Little Alpaca – Chapter 193
by Little PandaVolume 5: Tribulation of All Beings
Fatal Weakness.
Yi Qiu had no memory of You Yan ever writing a letter to the protagonists.
But when she voiced her confusion, You Yan replied flatly, “Just now.”
Just now?
Yi Qiu couldn’t help but fall into deep thought. After pondering, she remembered the magical art You Yan had cast on the blood-colored Fusang before leaving the Mass Grave.
Since Fusang branches thousands of li apart could sense each other, it shouldn’t be difficult to inform Jiang Yuyao of the danger here through them.
You Yan had always been thorough in her planning and too lazy to explain herself to others. Yi Qiu was long used to this, so she didn’t say anything more.
After more than half the spring season had passed, Yi Qiu returned to the Xianlu Sect once more.
The starting point of the entire story was now much quieterβof course, that was because most of the disciples were in Moshui City.
The Resentful Qi in Moshui City was now far too heavy; it couldn’t be suppressed by the Fusang branches alone. On her way here, Yi Qiu had seen that the rivers inside and outside the city had dried up, and many common people were showing signs of illness. She feared the Fei had long been hiding there, continuously absorbing the city’s Resentful Qi to heal itself.
Once the Fei recovered from its injuries, it would surely leave Moshui. When that time came, the entire Mortal Realm would be plunged into despair.
In the original novel, the Fei was a not-so-bright boss. As soon as it appeared, it was tricked and led around in circles by You Yan. In the end, under You Yan’s manipulation, it became a sacrifice in the fight against the Heavenly Realm, just like the male lead. After a great battle, both sides suffered heavy losses, allowing You Yan to easily clean up the kills.
But no matter how unintelligent the Fei was, it had still arrived in this mortal world as part of You Yan’s scheme. Even though the barrier at the Mass Grave was damaged, it still retained You Yan’s unique spiritual aura of being a god and demon as one body. If they were to meet one day, the Fei would definitely recognize it.
At this point, it was already impossible for You Yan to fool this ancient Ferocious Beast as she did in the original novel.
However, You Yan didn’t seem the least bit flustered.
She simply followed He Xiuzhu to Liuxian Pavilion and saw the Fuzhu and the Huodou, who were still recuperating.
They were truly heavily injured, so much so that they no longer had the extra strength to maintain their human forms and could only heal here in their demon’s true forms.
In the end, the Three Venerables had found out about You Yan’s plan. Fortunately, in order not to shake morale, the Three Venerables did not tell the other disciples the truth, and He Xiuzhu naturally kept his lips sealed about it as well.
At this moment, the four-horned white deer was lying by the clear spring in Liuxian Pavilion, surrounded by an incredibly faint, soft glow. The little black dog was lying beside it with its eyes closed, occasionally letting out a fiery sneeze. When it saw the ground catch fire, it would open its mouth and suck the flames back in.
Seeing this from a distance, Yi Qiu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Little Hot Dog!” she called out, running forward and crouching beside the little black dog.
Yue Zhuo opened one eye, gave Yi Qiu a listless look, and then slowly closed it again.
Yi Qiu: “⦔
After a brief silence, Yue Zhuo opened her eyes again. This time, her gaze was no longer so listless, and she let out a surprised “Eh?”
Soon, she struggled to lift her neck. “Little Alpaca Demon!”
This Little Hot Dog was indeed seriously injured. She was already unable to control her power; the moment the words left her mouth, she let out a fiery sneeze. Yi Qiu was quite frightened and quickly jumped back several meters to avoid the scorching sparks.
Seeing this, Yue Zhuo quickly sniffled, climbed up from the ground, and looked toward You Yan. “You’re finally back! What the hell is that big one-eyed ox? It’s way too hard to deal with!”
The white deer to the side slowly opened its eyes and also turned its gaze to You Yan. Its eyes were filled with exhaustion, as if it didn’t even have the strength to speak.
More than two thousand years ago, to save Yue Zhuo’s life, Jian Li had sacrificed half of her cultivation base to seal Yue Zhuo’s heart-soul in the Wuzhou Stone Cave. Her current power was far from matching Yue Zhuo’s, so after suffering heavy injuries, she was naturally even weaker than Yue Zhuo.
But right now, none of that was the point.
“You have something to say to me?” You Yan asked flatly.
“Do complaints count?” Yue Zhuo retorted.
Seeing Yue Zhuo’s response, You Yan turned to Jian Li and repeated the question. “You have something to say to me?”
Jian Li nodded and said softly, “This creature is extremely strange. Although it has a massive body, it’s like an intangible object. When I fought it, I felt like all my strength was being spent on empty airβ¦ It was like, like I couldn’t touch it.”
Yi Qiu frowned. “But it can get injured, can’t it?”
Jian Li said, “Yes, it can get injured, but it seems like it can’t die⦔
“It’s like a cloud of smoke! Even if you scatter it, it can just condense back together. It’s as if it has no vital points at all!” Yue Zhuo said, turning her head to glance at He Xiuzhu. “When you saw that thing, it was covered in wounds, right?”
“Yes.”
Yue Zhuo lifted her head and looked at You Yan again, saying angrily, “But before he arrived, I had clearly burned all its flesh away. I watched with my own eyes as it absorbed the surrounding Resentful Qi and made a pile of its own charred bones grow flesh and blood againβ¦ That speed was terrifying. If no one had stopped it, I’m afraid it would have been able to move again in less than a quarter of an hour and taken both my and Jian Li’s lives!”
“Howβ¦ how is that possible?” Yi Qiu was astonished. If the Fei had such strong self-healing abilities, it should have been wreaking havoc across the Mortal Realm long ago. Why would it be hiding?
Can there really be an unkillable boss in this world? Little Bird Gu Gu Fly wouldn’t have designed the novel’s villain like this, right?
“Why would I lie to you!” Yue Zhuo said, sniffling before flopping listlessly onto the ground. “Other than the Fusang Goddess, this is the first time I’ve ever encountered something I couldn’t burn away⦔
The little black dog’s tone was utterly defeated. Hearing this, Jian Li couldn’t help but sigh softly, lowering her eyes in self-reproach. “I’m sorry. We failed.”
You Yan was silent for a moment before saying, “You did your best.”
Yue Zhuo couldn’t help but ask, “So what do we do now? That thing is completely unkillable!”
You Yan immediately shot back, “It’s impossible for it to have no weakness. You fought it. Did you really not notice anything?”
“I burned all its flesh away, not even its internal organs were left. All that remained was a pile of bones, and⦔ Yue Zhuo trailed off, stunned for a moment.
“And what?” Yi Qiu pressed.
The little black dog hesitated for a moment, then tilted its head and said, not very confidently, “Andβ¦ and a rotten eyeball⦔
Yi Qiu: “An eyeball?”
Yue Zhuo nodded. “An eyeball, it was an eyeball!”
She tried hard to remember, then continued, “I saw it. In that pile of charred bones, there was a scorched-black, roundish lump of rotten flesh. That was the first part of it to recover. The moment it healed, it glared at me hatefully⦔
The corner of Yi Qiu’s eye couldn’t help but twitch.
A lump of rotten flesh on top of charred bones, which then quickly recovered into a big eyeball and glared forward⦠Just hearing about it sounded a little disgusting.
However, for the eyeball to retain its flesh and shape when all other flesh had been burned away, it must truly be the Fei’s weak point. When the Fei suffered a heavy blow, it must have used most of its power to protect that spot, which is how it avoided a fatal injury.
And He Xiuzhu had, by a stroke of luck, hit the mark. He had heavily wounded its only weak point when the Fei was powerless to resist, and that was how he managed to save Jian Li and Yue Zhuo. If his sword had struck any other place, the Fei would have been able to heal quickly and kill them all before they could escape.
In that case, that one sword strike, which had seemed like a reckless overestimation of his own abilities, had actually bought everyone a significant amount of time!
“It seems that is its weak point,” You Yan said flatly, her gaze sweeping over to He Xiuzhu. “If not for that sword strike, I’m afraid Moshui City would have already become a hell on earth. The loss of your arm was not meaningless.”
“But I still failed to kill it⦔
“You are only a mortal, after all,” You Yan said, offering no face-saving platitudes. “If the Fuzhu and Huodou hadn’t temporarily stripped it of its ability to protect itself, you wouldn’t have even been able to pierce its Protective Spirit.”
Hearing this, Yi Qiu quickly tugged on You Yan’s sleeve while speaking to comfort He Xiuzhu, “Don’t blame yourself. You already did very well. If it were me, I probably wouldn’t have even had the guts to go forward!”
As a mortal, when faced with that kind of situation, he clearly could have run away without looking back. But he still turned back. Not only that, he knew to help deal a finishing blow and even happened to hit the boss’s weak spot. That was already quite impressive.
After all, in the current Xianlu Sect, if you excluded the three Venerables of the three Pavilions, He Xiuzhu was the only one left with any real skill. If it had been any other disciple from the Xianlu Sect that day, they probably wouldn’t have been able to break through the Fei’s weakened Protective Spirit.
He Xiuzhu happening to run into this vicious battle seemed like an accident, but it was actually an inevitability. In the end, the Three Venerables trusted him, which was why they sent him out to investigate the cause of the abnormal Resentful Qi. And he had indeed not betrayed that trust, successfully securing a sliver of hope for all of Moshui.
Unfortunately, cannon fodder was still just cannon fodder. Little Bird Gu Gu Fly had no particular fondness for this character, so the abilities granted to him in the original novel were very limited. Naturally, it was impossible for him to one-shot the boss.
Right now, she just wished You Yan would say a little less.
After all, He Xiuzhu had already lost an arm to deal that finishing blow to the boss. As a Qin Cultivator, to be missing his right arm⦠he would likely have to change his cultivation path and start all over again.1
What a huge blow that must be for a cultivator, yet the person before her hadn’t uttered a single word of complaint.
Yi Qiu couldn’t help but feel a wave of emotion.
The He Xiuzhu from the original novel was a hypocrite with extreme vanity and jealousy who always put himself first. If he had truly encountered a situation that endangered his own life, he probably would have run off without a trace long ago.
But he was Chu Tinglan’s prized disciple. Back when the Xianlu Sect was in peril and You Yan wanted to save Chu Tinglan’s life, Chu Tinglan himself would have rather died than abandon the disciples of his sect. A beloved disciple whom such a Venerable had painstakingly cultivated for over a decade should naturally be of upright character and would certainly not be the type to cling to life and fear death.
It was precisely because of this that the Fei had suffered such a heavy blow and was forced to hide itself away to heal in secret.
She suddenly felt that this world was never something that could be saved by just one or two people.
In the novel, all living beings were mercilessly destroyed by the author, and the people seemed to have no ability to resist. But in reality, even a single cannon fodder character in the story was striving to protect this world. And the many, many people of this world also began their own redemption the moment they saw a glimmer of hope.
All of this felt as if it had been fated in the great unseen. It made Yi Qiu start to believe that they were not weak and isolated, believe that everything would get better soon, and believe that when the protagonists returned, they could join forces and would surely be able to slay the Ferocious Beast that was now so heavily injured.
When that time came, she would probably return to the Demon Realm with You Yan and find a way to give the Mortal Realm back a Wood God.
The author has something to say:
_(:3γβ )_ Summer is a time for impatience and restlessness, soβ¦ ah, never mind. A pigeon2 has no excuses. Today’s red envelopes have been sent out.
Footnotes
- A Qin Cultivator is one who uses the βqinβ or βguqinβ, a seven-stringed Chinese zither, as their primary focus for cultivation, often for both musical arts and combat. Losing oneβs right arm would be a devastating, career-ending injury for such a practitioner.
- βPigeonβ (ιΈ½ε) is Chinese internet slang for an author who skips updates, is late, or breaks promises (flakes), derived from the phrase βto release a pigeonβ (ζΎιΈ½ε).
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