Lin Muyao confidently swept her sleeve and raised her chin. "What's so hard about that?"
"I'll help them channel the water down, then go find Brother Ye."
And so, under Yun Ruyi's affectionate gaze, Lin Muyao charged into action, brimming with enthusiasm.
Half an hour later.
With one foot planted in the mud and her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, she sent streak after streak of azure light into the parched, cracked earth.
An hour later.
She directed several villagers to move stones and lay out irrigation ditches, her voice crisp and imperious:
"Over there! Yes, right there! Oh, don't pile them crooked!"
Two hours later.
She crouched before a thatched cottage with half its roof collapsed, winding vines around wooden beams and forcibly piecing together a shelter from the rain.
"Little Qing, blow over there too!"
"Awoo, awoo!" Yun Ruyi's Little Wolf Cub scurried back and forth beside her.
The villagers gathered around Lin Muyao, so grateful they hardly knew what to do.
"Fairy, you're truly a living bodhisattva."
"Such a kindhearted fairy! And so beautiful, too!"
Lin Muyao could not suppress the upward curl of her lips.
"All right, all right, stop praising me. This is barely the beginning. I haven't finished channeling the water veins yet!"
As she spoke, she turned to look at Yun Ruyi.
Yun Ruyi stood in the wind, watching her with smiling eyes.
Lin Muyao lightly pressed her lips together and proudly lifted her chin.
"What are you looking at? I told you I could solve it with a wave of my hand."
Yun Ruyi smiled and nodded.
"Mm, you're truly impressive, young lady."
Suddenly, Lin Muyao felt she could do anything again. She turned and went back to constructing wooden beams, huffing with effort.
The south wind swept across the red