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

Chapter 437 A Spark
The second sea well collapsed under the skirt of Venerable Qianlong.

When the ice cone penetrated the last Xuanming rune, a thunderous sound echoed from the bottom of the sea. Twelve ice pillars burst like bones, plowing the earth into spider web cracks.

The woman was suspended in mid-air, her new plain skirt stained with evil black blood, but it could not hide the brilliance in her eyes:
"Two of the seven tripods have been destroyed, leaving five..."

You Su leaned on his sword and panted, the gash on his left shoulder blade was shocking. He looked at the woman and was surprised that she, a noble lady, had several identical skirts. He thought that the glittering and colorful clothes like the one he saw for the first time were the standard outfit for this female fairy of high status and respect.

"Do we need to stop all five of these?"

You Su admitted that it was fun to kill the evil spirits, but what was more important now was to kill those people. And now it would take too much time to rush from the north of Beiaozhou to the south to block the sea well there.

Venerable Qianlong fell beside him with a frown on his face, his white jade hands already condensed into a cold mist that enveloped You Su's wound.

The moment she touched You Su's skin, she felt as if she was burned by You Su's body temperature, which even Bei Ao Hanxue could not lower. A hint of displeasure flashed between her brows:
"I have already drawn up the formation, why don't you hide inside it!"

"Those people don't have the protection of the Lord's formation."

You Su's nonchalant answer left the woman speechless. Instead, she blamed the young man in her heart. If he really died, she would not feel the slightest bit of remorse.

I will probably blame myself... she thought to herself.

The woman lowered her eyes slightly and no longer looked into the boy's clear eyes.

She suddenly remembered that she had said that the boy and she were of the same kind, and now it seemed that she was right. They were both fools who would rather burn themselves than illuminate the night, and the boy's situation was even worse than hers, but his ambitions were even greater than hers.

In her opinion, being an immortal is by no means a status that allows one to be high and mighty and ignore the human world. Power also means responsibility. Otherwise, what is the difference between them and those landlords who profit by exploiting the people?

The boy is blind, but he can see the suffering of the people better than any of the immortals. Isn't he the like-minded person she has been looking for?
But she almost killed him...

She was not arrogant by nature. In fact, she had seen too many people who were capable of helping the world but only cared about themselves, so she felt that most of the cultivators in the world were like this. People with different beliefs could not work together, so she gradually became less friendly to others.

If the two had met in a different way, even if they were hundreds of years apart, perhaps she could have called him——

"Fellow Taoist".

"I'm asking you a question, Grandma Lord."

You Su's impolite voice interrupted the woman's thoughts at an inopportune time, and the next moment, he paid the price for his provocation.

You Su covered his frozen shoulders and grimaced, saying angrily: "You are really looking for an opportunity to take revenge!"

The woman glared at him angrily, not wanting to argue with him any more:

"The seven sea wells correspond to the seven bronze tripods. This is the secondary eye of the formation. If we block one more, our target will be the sea well in the sacred mountain!"

"What do you mean?"

"The arrangement of these seven sea wells also follows the principles of the formation. If the three secondary eyes are destroyed, and then the main eye of the sacred mountain is destroyed, four of the seven eyes will be destroyed, and the remaining three sea wells will fall apart. But even if six secondary eyes are destroyed, the main eye can still operate."

You Su suddenly realized what was going on and thought that this woman had indeed been scheming for this great cause.

"So if we block one more sea well, our goal will become a counterattack on the sacred mountain?"

"Ah."

You Su rolled his eyes, his pupils dilated as if he had guessed something:
"They know this too, don't they!"

Venerable Qianlong turned around and looked at him in surprise. He couldn't help but look at You Su more highly because of his cleverness:
"That's right. So these two sea wells are only guarded by evil demons, but there are no monks to stop us. One reason is that they don't know which of the six sea wells I went to. The other reason is that they know that the sacred mountain is the final decisive battle. They must be accumulating strength at this time, preparing to keep the opponents in the sacred mountain forever."

You Su nodded slightly, but he became worried about Bai Ze and his senior sister who were still in the sacred mountain.

"But can you defeat so many people in your current state?"

You Su's doubts were reasonable. After all, the person in front of him was not the Lord Bei Ao who was almost perfect in the upper realm of Dongxu. Moreover, she had lost half of her soul, which was the reason why she fainted from the pain that day.

Venerable Qianlong shook his head lightly, "No matter how many immortals there are in the sacred mountain, it is only a big mountain after all. And our Bei'ao Continent is vast, and the cultivators outside the sacred mountain may not be powerless to fight. At first I didn't have much hope, but after breaking two sea wells in succession, it can be basically confirmed that there are many survivors, which shows that there are many ambitious people in Bei'ao! Once we block the three sea wells first to solve the problem, we can gather strength and counterattack in one fell swoop!"

You Su also stood up upon hearing this, and was aroused with some passion. He thought that this woman could stay on the top of the mountain for hundreds of years, so she was definitely not a good-for-nothing.

The goal of their trip was no longer to simply destroy the sea well, but also to discover all the feasible forces and gather them together. To achieve this, You Su believed that there was no one more suitable than this old woman in Quan Bei Ao.

"Let's go to Dongjing City."

Venerable Qianlong opened her hands, and the ice crystal earrings hanging between her black hair made a crisp sound. She was no less tired than You Su, but she had no intention of resting.

You Su raised his eyebrows, sighed, walked forward consciously, lowered his head slightly, and stretched his neck as if he was waiting to be killed.

You Su was somewhat accustomed to being carried around by the collar like a chicken by this woman.

But what surprised him was that this time the woman did not grab the back of his collar directly, but instead put her arms around his waist from behind and held him against her graceful waist.

The woman's cold fragrance was faint, and You Su's eyelashes trembled under his felt hat. Before he could struggle, the howling cold wind in the sky made it almost impossible for him to open his eyes.

Well, now she doesn’t look like a chick, but more like a kidnapped good boy.

He secretly made up his mind to break through to the Feather Transformation stage as soon as possible to avoid being carried around by these women in various postures.

……

The north wind was howling, and the walls of Qilian City were looming in the twilight.

Venerable Qianlong walked on tiptoe past the dilapidated watchtower, and her plain skirt swept past the frosty flagpole. On the fluttering black flag, the word "Qilian" had long been soaked in blood and turned dark brown.

"They used city wall bricks to build the city wall." You Su's boots rolled over the broken bricks, revealing layers of talisman fragments under the ice crystals. The yellow paper that was supposed to be used to ward off evil was torn into triangles, wrapped in black dog blood and stuffed into the cracks in the wall. Every crack was filled with broken porcelain and caltrops.

Venerable Qianlong's fingertips touched the chisel marks on the wall tiles. Dark red ice slag condensed in the gullies of varying depths. She could imagine how the refugees dismantled the walls with their bare hands in the wind and snow, and used their bloody fingers to transform this dilapidated city into a cage to trap and kill evil spirits.

Suddenly, a fire appeared inside the city wall.

Dozens of torches emerged from the ruins. You Su subconsciously wanted to draw his sword, but the woman grabbed his wrist.

The woman shook her head at him, then shouted towards the fire: "We are not evil spirits."

An old man stepped out from the crowd, pointing the golden talisman in his hand at the two uninvited guests, but the end of the talisman paper was shaking violently.

It was not until he came closer and saw the woman's face clearly that his dry eyes lit up with a burning fire.

The old man was about to kneel down and kowtow in the snow, but the woman held him up.

"Please, Lord, save Qilian City!" The old man burst into tears. He had just met this woman, a woman he would never forget if he had only met her once, on the first day he was about to take office as the Lord of this remote city, Qilian City.

She was so noble, like a goddess descending from the clouds, but she passed by everyone and personally handed the city lord's order to him, and whispered to him - "Qi Lian City is handed over to you."

As he finished speaking, the crowd behind him suddenly became agitated, and everyone realized that they had finally waited until the moment when the reinforcements from Shenshan arrived.

"We are saved!" they all thought in their hearts.

Venerable Qianlong's gaze passed over the old man and spread to the faces of the people illuminated by the fire. Among them were monks and mortals, children and a one-armed old man - there was no despair in their eyes, only hope tempered by fire.

Venerable Qianlong suddenly recalled the snowy night three hundred years ago when she had just taken over as the head of the Exorcist Department and ran into a group of refugees in the snow.

They used their frozen fingers to dig through the ice and stuffed the last half bag of millet into her hands, saying, "Fairy, eat more so you can have the strength to kill the evil spirits." At this moment, the eyes of the people in Dongjing City were the same as those of them who held the millet back then.

"How am I worthy of saving them?" she murmured to herself, her voice so soft that it sounded like her inner voice.

The woman's cuffs embroidered with snow mulberry flowers were wrinkled by her. She didn't know how to explain to them that she was not there to save them, but to ask for their help. She didn't know how to explain to them that this catastrophe was caused by her. So how was the excuse that she was being used any different from an excuse to evade responsibility?

You Su suddenly grasped her cold wrist. The temperature of the boy's palm was incredibly hot, as if the wind and snow in Beiaozhou could not make him cold.

The woman turned her head in surprise, only to see a bonfire-like light dancing in the boy's eyes.

You Su said nothing and let go of his hand.

Many times, the support people need is not a long list of inspiring encouragement. A simple gesture is enough to make a woman who is trapped in the vortex of self-blame feel a little more determined.

"Qi Fang, you did a great job." The woman opened her red lips slightly, but her voice pierced through the cold night.

The old man stiffened upon hearing the voice. He had never expected that his name, the lord of a marginal city and a marginal person since he started seeking the truth in the sacred mountain, would be remembered by the most noble woman in Beiaozhou.

"Qi Fang only hopes to live up to the people of Qilian!" The old man was about to kneel down again, but was once again held up by Venerable Qianlong's empty hands.

"You have no regrets." The woman's affirmation came from the bottom of her heart. She glanced around and noticed seven yellow lights hanging on the top of the city wall.

The method of using talismans and lanterns to suppress evil spirits was a remote method that Shenshan had taught. However, she had not expected that this knowledge, which was useless to many cultivators, had been kept in mind by the lord of a remote city, Qi Fang. He learned the immortal method for the sake of the people's livelihood.

But she also noticed that each wick was wrapped with a yellow talisman, which turned out to be torn official documents from Shenshan upon closer inspection.

The old man followed her gaze, and his wrinkled face suddenly turned red: "Don't blame me, my lord! We really can't find the cinnabar talisman, so we..."

"Well done." Venerable Qianlong suddenly spoke, causing the old man to fall into confusion.

She rolled up her sleeves, and seven ice lanterns shattered. The scattered paper scraps were condensed into new talismans by the black ice before they even hit the ground. The dragon patterns on the talisman paper shone brightly, illuminating half of the city as bright as day.

The crowd cried out in surprise, and several children reached out to catch the falling ice talismans. When the talisman touched their palms, it turned into a warm current that flowed into their meridians. Venerable Qianlong looked at their surprised smiles, and suddenly his throat choked up - this was the most basic cold-repelling talisman, which should have been distributed monthly by the city guards in various places.

"My lord, are you the only one here..." the old man asked tremblingly.

A trace of sadness appeared between Venerable Qianlong's brows, and You Su quietly touched her lower back with the hilt of his sword.

She understood what You Su meant, and she knew what she should do.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, nine phantom dragons rose into the sky from her sleeves, and the dragons' roars shook the snow off the eaves.

"The Divine Mountain did not send any reinforcements! Even I am not a reinforcement!"

Her words brought a dead silence to the crowd.

She tapped the air with her toes and landed on the highest ruins. The moonlight stretched her shadow very long.

"I came here today to borrow your lives!"

"The evil spirits on the seabed are not natural disasters." She raised her hand and condensed an ice mirror, in which a sea well covered by black tides emerged. "It was the evil people in the sacred mountain who stole the formation and turned the spiritual veins that should have nourished the frozen soil into evil spirit passages! Because in their eyes, the lives of those of us who are of humble origins and unable to practice are worthless lives! It is because there are too many worthless lives in Beiaozhou that it is so barren!"

The ice mirror exploded, and the fragments turned into a mountain hanging above everyone's head. "I came here to let them know that they are wrong! These people have been high and mighty immortals for too long! They have forgotten the human world, but the human world is everywhere! Let us work together to collect debts from those immortals who drank your blood and still found it fishy!"

You Su looked at the fairy with fluttering dress high up in the air, inspiring everyone, and in a trance he felt as if he had gotten to know her all over again.

He looked at the increasing number of lights, and suddenly remembered his almost stereotyped impression of the people of Beiaozhou - they were clear about gratitude and grudges and would never let go of any grudge, and a grudge could be passed down from generation to generation like a family heirloom.

Now someone wanted all of them dead, but there was not a trace of fear in their eyes towards the Immortal from the Divine Mountain, even though they were just unarmed mortals.

However, Venerable Qianlong would certainly not let everyone follow her to risk their lives. She personally strengthened the city defense formation for the people of Qilian City, and then only left tokens to some of the cultivators above the middle stage of Condensation Water. Qi Fang, who volunteered, was rejected by her on the grounds that someone still needed to be in charge of Qilian City.

Although Qilian City itself is a remote town with few cultivators who can be considered as combatants, it is still the first force she has gathered. A single spark can start a prairie fire.

And when the token burns, it will be the time for this group of "debt collectors" to launch a counterattack at the foot of the sacred mountain.

On the way from Qilian City to Dongjing City, You Su was still held by the woman at the waist.

He looked up and saw that the woman's eyes were a little red in the morning light, and a malicious smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

Unexpectedly, the woman noticed his smile, and before You Su could speak, she let go of his hand and threw him down from the sky.

"You old woman have..."

You Su, who was falling rapidly, didn't even have time to curse the word "sick" before he was quickly caught by the woman who had regained her cold expression.

"have what?"

"Yes... there is something hehe."

You Su was restrained and dared not say anything more. He just looked at the scenery from the sky. As he looked, he suddenly felt a sense of déjà vu.

Only then did he suddenly remember that this was the road that Master Oshu had taken him on to Fei City!

As the largest city in the northern part of Beiaozhou, Feicheng is a must-go city if you want to go to Dongjing City in the east.

Moreover, the power that can be gathered there must be stronger than that of the remote town of Qilian City. Even if it is not on the way, it is still a place that you must go to by taking a detour.

"Next time you go into the city, talk less and cover your face with your felt hat." The woman spoke first, as if giving instructions.

"Why?" You Su was a little confused.

The woman lowered her head to glance at the boy's sharp eyebrows and starry eyes, then pursed her lips:
"Because there is a high probability that there is a woman who eats men without peeling her skin."

(End of this chapter)