Don't be afraid, fairy, I'm blind

Chapter 422: Brother Love

Beiaozhou, Changshan City.

The lead-gray sky was extremely low, and the broken city walls were covered with spider-web-like cracks, and the wind made a whimpering sound when it passed by.

Twelve-year-old Ajiu held his younger sister Aying tightly in his arms, and the two of them huddled under a collapsed temple shrine.

As poor people, they did not know who the immortal enshrined here was, but Jiu knew that the idea of ​​believing that the immortal would bless them was as fragile as the statue.

The statue of the immortal had long been broken into two pieces, with half of its compassionate face leaning between the broken tiles, its empty eye sockets facing the direction of the swirling black fog outside the city.

"Brother... I'm hungry..." Ah Ying's voice was as thin as a mosquito, and her cracked lips brushed against Ah Jiu's collar. She had a faded red rope tied around her wrist, the last thing her mother left when she sacrificed her life to send them here.

Their mother actually didn't believe in the so-called blessing from the immortals, but she had no other choice as she was desperate.

Two nights ago, Changshan City, a not-so-remote city in Northern Aozhou, suddenly erupted in an unimaginable evil tide. They came from nowhere and swept across the entire city in an instant. Monks died in battle, civilians died tragically, and the survivors tried to gather together and wait for reinforcements to arrive, but two days have passed and the evil tide is still there.

Ah Jiu swallowed his saliva, his throat aching like fire. They hadn't eaten a grain of rice for two days, and even the moss in the corners had been scraped clean. In the distance came the crisp sound of bones breaking, mixed with the sticky sound of evil spirits swallowing flesh and blood. He clenched his teeth, and the cold sweat from his palms soaked his cuffs - that was the mark of him tearing off the hem of his clothes to bandage his sister when she was stabbed by a splinter the night before.

"Just bear with it for a while." Ah Jiu whispered into Ah Ying's ear, his fingertips gently stroking her hair that looked like dry grass. "When the moon climbs above the statue, I'll take you to find something to eat."

Ah Ying buried her head in her bent knees and nodded. She had always been an extremely obedient child. Even if she really wanted something, she would not ask her mother and brother.

She was also a very smart child. She would take the initiative to say that she was hungry because she knew her brother was hungrier than her. If she asked her brother to eat something, her brother would starve to death and would not take her away.

At midnight, the long street looked like a tomb.

Ah Jiu led Ah Ying and crawled among the broken walls. The foul mist stuck to their skin and every step felt like stepping on a pile of corpses.

His heartbeat was roaring in his chest like a drum, and his ears were erect, catching any slight movement around him. The foul mist seemed to have life and wrapped around their ankles, as if countless skinny hands would reach out from the darkness at any time and drag them into the abyss.

"Brother..." Aying's voice was so weak that it was almost inaudible. Her fingers tightly grasped Ajiu's sleeves, as if she was grabbing the last straw.

"Don't be afraid, follow me." Jiu responded in a low voice, his voice hoarse but firm, "Don't look at them, go your own way..."

This was a rule he had vaguely discovered after taking risks several times. The more scared and panicked they were, the more fiercely these demons would chase them and bite them. If they restrained their reactions, sometimes they would just ignore them.

But this was not absolute. He had once personally stared into the eyes of an evil spirit that had let him go. He was very sure that the evil spirit did not fail to see him, but that he did not interest it at all. But not all evil spirits were uninterested in a dried-up flesh like him that had no profound energy.

So his eyes scanned quickly in the darkness, trying to find a relatively safe path.

The houses on both sides of the long street had collapsed long ago, and a few incomplete corpses could occasionally be seen among the ruins. Some had already rotted, while others looked as if they had just been torn apart, with the blood not yet dried.

Jiu did not choose to search in the homes of these wealthy families, because these rich people hid their food and money more carefully than their lives. He did not dare to stay outside for too long. He needed to go to a place where there must be food - the home of the philanthropic city lord.

The vermilion lacquered door of the city lord's mansion was half open, and a piece of intestine was hanging on the door knocker, swaying and spinning in the wind.

Jiu held Ying's hand tightly, his fingertips were cold, and beads of sweat oozed from his palms. He carefully searched everywhere with his sister, as if racing against time.

"There's a rice jar!" Ah Ying suddenly grabbed her brother's sleeve, and her dirty little face lit up.

In the corner of the treasury stood a half-man-high pottery jar, its mouth covered with spider webs, which raised a cloud of choking ash when it was opened. Ah Jiu reached his hand in with trembling hands, and his fingertips touched a few shrunken grains of wheat.

He suddenly remembered that when the City Lord's Mansion gave alms, it gave them poor people millet, but the rice jars that stored wheat in the City Lord's Mansion were covered with dust, which meant that they could not finish eating all the good rice, but would rather leave it here to rot than share it with these poor people.

He gritted his teeth and spat secretly, tearing the image of the city lord as a good man in his mind to pieces. Then he hurriedly grabbed a handful and stuffed it into his sister's palm, while he pressed his empty stomach even tighter.

"Hurry up and eat. Fill your stomach first and then we can take some away!"

"Brother, you eat too..." Ah Ying stood on tiptoe to feed the millet to his mouth.

Before he could finish his words, the beam above his head suddenly exploded with sawdust!

A pufferfish-like evil spirit bloated like a ball crashed down, its purple skin covered with pustules, each of which contained half a twisted fish face. It had no eyes, and a jagged mouthpart split open on its abdomen, mucus dripping onto the blue bricks, creating pungent white smoke.

The broken beam almost pierced Ah Jiu, and the brother and sister, who were only eleven or twelve years old, were so frightened that they collapsed to the ground. Ah Ying was trembling all over, but Ah Jiu made a quick decision and stood up suddenly.

"run!"

Ah Jiu pushed his sister towards the door and held a half-broken piece of wood across his chest. This strange pufferfish-like evil spirit was only one person away from him. The fish faces in the pustules all screamed like babies, and the fish lips opened and closed as if they were about to explode.

Ah Ying stumbled and fell outside the doorway. When she turned around, she saw her brother being dragged towards the abyss. She grabbed the tiles at hand and threw them hard, but the broken tiles were smashed into powder by the evil spirit.

"Run!"

Jiu, who was about to be swallowed by the evil spirit, suppressed his voice and did not roar or cry, because he knew that any loud noise might attract the attention of other evil spirits to his sister.

Ah Ying's mind was blank at this moment. With a deathly pale face, she could only watch as her only relative in the world was swallowed into the tiger's mouth.

"boom!"

A loud bang suddenly occurred in the yard, and Ajiu fell heavily to the ground.

Before he could react to the severe pain in his body, he saw the bloated evil spirit suddenly deflate, and its sticky body collapsed to the ground like a shed snake skin.

Ah Ying was overjoyed and rushed to her brother, "It was my brother who killed it!" Ah Jiu's confused look gave the answer, he looked at the evil, shriveled corpse on the ground and shook his head.

In a flash, the evil spirit turned into a pool of pus that seeped into the cracks between the bricks. What made Ah Jiu and Ah Ying open their eyes wide was that after the corpse turned into water, two figures hugging each other tightly were revealed underneath!

Ah Ying was immediately frightened by the scene and grabbed her brother's sleeve tightly. Ah Jiu felt a sweet and fishy taste in his throat and gently pressed his sister's hand.

He guessed that this must be the poor person who had been swallowed by the evil spirit before him. He plucked up his courage, blew up the tinder sandwiched between his heavy collar, and swept it over tremblingly.

In the light of the fire, he could see the winding bamboo leaf pattern on the girl's green skirt. She looked like a girl, and her figure and face looked childish, not much different from his sister, so he should call her a girl. The man was tall and slender, wearing a long black robe, and he held the girl, who was much smaller than him, tightly in his arms.

"Is this... a couple from the gods?"

Ah Ying took a half step closer in a daze, and at a glance she was drawn to the stunning looks of the two unconscious people. In her limited vocabulary, only the word "goddess" could describe these two people.

What made Ah Jiu's eyes flicker was not their faces, but the fact that this man and woman, with a big difference in size, were kissing each other and breathing together, as if even death could not separate this pair of perfect lovers. He marveled at the depth of the couple's friendship, as if he had seen the day when he would die in the mouth of an evil spirit, but his sister would not be with him because he would let her live.

At this moment, shadows spread over the wall, and what attracted other evil spirits was not Ah Jiu's roar, but the explosion of the pufferfish-shaped evil spirit.

A three-meter-tall spider-shaped evil spirit hung from the beam, its eight compound eyes reflecting the terrified faces of the brother and sister.

This time, Ying's reaction was faster than her brother's! She rushed forward without hesitation and pushed her brother away!

The moment the spider-like evil spirit's sickle-like forelimbs slashed towards Ah Ying's back, Ah Jiu realized how foolish it was to let his wild thoughts run wild at this moment. Despair wrapped him tightly like silk, and the pair of "immortals" lying on the ground suddenly opened their eyes -

You Su's Mosong sword was unsheathed with a roar like a dragon, and the sword energy split the spider's abdomen in half; Bai Ze's fingertips bloomed with ice lotus, and the exploding frost blades pierced the remaining seven eyes. When pus and blood poured down like a rainstorm, You Su turned around and protected Ah Ying in his arms, and raised his black cloak to cover all the filth.

"Finally alive, meow!" Bai Ze closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if she was feeling the beauty of life. She turned to look at Ah Jiu who was sitting on the ground and greeted with a smile: "Hello!"

The girl who greeted him warmly after coming back to life shocked Ajiu's mind. The crystal clear ice crystals around the girl's ten fingers formed a strange contrast with the blood on the ground, which made him even ignore the cat-like meow at the end of the girl's voice.

Ah Jiu quickly came back to his senses, looking over the girl's shoulder to his sister who was safe and sound in You Su's arms. The boy's tense back suddenly collapsed, and tears mixed with blood on his face fell to the ground.

There were more rustling sounds coming from the end of the long street. Bai Ze stood up and brushed off her skirt, but the dirty and smelly mucus had already stained her skirt with a dirty color.

You Su made a sword flower, turned around and sent Aying to Ajiu.

"Thank you." You Su thanked softly from the bottom of his heart and extended his hand to the boy who was sitting on the ground.

He and Bai Ze had been tortured for an unknown amount of time while the world spun around, and they were already dizzy, but they were able to quickly determine the situation based on the surroundings. The evil spirit had left its lair, which was something he had expected.

What his brother did made him feel as if he saw himself in Izumo Castle, so he looked at this boy who was much younger than him with both admiration and respect in his eyes.

Ah Jiu stared in amazement at this young man who was covered in dirt but so handsome. His sword skills just now had proved that he must be a cultivator, and he could feel the respect he gave him. For a poor man who had the chance to survive in the city, this was a great luxury and the best affirmation.

He puffed up his chest unconsciously, and despite his sister's support, he forced himself to stand up, but his voice still revealed his uncertainty:
"No, you're welcome..."

Ah Ying clutched her brother's clothes tightly, but her eyes kept glancing at the immortal who saved her. She suddenly felt that what her mother said was right - the red string tied her life, and the gods would take care of her in desperate situations.

"Brother, they seem to have recognized us..."

Bai Ze frowned and stared at the three evil spirits lurking on the beams. The look in their eyes was no longer that of their own kind, but naked greed.

You Su also noticed the evil spirits that were watching them eagerly, "Well, send them to a safe place first."

He shook the Mosong Sword, and the sword tip vibrated the air and made a buzzing sound. He was trying to wake up the sleeping Mosong Sword, and also to wake himself up.

Ah Ying was stunned when she heard this. She had just clearly seen these two gods kissing each other when they were unconscious... She thought they were a couple, but she didn't expect that they were actually siblings like her and her brother? !
Little did she know that this was an emergency measure that You Su and Bai Ze had to take in order to share the power of the water-repellent beads in the vortex on the seabed...

Ah Jiu didn't have his sister's keenness in this regard, so he volunteered, "I know where it's safe!"

You Su glanced at him and said without hesitation, "Lead the way."

This unquestionable trust warmed Jiu's heart and completely eliminated his doubts about these two people.

Seeing his sister holding hands with the harmless-looking fairy, he did not try to stop them. He just walked ahead and said, "Follow me!"

You Su looked at the boy's back in a trance, and then called Bai Ze to follow him, without any intention of asking the boy to hide behind him. Because he did not think the boy in front of him was weak, on the contrary, he thought the boy was stronger than many people with cultivation.

Ah Jiu led You Su and Bai Ze through the ruins, heading for the temple, with brisk but firm steps. Despite the roars of evil spirits around him, he felt inexplicably at peace. Perhaps it was because of the presence of the two "gods" behind him, or perhaps it was because he felt the power of being trusted for the first time.

Ah Ying held Bai Ze's hand tightly, feeling the warmth from her palm, and the fear in her heart gradually dissipated. She secretly looked up at Bai Ze and found that she was smiling at her, her eyes as gentle as the spring sunshine.

"What's your name?" Bai Ze asked softly, his voice as pleasant as a clear spring.

"Aying..." Aying answered timidly, her voice as thin as a mosquito.

"Aying, what a nice name." Bai Ze smiled, "Don't be afraid, we are here, nothing will happen, meow."

Ah Ying nodded heavily, but suddenly a voice sounded in her ears again. She looked at the girl who was as tall as her, but she just smiled and didn't open her mouth.

"You can't do that with your real brother... This person is my love brother."

(End of this chapter)