If an ordinary person shouted a thing like that, it would of course do nothing.

Having your water meter checked is a frightening business.

But not just anyone can check it. It has to be the relevant department doing the checking before the words carry any weight.

Yue Yang, for his part, was shouting without the weight of any relevant department behind him. It could at least frighten one little piglet of a shut-in girl who slept the entire day away, though. The reason? He was the landlord. Checking the water meter was standard procedure.

“You are so annoying. It’s always when a person’s in the bath or about to go to sleep that you start yelling.” A sweet, sulky girl’s voice came up, thoroughly displeased, sounding as though it were being snorted out through a small nose — and then a big loli appeared behind Yue Yang with a towel wrapped around her head and a bath towel around her body. Both arms were bare, white as lotus root and still wet, with beads of water on them like morning dew, warm little points of it. Below, two bare feet stepped along as though on moonlit lotuses, so delicately made that a spring of sweet water might well up out of this barren ground wherever they came down.

“Help. I’m so frightened.” Yue Yang, for his part, prepared to bury his face in the place where the bath towel rose slightly over a pair of fragrant snowy doves, and be an ostrich, and die happy.

“Ah — you pervert!” Before the transmigrator could get what he wanted, the big loli in the bath towel had already put a foot into him and kicked him off past the ninth heaven.

Nobody understood why.

From the moment she appeared, Weiguang’s pressure and the black shadow’s green lights both stopped working.

The pressure that had been suffocating Yue Yang now dispersed into nothing, the way a spring wind turns into rain, and in the end it thinned out so far that even Weiguang found it inexplicable. How could this be? This little girl who had just run up in a bath towel was plainly not divine-tier. How could she possibly cancel out divine-tier pressure? And that plague sorcery was something even Weiguang did not provoke lightly.

How had it lost every bit of its effect?

From the moment this strange little girl ran out, not only could those green lights not advance an inch, but even the ones that hit Yue Yang did nothing at all, and none of the plague sorcery from a moment ago came out of them.

The black shadow was stunned.

Only she.

Only she knew why.

Because the Qilin is the auspicious, gentle sacred beast of the East, and is born with the properties of driving off evil, breaking barriers, killing curses, and cleansing filth.

The plague-shifting art works on any martial artist and any defense; even a divine artifact or a divine beast has trouble clearing that kind of negative effect completely. Against this Qilin girl, though, it did nothing, because she was by her own nature the thing it could not touch. And most importantly, the plague-shifting art actually came out of the Eastern world in the first place — an Eastern sorcery, improved somewhat, then combined with a war beast and a talent, and so evolved into the plague-shifting art of today. Using an art like that against a Qilin sacred beast, which is its natural counter, was never going to work.

Fortunately this was still a juvenile Qilin sacred beast. If it had been an adult, one wave of her hand and the black shadow would very likely have taken the backlash herself.

Yue Yang, for his part, came down out of the sky.

And he hit the ground with a slap.

He had meant to sneak a look at the splendid scenery under the Qilin girl’s bath towel, but with this many eyes on him it was a little embarrassing, so he could only cough and put on the manner of an upright gentleman — cursing his own thin skin while he did it — and point at the black shadow and complain. “What is going on here? Look at that. That old witch is one of yours, isn’t she? Now she’s come to my door to push me around, and you’re not going to do anything about it?”

The Qilin girl was still angry with him. She turned her powdered face aside and snorted through her small nose. “She is certainly not one of ours. At the very most she’s some demon race’s descendant living in the Heavenly Realm. What has that got to do with us? Her realm isn’t high and she’s full of evil energy. Don’t drag her in with us. They’re two completely different things. Don’t talk nonsense about what you don’t understand.”

Yue Yang heard that and cheered up. “So what you’re saying is, killing her wouldn’t matter?”

Bingyin, the Qilin girl, gave him a look that said are you an idiot. “Our whole race loves peace deeply. How could we possibly attack you?”

“That’s laziness. You can’t be bothered to lift a hand. It isn’t loving peace.” Yue Yang thought that was very likely the case.

“What?” A certain Qilin girl was about to lose her temper.

“If it isn’t, prove it. Just knock that big fellow down.” Yue Yang did not think he was setting her a task of any great difficulty. All she had to do was finish off Weiguang, and he would just about believe that the Eastern clan loved peace instead of being too lazy to lift a hand.

“No.” The extremely clever Qilin girl turned it down flat. Being used as somebody’s gun? He could dream.

“If you don’t want me spanking your little backside, help out right now.” Yue Yang, for his part, was angry. Pandora coming out to cause trouble was one thing, but was this girl planning to stand by with her hands behind her back too?

“All right.” Under Yue Yang’s murderous stare, the Qilin girl nodded with her eyes brimming, and the pitiful little look of her nearly softened the transmigrator’s heart. Fortunately Yue Yu and the others were not present, or Yue Yang, for his part, would certainly have been told off and forbidden to bully small children. Xiao Nu at his side, being the master’s devoted fan and loyal handmaid, also comforted the Qilin girl on the master’s behalf, explaining that the master was very angry and the consequences would be severe, and that a good friend really ought to do as she was told, and that a spanking was a household discipline that made a person extremely unhappy, and that the master used this one on everybody all the time, and everybody was very frightened of it. Which left the poor Qilin girl no choice but to agree through her tears, looking more pitiable than ever — exactly like a small handmaid being persecuted by a cruel head of household.

“What I actually…” What Yue Yang, for his part, had in mind was touching. Hitting was out of the question, obviously. But there was no way on earth to say so out loud.

The Qilin girl’s rose-pink finger pointed at the distant black shadow.

A spirit light shot out of that finger.

Wherever the spirit light passed, those sickening green lights dissolved into the air on the spot.

Through a sky-covering encirclement of green light, the spirit light opened a clean, transparent corridor, aimed straight at the black shadow who had been so insufferably arrogant a moment ago.

The black shadow could not dodge a spirit light that was her natural counter. As though a hand had closed around her throat, she struggled in pain for a moment, and then began to rasp and howl. “You have destroyed my plague-shifting art. Damn you — do you know what it cost me to cultivate it? Do you know how many years I labored at it? And you have destroyed it.”

Bingyin, the Qilin girl, snorted contemptuously at the accusation. “You are not of our race. You are forbidden to use our race’s arts and ruin our race’s name.”

In the sky.

Weiguang’s planet avatar had come down far enough to blot out the sun.

If the pressure had not been gone, this move — the avatar coming down on top of him — would have been one Yue Yang had real trouble answering. There was no escaping it, and the Leo meteor shower was behind him besides. Even if it did not kill him, Weiguang would have buried and sealed him in this place.

Now, with Bingyin the Qilin girl on the field and the pressure gone, the situation was very much improved.

Even if he could not win it, getting away would certainly be no problem.

For the first time, the small face of Bingyin the Qilin girl went genuinely serious.

She had not been this serious even for the mysterious man. She had lowered her head that day and rammed him and hurt him — and now she was not using that never-fail move at all, only watching the sky for a long time, watching Weiguang’s planet avatar come closer and closer, until it had become a terrible burning planet filling the whole sky and coming down on top of them. Something twisted in Yue Yang. A man’s fight — how could he let a small girl carry it?

This was his responsibility. This was his fight.

Yue Yang drew a deep breath.

He was about to send Pandora and Bingyin the Qilin girl back, and put everything he had into it, and gamble his life against this Weiguang character.

But Bingyin the Qilin girl put out a small hand, unusually serious, and stopped him. “Let me fight this one first. The next one will be yours.”

Seven-colored light came off her like a rainbow, like silk, and the whole field filled with fragrance. The towel on her head and the bath towel around her came away by themselves, and treasure-armor covered her slender body of its own accord. Under Bingyin’s will, an aura of peace past describing spread out of her — not sweeping across the land the way an ordinary shockwave does, but like a light wind and a fine rain moistening things without a sound, until, before anyone noticed, the whole of heaven and earth was full of her matchless holy aura.

“I have no wish to fight the Eastern clan. But you have forced your way into this, which breaks the law of peace your own people laid down, so I will absolutely not hold back.” It was the first time Weiguang had spoken. His voice was like thunder magnified a millionfold, cracking out between heaven and earth, and it shook the mountains and rivers as it went.

“Shrink!” Bingyin the Qilin girl’s answer was a sharp cry, and she raised both hands, flashing with seven-colored light, to the sky.

“Anyone who blocks me dies.” Weiguang was angry too, and he came down at the earth faster.

Seven-colored light without end.

It was born out of Bingyin’s two hands, and it formed, as though it were alive, a seven-colored river of light — or a curtain of seven-colored light more splendid than anything — and it cast itself upward into that burning sky.

Seven-Colored Treasure Light. Whatever it fell on changed.

Meteors, streaming fire, and Weiguang’s planet avatar too, all of it shrank at a speed the eye could follow.

Weiguang burst out wildly with divine power and divine intent to stop it — and he could slow it somewhat, but he could not stop the effect the Seven-Colored Treasure Light was having on the planet avatar.

Under Yue Yang’s eyes, a planet avatar whose hand he had not been able to take in whole was now more than half visible, body and all. Weiguang’s planet avatar had shrunk at least a hundredfold. Yue Yang could not imagine what kind of power this was. With Weiguang obstructing it, the Seven-Colored Treasure Light could still shrink a planet avatar a hundred times over. Given a different target — anyone less formidable than Weiguang — wouldn’t Bingyin’s Seven-Colored Treasure Light shrink him down to an ant?

It seemed she did not think that was enough. Bingyin took a small jade gourd out of her robe.

She turned it toward the planet avatar still blotting out the sky above.

She shone it.

A spirit light flashed out of the little mouth of the jade gourd.

Weiguang’s planet avatar shrank again, and this time ten times faster than before, which left Yue Yang and Pandora, the former Goddess of Misfortune, standing there with their mouths open. In under a hundred seconds the headless planet avatar had shrunk to an enormous puppet of about ten thousand meters. It could not be called a planet avatar any more. At most it was a giant avatar.

Yue Yang noticed that the serious set of Bingyin’s small face had not eased at all, and that she even let out a breath in secret, as though producing this change had taken everything she had and was nothing like as easy as it looked.

“It only holds for the burning of one stick of incense. Hit him, quickly.” Even as Bingyin ordered Yue Yang up to do the work, she let out the giant big loli, Xiao Xiao’en.

The giant big loli was rarely on the field in a fight, because in a great many fights there is no room for a body like hers to do anything.

But now.

Now was exactly the moment when the enormous advantage of that body counted for most.

Bingyin the Qilin girl took a ball of seven-colored immortal power in each hand and pressed them into the giant big loli — Vajra on the left, Colossus on the right.

With those two seven-colored immortal powers laid on her, the giant big loli Xiao Xiao’en threw back her head and shouted, and her body grew tenfold in an instant, up to a thousand meters — and on top of her own Titan Battle Armor she now had a golden shell of Vajra energy as well, which raised her fighting power enormously. When Yue Yang layered a Giant’s Shadow on top of that, the giant big loli Xiao Xiao’en’s strength erupted to its absolute limit, the way a volcano goes off and cannot be talked out of it.

She shouted like thunder and charged the falling planet avatar of Weiguang, shrunk now by who knew how many times.

Yue Yang meant to charge in too.

He looked back once more, and found Bingyin, who had spent nearly all her immortal power, slumped weakly on the ground.

Apart from the day she first broke out of her seal, Yue Yang had never once seen this girl look so frail, and his heart went like a needle going in. It hurt him past bearing, and he got her up into his arms in a hurry.

“Idiot. Get up there and finish the enemy. Shrink only holds for the burning of one stick of incense…” Bingyin the Qilin girl was angry enough to want to hit him, but the strength had gone out of her and she could not lift her arm at all, and even her voice, normally full of breath, was so weak it was like an ant’s. Yue Yang planted a loud kiss on her small face and gave her a promise. “Never mind one stick of incense — give me ten seconds and I’ll wipe him out. Rest easy and wait for me to come back.”

The shameless transmigrator, in the act of sending Bingyin the Qilin girl back to the Grimoire World, took advantage of her again, bent his head, and stole a kiss on her jade lips.

Which struck the Qilin girl — pure as a small white flower — like a thunderbolt.

She was completely dumbstruck.

(End of Chapter 1229)