Miss Fairy, Please Hear Me Out

The glow of the sunset that filled the sky scattered through the thin film of ice crystals, shining in her dark pupils. It was dazzlingly beautiful.

Xu Yuan fell silent for two seconds, then continued asking softly. “Are there any other reasons?”

“Other reasons?” Ran Qingmo asked.

“Other reasons for wanting to protect your sect. Like your feelings for the sect, or for your senior and junior brothers and sisters there.”

A trace of confusion appeared in Ran Qingmo’s beautiful eyes.

“Senior and junior brothers and sisters?” After thinking back for a moment, she gently shook her head. “I’ve always stayed on Skytip Mountain. I rarely see them.”

Hearing this, Xu Yuan seemed to realize something. The look he gave her gradually turned strange. “Ran Qingmo, how exactly did you grow up?”

Her answer was very simple.

“Cultivating.”

“Besides cultivating?”

“Practicing the sword.”

“Besides practicing the sword?”

“Mhm... I used to sleep and eat too.”

“Anything else?”

“Does practicing calligraphy count?”

Xu Yuan fell silent. Well then. No wonder this iceberg of a woman turned out like this. He gave a light cough, drew in a breath, and asked again. “So you’re doing this only because you’re going to be the future sect master?”

Ran Qingmo looked puzzled. “What else would it be...?”

Xu Yuan lowered his eyes and fell silent. It was a reason so pure it contained not a single impurity. Not because of a sense of belonging. Not because of bonds with her sect. Simply because this was how she had been raised.

Ran Qingmo had been born for the Celeste Sword Sect. She looked at Xu Yuan, a certain light flickering in her eyes, and asked cautiously. “Xu Yuan, when you said you could help me... was that true?”

This time, Xu Yuan did not answer right away.

The destruction of the Celeste Sword Sect was a major event in Azure Point, but the game’s plot had long since veered off its established track. It was like a wild horse that had snapped its reins, galloping madly in a direction unknown even to Xu Yuan.

The only advantages Xu Yuan could still rely on now were probably those opportunities that had yet to appear, along with certain people’s personalities and pasts. As for saving the Sword Sect, he no longer had the same confidence he had before.

Ran Qingmo watched him lower his eyes and remain silent for a long time. The light in her beautiful eyes gradually dimmed.

“It won’t work?”

“It’s not that it won’t.”

Her beautiful eyes opened slightly wider.

Xu Yuan lifted his gaze to her and smiled. “I want to travel outside right now, and one of the reasons is to help you.”

Ran Qingmo instinctively stepped forward and grabbed the hem of his blood-red robe, the one edged with golden patterns. “Really?”

Xu Yuan glanced at the hem of his robe caught in her hand, then lifted his eyes to meet hers. His tone turned serious as he asked in return. “But do you trust me?”

Could she trust him? Right now, he was the Third Young Master of the Chancellor’s Manor, a core figure in the very force that was about to destroy the Celeste Sword Sect. If he chose to deceive her, then with a little guidance and a few carefully placed pieces of information, the Sword Sect would only fall even faster.

Ran Qingmo froze for a moment. She stared at Xu Yuan for several breaths. “But you’re Xu Yuan.”

“I’m also Xu Changtian,” Xu Yuan said.

Ran Qingmo bit lightly at the corner of her lip with her pearly teeth. She lowered her eyes and stayed silent for a long while, but the hand clutching his robe never let go. “I... I don’t have any other way.”

Hearing this, Xu Yuan gave a soft sigh. He raised his hand, brushed the loose strands of black hair at her temple behind her ear, and smiled faintly at her. “Ran Qingmo, I can try my best to get you a chance, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to get it. And even if I do, the final result will still depend on your master’s decision. Of course, his decision might not necessarily be final either.”

The name of the Chancellor’s Manor meant that all its power was concentrated in his old man’s hands alone. A sect, however, was not ruled by the sect master’s word alone.

After a thousand years of evolution, sects had long since become complicated webs of competing interests. The council of elders, the great subordinate clans, and even the rising grassroots factions, when powerful enough, could all influence a sect’s final decision.

The most Xu Yuan could do was ask that old man of his for a chance on Ran Qingmo’s behalf. Whether the matter could ultimately succeed was still unknown.

Yet after hearing his vague answer, Ran Qingmo nodded without the slightest hesitation. “Mhm. Okay!”

Xu Yuan withdrew his hand and shook his head with a soft laugh. It looked like this iceberg of a woman really had been driven into a corner. Before coming to him, she had probably already tried every method she could think of.

Since he had already made the promise, he would also need the relevant information. Xu Yuan asked, “Ran Qingmo, let me ask you something.”

“What?” Ran Qingmo’s mood had clearly improved.

Xu Yuan asked calmly, without hurry. “Since we last parted, what have you been doing?”

“I went to Azure Peak and Jadefall Valley. Mhm... I also went back to Celeste Mountain,” Ran Qingmo honestly reported her itinerary.

After thinking for a moment, Xu Yuan remembered that Azure Peak and Jadefall Valley were the locations of two major sects within the territory.

“You went there to try to persuade them?”

“Mhm. But none of them believed what I said.”

Xu Yuan was left speechless. It would be stranger if those people had believed her. During these past few days, he had learned many things through the internal records of his family. The relationship between the Chancellor’s Manor, the imperial court, and the sects was different from the information he had known in his previous life.

That Imperial Preceptor did not refuse to believe the Chancellor would destroy the Sword Sect simply because the old man and his father were friends. The reason was not that shallow. It was because something like this had happened before.

It was the matter Zhou Chen had mentioned, the whole business of establishing the Calm Sky Martial Halls. That had been a preliminary test carried out jointly by the Chancellor’s Manor and the reigning emperor. But the sects were not fools, and their reaction had been extremely fierce. When the situation was at its most tense, the capital’s grand defensive formation had been activated, and Marquis Wucheng had received orders to be ready to lead his troops back to the capital at any moment.

In the end, however, they did not fight. The Emperor had fallen ill, and the president of the Calm Sky Merchant Association had died.

After that, throughout all these years, the Chancellor’s Manor had indeed continued submitting memorials requesting that the sects be rectified. But in truth, it had all been thunder without rain. Most of those efforts started loudly and ended in a hasty whimper.

The sects would never compromise. If reform was to happen, it could only be done at swordpoint. But who would dare? Now, the power of the sects was tangled and deeply rooted. It had almost seeped into every vein of the Great Flame Empire.

At a time like this, whoever dared rashly take up arms would be defying the will of the entire world.

Under such circumstances, Ran Qingmo had gone knocking on their doors and suddenly told them that the Chancellor’s Manor was going to move against the Celeste Sword Sect, and even against all the sects under Heaven.

If Xu Yuan had been one of those sect people, he would have treated it as a joke too. He might even have thought that Ran Qingmo had come to spread alarmist rumors and drive a wedge between them. After all, the relationship between sects was hardly harmonious.

Because of that, Xu Yuan was very curious as to why Ran Qingmo believed this matter so firmly, and where her information had come from. This question had been pressing on his mind for a long time.

Thinking up to this point, Xu Yuan no longer hesitated. He asked bluntly. “Where did you hear that my Chancellor’s Manor is going to destroy the Celeste Sword Sect?”

The expression on Ran Qingmo’s face changed slightly. She fell silent for two seconds, then asked softly, testing the waters. “Can I... not say?”

“No,” Xu Yuan replied very decisively.

Ran Qingmo asked in a low voice, “Is this very important?”

Xu Yuan’s answer was vague. “It might be important. It might also not be.”

Ran Qingmo stared at Xu Yuan for several breaths. In the end, she said softly, “Fine. I’ll tell you. Mhm... it was a little girl called Tian Yan who told me.”