted her head.

"That little brat is still alive?"

"Of course it is. Did you expect it to die or sothing?" Ma Yuanyuan's tone ca out flat, almost tired.

"Haven't seen it since. Just asking." Chen Xi shrugged, loose and easy. "But when's it going to get tired of glaring at ?"

Ma Yuanyuan squinted at the bird. The glare was there, yes, beak tipped slightly down, eyes fixed forward, but sothing about it felt unfocused. The bird wasn't tracking Chen Xi's movents. It was just… staring. Drenched in its own thoughts.

"I don't think that's quite the case," Ma Yuanyuan said. "It's glaring at you, sure. But absentmindedly. It's probably stewing in so malicious fantasy right now, off in its own little world."

"Ah. Malicious thoughts." Chen Xi leaned forward slightly, elbows on her knees, and studied the bird with fresh interest.

That's when she saw it. The vacant, glassy quality in those black eyes. The glare was aid at her, yes, but the bird wasn't present in it. It wasn't seeing her. It was seeing whatever version of her lived inside its head, the one it could peck apart piece by piece, probably. The hatred was real. The awareness wasn't.

Chen Xi grinned. Slowly. Then she cracked her fingers, one by one, the joints popping soft and sharp in the morning quiet.

"Seems like it's getting its nerves back."

'Thinking ill of in that tiny walnut brain of yours? The audacity.'

She wanted nothing more than to teach it another lesson.

As if the sound of her knuckles had tripped so buried alarm, the Jade-Eyed Moss-Crane snapped back to reality. Its eyes, those liquid-black pools, widened. The glare dissolved. The feathers along its neck and back lifted in a sudden, rippling wave, every quill standing on end. A cold chill clearly crept down its spine.

It averted its gaze fast, jerking its head to the side, then scrambled backward with quick, scratching footsteps until it found a corner between two crates and wedged itself there. Hiding. Waiting. Its body had gone rigid but for the faint, tremoring ruffle of feathers it couldn't quite control.

Chen Xi watched it go. Her grin didn't fade.

Ma Yuanyuan rubbed her forehead.

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"I don't think that's necessary."

"What do you an, 'not necessary'? You saw how it was glaring at . Who knows what villainous little thoughts were running through its head." Chen Xi flexed her fingers. "Better to stamp it out now than let it grow."

"Trust . That bird is never getting the guts to look you in the eye again. Look at it." Ma Yuanyuan gestured toward the crates, where only the tip of a trembling tail feather was visible. "Have you forgotten you literally strangled it? It was on the verge of death. I'm pretty sure it saw its ancestors for a brief mont back there, probably a whole flock of them, lined up and waiting."

"I haven't forgotten." Chen Xi's voice ca out even. "And if it repeats what it did to , I'll repeat what I did to it. Yes." She glanced at Ma Yuanyuan, expression unreadable. "If I hadn't done sothing when I did, I would've ended up like everyone else in this market."

Ma Yuanyuan said nothing. Because Chen Xi wasn't wrong.

The Jade-Eyed Moss-Crane had been terrorizing the market for days before that. Sellers, buyers, even the delivery runners, no one was safe. It destroyed stock without warning, snatching dried spirit herbs from displays and ripping them apart, scattering them like trash. It stole the most useful items right out of buyers' hands, ingredients, components, small tools, and fled before anyone could react. It overturned baskets. Shattered pottery. Once, it had reportedly dragged a woman's entire purchase into a mud puddle.

All for no reason anyone could na.

And no one could stop it. No one dared stop it.

Because of whose bird it was...

Gong Xun.

An elder of the Tiger's Claw sect.

The crane was intelligent. It knew exactly what its connection ant. It knew it was protected, and that knowledge had fattened its boldness day by day. So rumors said the trouble started right after the bird was deed special among elder Gong Xun's flock, one of the fastest-growing Jade-Eyed Moss-Cranes in the pens. A prodigy. Pride did the rest.

Chen Xi had noticed sothing early on, though. The bird never made trouble for people as important as its owner, or more so. Nor did it bother anyone with connections to people like that. It was careful about where it aid its cruelty.

The first category made sense. It could sense energies. It knew, on so instinctual level, who was untouchable. Stay away from the strong. Simple.

The second category took her longer to figure out.

Ma Yuanyuan told her it watches people. Observes them. Studies who they talk to, where they go, who they're tied to. That's how it knows who it can try and who it can't.

The bird's specialty made it all easier. Its eyes weren't just ancient-looking, they were sharp. Evaluative. It pieced together the social web of the market stall by stall, marking the safe targets and the forbidden ones.

Chen Xi sotis wished, in the idle hours, that the bird would misjudge. That it would try soone stronger than its owner. Soone who would tear it apart and leave the pieces smoking on the cobblestones.

But the bird never made that mistake.

Ma Yuanyuan let out a long breath, the kind that ca from soone who'd had this conversation too many tis.

"Look. I'm not saying what you did was bad. But it was insane. You do realize that, right?" She turned to face Chen Xi fully, her brows drawn together. "You seriously ignored the fact that it was a Rank Nine True Beast. It was stronger than you."

Chen Xi rolled her eyes.

"It drove to the edge. So I taught it the lesson everyone else was too afraid to teach." Her tone was light, almost dismissive. "The fault is on it. It should have observed better. Should have known not to try ." She flicked a bit of dust off her sleeve. "Let's just say it was its unlucky day. That's all."

"Look, I know it got on your nerves, I saw it. It got on mine too. But you outright strangled sothing more powerful than you. That's—" Ma Yuanyuan threw her hands up. "That's a crazy move. Not even an actual insane person would do that."

She would know. The bird had made her life miserable too. It had stolen from her stall, ruined a batch of things she'd spent weeks preparing. And she'd done what everyone else did: swallowed it. Sucked it in. Kept her head down.

Chen Xi suspected that was why the bird had co for her in the first place. It saw her with Ma Yuanyuan often enough. Marked her as another soft target. Soone who wouldn't fight back.

It had been wrong.

"Fine, fine. I've heard you already." Chen Xi waved a hand. "You've said that so many tis since it happened."

Ma Yuanyuan sighed, a deeper one this ti, heavy with the realization that her words still weren't sinking. They never did with Chen Xi. They'd hit the surface and slide right off, like water off waxed cloth.

Then sothing flickered in her expression. A mory surfacing.

"And, I just rembered." She straightened, pressing a palm to her temple. "Since we're on the topic. Sothing I nearly forgot to tell you."

She looked at Chen Xi.

"The word of what you did…"

A pause. Just long enough for the market noise to fill the space between them, sellers calling, a cart rattling over stone.

"It has reached Elder Gong Xun."