Let Me Explain, Fairy
Chapter 403: 二百七十六章 _2

Chapter 403: 二百七十六章 _2

Within these fields, peculiar crops were planted in an orderly fashion similar to canola fields, with fruits hanging from the branches that seemed on the cusp of ripeness.

All around was silent, save for the rustling footsteps of Xu Yuan and Li Qingyan.

After a moment,

Xu Yuan suddenly asked aloud,

"Qingyan, these crops can actually grow underground without sunlight; do you know what they are?"

Li Qingyan, while staying alert to her surroundings, replied softly,

"It’s not about the crops; it’s the soil. Beneath this abyss lies Centenary Soil."

"Centenary Soil?" Xu Yuan furrowed his brows.

"A type of soil that can cultivate precious medicinal herbs; it’s quite valuable."

As she spoke, Li Qingyan winked at Xu Yuan in a half-joking manner, "Just like you said before, Prince Consort, if we get out, we could make a fortune just from the vast expanse of Centenary Soil beneath this abyss."

Xu Yuan was momentarily speechless, then sternly questioned,

"You... you must have noticed the traces of human activity here, haven’t you?"

Li Qingyan glanced at him and nodded,

"Without human care, even Centenary Soil would be overgrown with weeds after a thousand years. Didn’t you know that, Prince Consort?"

Xu Yuan looked at the approaching city walls, stroked his chin, and said with a narrowed-eye smile,

"The intelligence isn’t comprehensive; there are some minor details—"

Before he could finish,

"Thwack!"

"Thwack!"

Two sounds of bowstrings being stretched abruptly rang out!

With the augmentation from the Black Death Armor and the Blood Essence Meteoring Art, Xu Yuan, even as merely a Grade Fifth Soul Condensation cultivator, still caught a glimpse of the incoming dark shadows.

They were giant crossbow bolts from above the city walls!

Seeing this, a thoughtful look crossed Xu Yuan’s eyes.

And in the next instant,

a fair, jade-like hand wrapped in brownish-red armor appeared before his eyes...

"Hum—"

A resonating vibration.

The gust of wind raised Xu Yuan’s long hair, with the sharp arrow tip stopping less than half a foot from his brow.

Li Qingyan had caught the half-yard-long giant crossbow bolt in her hand, its tail still vibrating intensely from the powerful inertia.

The other bolt aimed at Li Qingyan was directly shattered by her body.

These two massive bolts came from atop that ancient city.

However, without Li Qingyan’s Origin Qi to augment him, the pitch-black environment left Xu Yuan unable to see clearly what was happening above that ancient city. He asked casually,

"Is it a person?"

Holding the giant crossbow bolt, Li Qingyan looked towards the city with interest and asked in a clear voice,

"It looks like a person. Kill them?"

Xu Yuan pondered for a moment:

"Is there danger? If not, take me over to have a look first."

Li Qingyan shook her head, her phoenix eyes ablaze as she stared at the city wall:

"No, the ’people’ on the city walls have Origin Qi fluctuations of no more than Seventh Grade."

More than one...

Xu Yuan frowned,

"Take me over there to have a look."

No sooner had he spoken,

than Li Qingyan, without a word, embraced Xu Yuan around his waist and leaped forward.

A distance of several miles passed in the blink of an eye.

As the two quietly landed atop the city’s watchtower, Xu Yuan immediately heard a hushed, low chuckle from below:

"Those foreign devils are here! Go notify Lord Si Ming, tell the Blood Armor Guards to prepare for battle."

"Don’t stop, keep winding the ballistae!"

It was the Dayan dialect with a regional accent, but Xu Yuan could barely understand...

Looking down in response, he saw a group of "soldiers" on the tower below him, frantically rallying for battle.

Their attire was somewhat unusual, which was likely due to scarce resources underground, as they were mostly dressed in armor crafted from plants.

However, as soldiers, those on the ramparts of the ancient city seemed somewhat unqualified.

Having grown accustomed to the elite forces like the Northern Border Army and the Black Scale Army, Xu Yuan found their preparation for battle awkward and almost laughable.

He even saw some among them, overcome with fear, directly disobeying commands and curling up in a corner of the wall.

However, these people’s physical structures appeared to be somewhat strange.

Although he had cultivated the Blood Essence Meteoring Art at Grade Fifth of Soul Condensation, he couldn’t see clearly for miles, yet these Underground Palace dwellers with merely Seventh Grade Origin Qi fluctuations seemed able to spot him.

As Xu Yuan was pondering,

the group of "soldiers" below finally seemed to realize something was amiss, their voices trembling with fear:

"Commander... Commander? The two specters have disappeared."

"What?"

The man called Commander turned abruptly, saw the empty stone path, and realizing something, he quickly called out in a low voice, "Hold firm, don’t panic, everything will be fine once the diviner arrives!"

Following the Commander’s voice, panic spread instantly across the city wall.

Some soldiers imbued with Origin Qi, grappling with the terror of impending death, gradually lost their reason, gritted their teeth, and cursed:

"Hold firm? How can we hold firm?! That speed is clearly that of the spotted specters capable of turning us into monsters!"

"What rubbish diviner, wouldn’t it just be better to honestly offer up to those monsters, to protect commoners? Aren’t commoners meant to be sacrificed? It has been this way for generations."

"It’s all because of you bastards, the priest was here every year sacrificing just two hundred commoners to those monsters, it was that woman diviner who killed the priest!"

"Two years ago, Earth Sun City was slaughtered, and now it’s our turn, hahaha....."

"...."

"....."

Chaos spread rapidly on the city wall, and morale collapsed without even sighting the enemy.

Xu Yuan listened to the shouts below and turned his head towards his side:

"Qingyan, what do you think?"

Li Qingyan’s phoenix eyes lowered slightly as she gently shook her head:

"A rabble, not worth a blow. There seems to be not a single capable leader in this city."

Xu Yuan let out a wry smile.

If the soldiers under Li Qingyan behaved like this, they would probably have been dragged out and beheaded by now.

Shaking his head, Xu Yuan spoke softly, lifting his finger slightly and pointing at the crowd below:

"I know, I’m referring to the system of this underground city. Don’t you find it strange?"

Li Qingyan’s phoenix eyes narrowed slightly:

"Indeed strange, even their physical structures have changed. These people must have lived in this underground realm for generations since ten thousand years ago.

"But if we go by what you described, Prince Consort, with the current military preparedness of this city, they couldn’t have survived under the hands of those specters. Forget First Grade, even a common Third Grade specter could obliterate this entire city."

"Indeed."

Xu Yuan looked up towards the distant cave walls hidden in darkness and said somberly, "Indeed unlikely."

The current situation had completely exceeded the information Xu Yuan possessed.

At the very least, in the Cangyuan Chronicles’ dead Underground Palace, Xu Yuan had never encountered a single living person, nor had he even seen bones of the dead.

The only things that moved, other than specters, were specters.

However, after listening to the soldiers’ fear-induced outburst below and piecing together previous life’s informal chats with Old Man Luo, he could roughly make sense of the current situation.

Firstly, the dead Underground Palace covered an astoundingly large area, so massive that there were far more than one of these underground cities.

In other words, in Cangyuan Chronicles, the rundown city he encountered was not the one before his eyes now.

It might be the "Earth Sun City" mentioned by one of the soldiers just now, or perhaps another one.

The "humans" living in these underground cities simply could not compare with the specters in the corridors of the dead Underground Palace in terms of cultivation and military readiness.

They could only secure peace through "sacrificial" means.

But this is where the problem arose.

Though Old Man Luo had said that high-ranking specters possess intelligence, this intelligence would erode over time, eventually reducing them to mere beasts that know only killing and transformation.

Given this, why could the "humans" here continue to eke out an existence through sacrificial means?

As he considered this, Xu Yuan’s brow furrowed tighter, and he looked at Li Qingyan:

"Qingyan, I think I have an idea of what’s going on here..."

"What?" Li Qingyan pulled her eyes away from looking at the soldiers below.

Xu Yuan sighed deeply:

"This Underground Palace was constructed by humans ten thousand years ago to research the beings known as specters."

Please vote for monthly tickets...