Chapter 140 - Talismans

After she groomed herself and returned to the camp with the basin, Xue Qilin immediately discovered that the last remaining tent belonging to Merak Temple had been taken down and turned into some disciple’s luggage.

Seeing Xue Qilin come back, Qi Qiqi clapped her hands to attract everyone’s attention and said, “Okay, everyone is here! Let’s set off.”

Thus Merak Temple’s people immediately set off. They left Mirror Moon Lake and stepped into the woods.

The path here is even more rugged than when they first entered Martial Demon Realm, and it’s quite steep.

It is an uphill path.

While complaining “what the hell is this place”, Xue Qilin frowned and thought that it would be better to fly over, and then wait for the others. However, when she thought that this is an unfamiliar vast forest, that it would be easy to lose her way if she moved recklessly by herself, she could only endure and silently follow the group.

It was about an hour later before they got out of the woods and came to an open land.

However, what replaced the dense trees blocking their sight was…

“This is really deep…”

Xue Qilin came to the edge of a gorge lying in front of the team and pocked out most of her body while standing on tiptoes. If someone pushed her from behind, she would surely fall off.

While maintaining an extremely delicate and fragile balance, the lass gazed at the abyss that looks like the entrance to hell.

The gorge is too deep to see the bottom, and it is surrounded by thick fog. Xue Qilin isn’t sure how deep it is. But it’s certainly deep enough to kill anyone that falls off. Maybe it’s a little deeper than how tall Merak Mountain is.

Xue Qilin’s ears shook a few times and captured the indistinct sound of water flowing.

“Hey, there’s a river down there…”

“A river? Really?”

Standing behind Xue Qilin and holding her collar to prevent her from falling off the cliff, Qi Qiqi asked thusly. As an Earth Realm martial practitioner, Qi Qiqi’s senses aren’t as sharp as the senses of the lass in front of her. She shouldn’t be able to hear the sound of water flowing that has almost dissipated in the air coming from the abyss of the gorge.

Xue Qilin leaned back and replied with a “yeah…”.

“Elder Sister Qi, this place is really full of water qi.”

Probably resonating with the thick water qi, the “magic lines” engraved on Shui Yun’er’s body flashed with faint water-colored light. This has a somewhat queer beauty to it.

In a places where there is water flowing, they will gradually attract a large amount of water spiritual qi. And places where there is a large amount of water spiritual qi gathered for a long time, they will give rise to water pulse.

Spiritual qi and the environment influence each other. Feng Shui [1] Theory in Eastern Methodology is based on this principle.

Xue Qilin looked across the gorge and asked while estimating the distance, “What do we do? Do we go around? But – this gorge is still quite wide, maybe 20 zhang [2]?”

“Young, Young Ancestor, it should be about 23 zhang.”

Gong Tianqing interjected weakly to correct Xue Qilin’s estimate, displaying her incredible visual gauging ability. It seems that Gong Tianqing not only has a good memory and computing ability, but she also has an excellent visual gauging ability.

Xue Qilin suddenly recalled Gong Tianqing’s performance during the practice with the Nangong siblings last night. Her movement was so accurate and precise that it looked like it has been meticulously calculated. It is even more perfect than Situ Mutou’s.

That should be a consequence of Gong Tianqing’s talents.

“Um…”

Qi Qiqi placed her hand on her mouth and pondered for a long while.

“Qilin, do you have a way to get us all over the gorge?”

She asked while looking at Xue Qilin from the side.

“Hmm? Of course it is possible. After all, I can fly.” Xue Qilin wrinkled her nose and uttered loftily, “I can take two people at a time.”

“Don’t forget that there is still a pile of luggage.”

“Ugh…” Xue Qilin’s complexion turned sluggish, “That’ll take a few more trips.”

Qi Qiqi frowned.

“It’ll take too much time.”

“But it’s better than going around, right?” Xue Qilin pointed at the gorge, “We can’t even see the end of it.”

“That’s true… Can’t you do something with magic? Can you make a bridge?”

“This…”

Xue Qilin scratched her head and said a little awkwardly, “I’m not very good at earth magic… it’s a bit difficult…”

In terms of affinity with spiritual qi, Xue Qilin can be said to be a genius to some degree.

Generally speaking, everyone’s physique has an inclination or an attribute. Take Shui Yun’er and Qi Qiqi as example. The former obviously has a water attribute physique and can only use water magic, which in turn gives her an unparalleled control over water qi. The latter has an inclination for fire magic, yet has no talent for magic. She has a hard time learning magic.

As for Xue Qilin, her physique is relatively unique. She basically has no attribute. In short, her affinity with the five elements is fairly average, with the exception of earth spiritual qi. In this way, she can easily use metal, wood, water, and fire magic.

Of course, everything tends to be balanced.

Compared to someone with a certain attribute, her power is slightly lower when casting a spell of the corresponding attribute.

Qi Qiqi looked silently at Xue Qilin with a scornful gaze, making her feel uncomfortable.

“Don’t look at me with that “you’re really useless” look!”

Ticking me off! Xue Qilin jumped up in protest.

“If you’re that impressive, then you do it!”

Perhaps feeling that she’s asking too much, Qi Qiqi sighed, a tired look on her face.

“There’s no way around it. It seems that we can only move things little by little.”

“Let me tell you this, I won’t do it now!”

“Who asked you for your opinion!”

Qi Qiqi turned her head fiercely and glared at Xue Qilin.

“If you don’t do it, you won’t have dinner!”

“Yo, that’s unreasonable…”

Despite pouting and having a look on her face that states “I’m really unhappy”, Xue Qilin broke out in a cold sweat from her forehead.

At this time, someone intervened between the two peeved people.

“Young Teacher, if you use ice, maybe you can…”

“What? Ice?”

Xue Qilin turned her head and immediately saw Shui Yun’er squinting her eyes and looking seriously at the gorge.

“Um, yeah.”

Shui Yun’er withdrew her gaze and faced Xue Qilin.

“Young Teacher, you stated before that you can use magic to freeze water into ice.”

“Yeah.”

Water will freeze at a certain temperature – this is just a purely physical phenomenon. Magic is only a means to extract heat.

“In this way, can’t we gather water qi, then control water to connect the two sides of the gorge and freeze it?”

Yeah, why didn’t I think of it? We can build an ice bridge! Startled, Xue Qilin secretly called herself slow-witted.

Seeing the dull expression on Xue Qilin’s face, Shui Yun’er asked uneasily.

“Young Teacher, will this work?”

Xue Qilin suddenly came back to her senses and said repeatedly: “It will! Of course it will! … Little Seven, what do you think of this method?”

“Well… it sounds good. But will it be firm enough?”

Hearing Qi Qiqi’s question, Xue Qilin exchanged a look with Shui Yun’er, and then replied, “If it’s thick enough, then yes.”

“Very good.” Qi Qiqi nodded in satisfaction, “Let’s do it then!”

“Oh, okay.”

“Why are you spacing out! Let’s get started!”

Qi Qiqi urged Xue Qilin, who is standing motionless.

What a bossy girl! Xue Qilin rolled her eyes, and then said, “Take a few steps back”.

Gazing at the other side of the gorge, Xue Qilin exhaled a white mist. She then took out eight black talismans filled with complicated magic array from her sleeves and unfolded them.

“Counting from one to eight…”

With a wave of her big sleeve, Xue Qilin tossed the talismans.

“Entrust everything to the image of kan [3]…”

As if illuminated by candle fire, the magic array drawn on the talismans glowed. Then the talismans flew to the middle of the gorge, formed a circle at equal intervals, and rotated rapidly in midair.

“Water of earth veins take the form of a dragon…”

Numerous light threads extended between the talismans, connected to each other, and depicted a more complex, giant magic array.

“Heed my call, Dragon of Water Pulse!”

The magic array formed by the talismans stopped rotating and erupted with dazzling light.

Then something rose from the bottom of the valley.

A slender black shadows can be seen in the gray mist. Soon, a translucent giant water dragon wrapped tightly in mist pierced out of the mist, issued a silent dragon roar, and circled at the top of the gorge.

It is a giant dragon formed from the gorge’s river water.

“It’s a dragon! It’s a dragon!” “Amazing!” “Is this a legendary spell!”

Watching the water dragon circling in the air, the people from Merak Temple couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise.

Under their watch, the water dragon turned, rushed across the gorge, and bit the top of the rock wall, and its tail slammed into the rock wall in front of Xue Qilin.

Xue Qilin’s hair fluttered and the big sleeves flapped in the gust of wind the tail raised.

The two side of the gorge located close to 80 meters apart are now connected.

Xue Qilin exhaled again. The long breath contains ice chips glittering in the early morning sun.

“Freeze!”

The lass put two fingers together and slashed down violently.

In a flash, the eight talismans spread out, traced different trajectories, and imprinted on the water dragon.

Then…

As if emitted by precious stones, silver white sheen spread slowly.

A huge ice bridge that connects the two sides of the gorge and reflects moonlight-like silver light under the sunlight suddenly entered everyone’s eyes

[1] – feng shui

[2] – zhang

[3] – kan (坎)