# SWORDMAN # EMPRESS # LOVEY-DOVEY Lin Ran was transmigrated to a fantasy world and was the top scorer during the martial arts exam. He was assigned to protect the empress, but because he did not give presents to the general director in charge of the palace affairs, he was demoted to a guard at Mount Sword. His only job was to clean the swords stored on the mountain. [You have cleaned the broken sword, Fire Stream. You have been rewarded with 50% proficiency of the Heaven Fire Sword Will.] [You have cleaned the heavy sword, Dragon Elephant. You have been rewarded with the inner energy of the Dragon and Elephant Divine Art.] [You have cleaned the demon sword, Dark Wind. You have been rewarded with the Grade 9 method, Phantom Step.] [You have cleaned the spirit sword, Heaven’s Chance. You have been rewarded with the Eyes that Peek into Heaven.] “Isn’t this way better than working as the empress’s guard?” Lin Ran quickly decided to remain on the mountain until he had become invincible. He spent the next 100 years without leaving Mount Sword until the day the barbaric knights from the north invaded the central plains and started to mercilessly slaughter citizens, hoping to break the peace that was obtained through a lot of sacrifices over 100 years ago. Lin Ran had no choice but to descend from the mountain.
The short story is a crafted form in its own right. Short stories make use of plot, resonance, and other dynamic components as in a novel, but typically to a lesser degree. While the short story is largely distinct from the novel or novella (a shorter novel), authors generally draw from a common pool of literary techniques. Short story writers may define their works as part of the artistic and personal expression of the form. They may also attempt to resist categorization by genre and fixed formation. Short stories have deep roots and the power of short fiction has been recognised in modern society for hundreds of years. The short form is, conceivably, more natural to us than longer forms. We are drawn to short stories as the well-told story, and as William Boyd, the award-winning British author and short story writer has said: "[short stories] seem to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards the grave and oblivion".[2] In terms of length, word count is typically anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 for short stories, however some have 20,000 words and are still classed as short stories. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or "flash fiction".[3]