Misguided practice of sinister cultivation techniques: Slander! The problem lies with you all, not me!
This is a bizarre and mysterious world filled with various sinister cultivation methods. Once a person begins to cultivate, they will either undergo mild changes in appearance and temperament, descend into madness, or become a great elixir for evil beings to consume...
Duan Yun, having transmigrated into this world, unexpectedly comes across a supreme elixir cultivation manual, the 'True Explanation of the Jade Sword.'
To his surprise, he is a one-in-a-million cultivation genius who, unwittingly, transforms the manual into something extraordinary. Guided by the Jade Sword, he is able to pierce through everything.
Later, as his mastery over various methods grows, Duan Yun, carrying the philosophy of 'the enlightened benefit the world,' never keeps secrets and spreads martial arts across the land.
Who would have thought...
"Duan the Demon misled me! He said this technique enhances yin and yang, but now I can only squat to pee, boo hoo..."
"It was the Demon who taught me this 'Seven Parts Returning Qi'. Instead of blessing me, it brought disaster—I either get killed or step in dung. The fortune-teller said I've lost seventy percent of my luck."
"Don't trust a word of what Demon Duan says! The fairy of the Myriad Wonders Palace was supposed to ascend the whole palace to the heavens, but in one night, she was possessed and turned into a demoness, all due to that old demon Duan's handiwork!"
...
Duan Yun finds this incomprehensible. All he did was practice martial arts, spread techniques, and occasionally emulate the laws of nature, so how did he become notorious as a demon?
This is slander!
The same techniques cause no issues for me, so the problem lies with you all, not me!
The sword flies in the stormy rain · Eastern
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]