Miss Fairy, Please Hear Me Out

This was the first time Xu Yuan learned that among Tian Yan’s Heaven Characters, there was apparently a Scram mantra.

The word had barely left her lips before a force sent him flying straight out of the cave.

Perhaps out of deliberate revenge, Tian Yan had added a special twist to the force. Xu Yuan spun through the air like a human top all the way until he crashed into a soft, warm, fragrant embrace.

Ran Qingmo caught him a hundred meters up in the air. Her clear, quiet eyes lowered slightly as she asked in her crisp voice, “Are you all right?”

When Xu Yuan finally came back to his senses and looked up, the full moon hung high above. Her long hair drifted in the wind, edged in silver by the moonlight, so quiet and beautiful it seemed almost unreal.

Suppressing the dizziness, Xu Yuan circulated his cultivation technique twice, then looked at her and grinned. “I’m fine...”

Ran Qingmo hesitated for a moment, then glanced toward the cave.

And with that glance, she met Tian Yan’s bright golden eyes.

That slender figure stood alone at the cave entrance, staring coldly at the two of them in the air.

A single look seemed to stretch for ten thousand years.

In the end, Xu Yuan was the first to break the silence, because he had the distinct feeling that if this continued, something was going to happen again.

“Ran Qingmo, let’s go first. Tian Yan’s injured. Before she recovers, she won’t chase after us again. That gives us enough time to escape.”

Ran Qingmo withdrew her gaze and lowered her eyes to look at him in her arms.

“Oh.”

“All right, then hurry and...”

Before he could finish, the woman in black pursed her lips and simply let go of him.

ᯓ➤

The first snows had begun to melt, and tender green buds were sprouting from the branches.

Beside an official road stood a woman dressed in black as dark as ink. Her figure was extraordinary, and she wore a veiled hat. Through the hanging silk veil, one could only vaguely make out her tall, graceful silhouette. Beside her stood a handsome young nobleman in splendid brocade robes.

Xu Yuan looked over the travelers around them.

For some reason, the iceberg of a woman had adamantly refused to fly with him these past few days. Add to that the fact that they had no map, and the two of them had ended up wandering around the Myriad Ascents Mountain Range for almost a full month before they finally, painstakingly, made it out.

They came across an official road, followed it, and arrived at the scene before them.

There was no shortage of people on the road, but there were very few ordinary civilians. Most were merchant caravans, wandering swordsmen, or mercenaries. Many had dried bloodstains on their clothes.

Xu Yuan swept his eyes over them and lightly shook his head. Who knew how much of that blood was human, and how much belonged to monsters? It seemed that because of the rampaging demonic beasts in the Myriad Ascents Mountain Range, this area could hardly be called peaceful either.

The official roads of the Great Flame Empire were extremely prosperous. They stretched in every direction and could reach almost every town and city in the nation. In terms of width, they were not much inferior to the highways of his previous life.

The people of this world clearly understood the truth of, If you want to get rich, build roads first.

The crisscrossing official roads and the prosperity brought by canal transport had created busy trade routes, allowing all kinds of merchant gangs and trading houses to flourish.

However, the existence of the extraordinary in this world meant there was never any real soil for capitalism to take root.

No matter how prosperous a merchant gang or chamber of commerce became, in the end, it could only be a dog under the command of some extraordinary power.

Of course, perhaps one day some absurd monster of a genius would descend from the heavens and change all that. Who could say?

As they continued down the road, the refugee camps gradually appearing on both sides of the official road soon drew Xu Yuan’s attention.

This was not the first time Xu Yuan had seen camps like these.

Along the official roads, the local governments would scatter a powder known as demon repelling powder.

This powder was refined from special organs found in the corpses of high ranking demonic beasts. It gave off a dense aura that filled low ranking demonic beasts with fear, achieving the effect of driving them away.

Aside from that, the local government offices also had to regularly organize manpower to patrol the official roads within their jurisdiction, ensuring that the roads remained open.

Across the Great Flame Empire, official roads were valued far more highly than ordinary villages and towns.

And because of that, it had created an ironic reality.

When demons wreaked havoc in the countryside, it was difficult to spare manpower to control the situation. Yet the official roads remained clear and unobstructed.

For that reason, refugees whose homes had been destroyed by demonic beasts and monsters all fled to the sides of the official roads of their own accord, gathering there in droves. The simple wooden sheds they built were scattered almost everywhere along both sides of the road.

Because for these refugees, the official road was safe. It could keep them alive, at least for now.

Walking along the side path, Xu Yuan let out a soft sigh.

He could clearly see the filthy, chaotic conditions between the shacks. He could see several men with bloodstained blades escorting a shirtless man into one of the sheds. He could see a few skinny children relentlessly beating another child who was clutching his food. And he could see withered arms half-buried in the melting snow.

If he had never left the city, Xu Yuan probably would have gone his entire life without ever seeing a scene like this.

No matter how much Zhou Chen had told him before, words could never compare to seeing it with his own eyes.

The peace and prosperity within the Great Flame Empire’s cities and towns had been built atop countless bones.

The Great Flame Empire was simply too vast. So vast that even when parts of it had rotted this badly, it still remained prosperous as ever.

Half an hour later, Xu Yuan looked at the refugee camps stretching endlessly along both sides of the official road, and his brows gradually furrowed.

There were too many. It was too big.

This refugee camp was far too large. Even if it was close to a water source and naturally attracted more people, surely it should not have grown to such an extent?

It was several times larger than any refugee camp Xu Yuan had seen throughout his journey.

Many of the crude wooden sheds had clearly been built only recently. Were all these refugees here because of the demonic beast rampage in the Myriad Ascents Mountain Range? But if so many refugees gathered here, would nothing happen?

A faint sense that something was wrong began to spread through Xu Yuan’s heart, thread by thread.

“Xu Yuan.” Ran Qingmo suddenly spoke.

Xu Yuan snapped back to himself, glanced sideways at her, and replied in a low voice, “What is it?”

Beneath the veiled hat, Ran Qingmo’s gaze remained fixed on the refugees on both sides. After a moment of silence, she still shook her head. “Nothing.”

Xu Yuan looked at her, sighed softly, and said in a low voice, “The appearance of refugee camps like this is actually an inevitable result of the current situation.”

“Inevitable?” Ran Qingmo’s eyes filled with confusion.

Xu Yuan did not answer. Instead, he asked in a low voice, “Have you never seen a place like this before?”

Ran Qingmo pondered for a moment, then shook her head. “I have. Before I went out to travel, Master took me to see many things. Places like this were among them.”

Xu Yuan raised an eyebrow and asked, “What did he tell you?”

Ran Qingmo thought for a while, then said softly, “Master told me not to interfere in struggles between people. But if demonic beasts were harming the common folk, then as long as I was able, I had to help. Otherwise, there would only be more and more pitiful people like these.”

Xu Yuan fell silent for a moment, then shook his head. “That’s not what I’m asking. I mean, did he ever tell you why there are refugees in this world?”

Ran Qingmo’s eyes flickered, and she nodded.

“He did.”

“What did he say?”

“Master said that one reason is corruption among the court officials. The second is that the court only allows us sect disciples to operate within the boundaries originally assigned to us, while the court itself lacks the strength to control those areas. Even if the people are left to be harmed by demonic beasts, the court still refuses to let us go help.”

Xu Yuan was left a little speechless when he heard this.

What Ran Qingmo’s master had said was true, but it was also false. The court did not allow sects to station themselves permanently in local regions. That was different from forbidding them from going out to slay demons.

As for corrupt officials, they certainly existed, but they were not the main reason.