The Little Peacock Raises a Snake (GL) Chapter 24

Every living being in every realm had its own unique spiritual aura. It was born with them and could not be changed.
No matter how skilled someone was at hiding their own spiritual aura, they could not completely hide that special nature. At most, they used some method to interfere with the hunter’s search.
The world was vast. Finding someone who was good at hiding their aura and meant to hide was very difficult. But if that person had to go to a certain place, one could simply choose a necessary path and wait there.
The killing array beneath their feet could never have been formed in one day. It must have been set up ahead of time and waited here for a long while.
Qu Linyan had long expected this, so she was not very surprised.
But not being surprised was one thing. Whether her heart was calm was another.
Just like now. Her mouth had said she would kill everyone who set the array, but she clearly felt the spiritual power inside her body being suppressed by an invisible force.
“This array is extremely powerful. It needs eighty-one people standing at eighty-one array points. Netherworld power draws out every thread of life soul above those points, finally gathering them into one baleful force.” Miss Shen reminded her, “Those who enter the array will not only have their spiritual power heavily limited, but their senses will also become much slower. Withered Lamp blood slaves do not show mercy when they strike. You must not underestimate them.”
This array was a rare devil clan array. The devil clan could not freely enter and leave the human world. The only ones who could set up this array in the human world were Withered Lamp blood slaves.
Many people in the devil realm kept blood slaves, but only the blood slaves of the Withered Lamp clan were not devils. They were humans.
Legend said the Withered Lamp clan used underworld merchants to spend heavy money buying human children with decent talent. They locked those children in underground stone prisons and raised them as weapons. These human children learned devil clan arts from childhood. They fought and killed each other for limited food, changed their bodies through cruel training, and lost the emotions that belonged to humans.
They were slaves raised by the Withered Lamp clan, the one chosen from a hundred.
From the moment they left the dungeon and saw daylight again, they became forged weapons for others to choose. All they had to do was wait to be chosen, sign a blood contract, and then offer a short life of loyalty with no freedom.
After all, once a blood contract was signed, their lives were tied forever to one thought of their master. If they betrayed even a little, their heart veins would shatter, their souls would scatter, and they would never enter reincarnation again.
A Withered Lamp blood slave was only a dog in their master’s eyes, a sharp blade with no feelings, ordered to strike wherever pointed.
Their mission was their life. Their ruthlessness even far surpassed ordinary devils.
Qu Linyan had long heard that the Withered Lamp clan raised human blood slaves, but she had never imagined that one day she would see the legendary one-in-a-hundred Withered Lamp blood slaves with her own eyes. Not only did she see them, she had also entered their killing array.
“Miss Shen, the Withered Lamp clan truly spent a great price on you, sending eighty-one blood slaves.” As Qu Linyan spoke, she pretended to be fearless and mocked herself. “Thanks to Miss Shen, after experiencing heavenly lightning punishment, I have now met a devil clan killing array too. My life can count as well traveled.”
“Great Clan Leader Qu, do not mock me. After today, can we count as friends who survived life and death together?” Miss Shen smiled bitterly. “I did not think that old fellow could go this far. If I can return alive, then the flood dragon clan’s matters will be my matters from now on.”
“I believe it.” Qu Linyan could not help smiling bitterly.
If she had still half believed and half doubted before, then now that she saw Miss Shen could draw out this kind of thing, she no longer doubted her identity.
The Withered Lamp clan was a great clan in the devil realm. Withered Lamp blood slaves were extremely hard to raise, and their numbers were relatively few. In the entire devil realm, there were probably fewer than ten people worth having the Withered Lamp clan send eighty-one blood slaves to the human world to set up a killing array.
“Miss Shen, help me protect Xiaoba.” As Qu Linyan spoke, she tightened her grip on the long maces and raised her eyes to the blood moon. Step by step, she walked forward. “I will be back soon.”
The spiritual power around them began to move strangely. Fu Xiaoba instinctively wanted to follow Qu Linyan, but Miss Shen pulled her back. “If you follow, you will only distract her.”
Fu Xiaoba felt wronged. “I…”
Miss Shen formed a seal with both hands. Blue-green light rose between her ten fingers. The next second, one hand formed a barrier and protected Fu Xiaoba by her side, while the other pushed toward Qu Linyan and wrapped heavily around her.
When the blue-green light brushed over her, the feeling that had pressed her so hard she could hardly breathe scattered by more than half at once.
Qu Linyan instinctively looked back. Miss Shen rarely used this kind of spiritual power in daily life. Every time Qu Linyan saw it, it vanished in a blink. Because of that, she only knew this spiritual power was very rare, but she had never been able to tell what kind of spiritual power it was.
Now, the once-mysterious devil girl finally stopped hiding. She let the rising blue-green light bloom through this strange world, fully blocking the abnormal spiritual flow outside the barrier she held up with spiritual power. The blue-green light around her carried an unusually strong pressure.
In that instant, Qu Linyan realized what that unfamiliar spiritual power was.
There were many kinds of spiritual energy in the three realms. They created and controlled one another, changing endlessly. The place where a cultivator stood could also affect their strength.
Fire grew stronger when it met wood and weaker when it met water. It was like sunlight and netherworld power, which answered to day and night. The reason most devils cultivated netherworld power was that the devil realm had no daytime, so netherworld power never weakened there.
Most spiritual powers ordinary people could cultivate had certain weaknesses. In some places, they were especially thin and could not gather.
But in heaven and earth, there happened to be two kinds of spiritual energy that were everywhere and had no weakness. One was Blue-Green Light, and the other was Cangling.
But though these two kinds of spiritual energy were powerful, ordinary cultivators could not use them for cultivation at all.
Legend said that in the three realms, the only beings able to cultivate these two kinds of spiritual energy were two great devil-realm races that had vanished in the ancient era: the Green Lizard and the Cangling.
Several thousand years ago, there had been a devil disaster that shocked the three realms. Although all the truth had been deliberately hidden afterward, one saying had spread: during that devil disaster, traces of the long-extinct Green Lizard devils appeared.
Though time had passed and no one cared anymore about the truth of that devil disaster, as an outsider unrelated to the devil clan, Qu Linyan still felt shocked to personally see the legendary power of Blue-Green Light now.
But she had no time to think. Borrowing the aid of that powerful spiritual power, she closed her eyes and sensed a place where the spiritual flow was abnormal. She flew forward. Her long mace hacked down from above with force, instantly stirring up a huge spiritual power wave, as if it wanted to split this piece of heaven and earth.
A shadow swept past her side. She spun and slashed sideways, but the mace seemed to sink into a soft piece of empty space. It could neither go in nor come out, with nowhere to use force.
“Watch behind you!”
Hearing this, Qu Linyan released the mace from her hand, gathered spiritual power in her palm, turned, and scattered a shadow.
When the shadow faded, it left blood mist filling the air. Before she could react, that blood mist suddenly ignited into ghost flames and surrounded her layer after layer.
Qu Linyan frowned slightly. Her palm closed, and the released mace flew back into her hand. Her two maces split open the ghost flames around her and stabbed straight toward the next abnormal place in the spiritual flow.
“Qu Linyan! Close your eyes and search for the array heart!”
Hearing this, Qu Linyan closed her eyes and suddenly felt the guidance of the blue-green light. When she opened them again, she saw the river not far away.
The blood moon’s reflection in the river was where the array heart lay.
Break the array heart, and the array would be broken.
She tightened her grip on the pair of maces and walked forward step by step. If gods blocked her, she killed gods. If buddhas blocked her, she killed buddhas. Every obstacle was cut in two at the waist.
She would carve a bloody path.
But one person’s strength had limits. As her spiritual power was consumed in great amounts, everything around her gradually began to change uncertainly.
The whole world was lit by blue flames, which crackled and burned everything she could see.
Choking smoke blurred her vision, and the sound of fire disturbed her hearing.
So noisy. So annoying.
She was clearly getting closer and closer to the array heart, yet thorns seemed to grow beneath her feet. Every step was so heavy it felt like she was walking on her own flesh and blood.
It hurt so much…
“Qu Linyan, guard your heart!”
Miss Shen wanted to step forward and help, but she discovered that the full power of the killing array had just begun to show itself bit by bit.
At this moment, even protecting herself and the little peacock demon beside her had become very difficult. How could she help someone who was already stronger than her?
After losing the protection of the Blue-Green Light, that breathless pressure swept over Qu Linyan’s whole body again. The deadly attacks hidden inside the array also gradually left her covered in wounds and struggling to hold on.
Qu Linyan gritted her teeth. When she opened her eyes, they were full of blood-red shadows. Her awareness began to blur, and she could no longer tell truth from falsehood.
So tired. Even with all her strength, she could not carve a bloody path.
Just like even with all her strength, she could not save the person who had left.
She seemed to have always been this useless. She could not shoulder heavy responsibilities, nor could she live up to anyone’s expectations.
She had clearly already worked so hard. She had clearly already risked her life. Yet she still could not do anything well.
She thought this was not the first time she had been so close to death.
Five hundred years ago, that blue-robed woman’s sword had almost taken her life. The five bolts of lightning punishment she endured while badly injured had nearly scattered her soul.
Later, when she charged alone into Qixia Mountain, she had also been only one step from death. She had survived from a hopeless place, as if fate had not yet ended her.
But sometimes, she also thought: Stop struggling. When you are exhausted, just close your eyes. As long as you do not wake again, everything will have nothing to do with you.
From the day Qu Muqing left, Qu Linyan’s life had stepped onto a road of no return that would only end in death. She was not afraid, and she no longer had the right to fear anything.
To live meant nothing more than using all her strength to seek one thin hope. To die meant nothing more than the final resting place of a defeated person whose strength was gone.
It did not matter. She truly did not care.
After all, the person everyone wanted was Qu Muqing. No one would be sad for her…
“Little Black!”
Fu Xiaoba’s voice faintly came from behind her, blurred by the messy sounds beside her ears…
“Let go of me!”
But that was clearly crying.
Why was that silly girl crying…
Her muddy awareness was suddenly called awake.
Qu Linyan planted a long mace on the ground and forced herself to stand. Holding back pain, she turned back and looked toward the direction the voice had come from.
Far away, amid firelight that swept heaven and earth, weak blue-green light protected the girl whose face was full of tears. Yet Fu Xiaoba broke free of the person protecting her like she had gone mad. Under the block of powerful spiritual flow, she took the heaviest steps, stumbling all the way toward Qu Linyan.
She was clearly only a weak little demon, yet she was so reckless.
Her weak protective spiritual power was burned away by the blue flames in the array in an instant. In only a few steps, countless tiny wounds had split open on her body.
Blood dripped onto the scorched earth beneath her feet, and dead ground returned to spring. With every step, a patch of ghost flame went out.
But she was so weak. No matter how recklessly she pushed forward, she could not reach the other side beyond the layers of ghost flames.
Miss Shen chased forward despite her injuries and, according to that promise, pulled Fu Xiaoba into her arms and protected her. The already weak blue-green light flickered in the heavy ghost flames like a candle about to go out.
“If you fall, they will both die…” Qu Linyan said to herself in a hoarse voice.
She was the one who had brought Fu Xiaoba away from that worry-free place. She could not leave her in this killing array.
The next second, dark clouds filled the sky, covering that dark red blood moon.
A huge mass of black mist suddenly spun between heaven and earth, drawing in lightning and thunder as strange signs appeared everywhere.
Sudden rain poured down. When the black mist scattered, what soared through the air was a giant black flood dragon. It broke through every spiritual restraint around it and charged toward the moon’s reflection in the river.