Fulilian: The Little Master Who Doesn't Understand Love

She pursed her lips and looked at her reflection in the lake, trying to make a disgusted expression: "Hmph, it's just so-so."

But her tone was much softer than before, and even carried a hint of barely perceptible satisfaction.

“As long as it’s practical.”

Lord responded with a smile, looking at Celie's new look in the sunlight, and felt that this simple ponytail surprisingly suited her.

Maybe, next time, I can try to learn a more complicated hairstyle?

As soon as this idea came up, he temporarily rejected it.

Still, take it slow.

Chapter 206: Commission to Clean the Statue

"I am not happy."

Miss Elf said the same lines as a certain yellow-haired guy.

On a sunny day, in the city's central square, stood a statue of the renowned Saint King Norn.

In front of this statue, there are two figures busy working.

Time and wind and rain have left their marks on this statue.

Dark green moss crawled between the stones, and some tiny cracks began to spread at the base.

At this moment, Celie was hovering above the statue, with delicate blue magic threads lingering on her fingertips, peeling off the hard-to-reach moss on the stone peak without damaging the statue itself.

She moved quickly, but her face hidden under the hood was filled with obvious impatience.

Below her, Lord was responsible for cleaning stains and repairing minor cracks on the statue's base.

The method he used was very simple.

A bucket, a few rags, and some mud to fill the cracks, looking like an ordinary worker.

"Lord." Celia's voice came from beside him.

It turned out that the other person had cleaned the moss and stains on the top of the statue, and landed lightly on the ground, coming to Lord who was bending over to scrape the stains off the base.

"Hmm?" Lord didn't even raise his head, completely unaware of the elf lady's unfriendly expression.

"I need an explanation." Celie's voice rose a little. "Why should I use my precious magic to clean the stains and moss off a statue's head!?"

This was simply the most boring thing she had ever done in her long life, even more difficult to accept than when Lord forced her to wash her hair.

Lord stopped what he was doing, stood up slowly, and looked at the elf lady beside him who was emitting a low pressure.

He didn't answer immediately, but slowly took out a deflated wallet from his pocket.

Under Celie's puzzled gaze, he poured the contents into his palm and showed it to her.

There were a few soft ding-dong sounds.

Celie looked down and saw several small dark metal discs lying in Lord's palm.

They are black, dull and look very inconspicuous.

"?"

Celie was completely puzzled. She looked up at Lord in confusion, "What are these black things? Where did you dig them from?"

"This is not something I dug out from anywhere, but it's for our upcoming travel expenses." Lord answered seriously.

"Travel expenses?" Celie's brows furrowed even deeper. "Is this money? Human tastes are becoming increasingly strange."

She simply couldn't understand the logic behind humans using such a magic-less, even dirty-looking piece of metal as a medium of exchange.

"Yes, it's money." Lord explained patiently, "In human cities, you need this to eat and buy things."

"Money? Don't you have any with you? I remember that over the past thousand years, you have occasionally collected some shiny treasures and high-quality magical gems."

She remembered that Lord had placed a large pile of gold coins and gems in a corner of the room. Last time, she almost threw them away because they took up space, but was stopped by this man.

When the other party asked me to take the risk, I thought he didn't even bring any money with him, right?

"I did bring some." Lord sighed, his tone full of helplessness, "I did bring some gold coins out. But..."

He paused, his expression indescribable.

“The currency is not universal.”

"Although gold is a hard currency, most of what I brought out was forged by dwarves."

"What's wrong with the dwarf's casting?" Celie was puzzled.

"The gold coins minted by the dwarves," Lord picked up a dark copper coin for comparison, "are often mixed with some metal ores to increase their hardness, resulting in a purity... well, not as high as the gold coins currently in circulation among humans."

"Moreover, times have changed. Human kingdoms now recognize their officially minted gold and silver coins more."

"My dwarven gold coins either need to be sold at a specialized exchanger for a steep discount, or they can only be sold as low-purity gold raw materials, greatly reducing their value."

He weighed the few pitiful copper coins in his hand. "As for gems, I only brought a few. I can't just take one out every time I buy something, right? It would be too conspicuous, and I can't find any place to sell them."

Celia: “…”

She looked at the few shabby coins in Lord's palm, and imagined the scene of Lord taking a gem to exchange with a roadside vendor, and the corners of her mouth twitched involuntarily.

This is indeed unrealistic.

"So," Lord spread his hands and pointed at the tall Norn statue in front of him, "When I entered the city yesterday, I happened to see a commission looking for a magician to repair and clean this statue. Not mentioning the reward, I thought it was quite interesting, so I accepted it."

"Interesting?" Celie's voice rose again. "I don't think it's interesting! Don't you have any commissions like clearing monsters?"

Rather than cleaning the statues here, Miss Elf would rather clean up the monsters, which would be more interesting.

Lord smiled and looked at the statue in front of him.

"Don't you think it's nice to do simple things like this every now and then? And..." His tone was tinged with nostalgia, "Looking at this guy's face, don't you feel anything?"

Celie followed his gaze and looked at the familiar face on the statue.

Norn.

The guy who used to be silent by the campfire but had been silently preparing everything for everyone, seemed a little at a loss when faced with Lord's sudden request to establish a country.

His ideals, his persistence, his final farewell...

An indescribable complex emotion quietly replaced the disgust in Celie's eyes.

She was silent for a moment, then whispered, "It's a little too old."

The Norn in the statue is a middle-aged man with a dignified and steady image, which is far from the high-spirited young man in our memory.

"Yeah, being a king is tiring." Lord shrugged, with a hint of sarcasm in his tone, "But this guy only built such a big statue for himself, it's really too much. What about us? There's not even a shadow." He deliberately said in a complaining tone.

To Lord's surprise, Celia spoke up to defend Norn: "These statues were erected long after his death by his descendants to commemorate him."

She paused, as if trying to recall a detail, “I heard about it later.

When Norn was in power, he seemed to want to erect a statue somewhere for all his companions who had adventured with him.

He made sketches and hired craftsmen, but…"

Celia's gaze fell on an inconspicuous spot on the base of the statue, where some inscriptions about the achievements of the Norn were engraved, but they were now blurred.

"But, regarding your statue," she looked at Lord, her previous impatience replaced by memories, "he was never satisfied with the finished image. He revised the design draft again and again, but he was still not satisfied. In the end, it was put aside."

"It fits his serious but somewhat hesitant personality quite well."

There were only two things in Norn's life that he had never hesitated about.

One was the decision to go on an adventure with Lord Celie.

The other was to agree to Lord's request to allow him to establish a country.

Lord shook his head with a smile and picked up the rag on the ground: "This guy has very high requirements. Forget it, since he has such good taste, I will clean it up for him today."

Celie watched Lord return to work, then looked at the statue in front of her.

The slight unhappiness in her heart seemed to dissipate quietly in her memories of the past.

Chapter 207: Volame's Letter

To the respected teachers Lord and Celia:

I hope that when this letter reaches you, the forest will remain peaceful and your magical research will go smoothly.

Everything is going well with my adventure with Sister Ella, so please don't worry.

I am writing this letter because there is something I need to report to you, Mr. Lord.

Do you still remember that when we parted, you specifically told me to visit the elves’ village more often?

I have always kept it in mind and have been trying hard to find it.

However, they did not encounter any elf villages along the way.

At first, I thought it was just that the route I chose was remote and there were no elf villages.

So I started asking the caravans and fellow travelers I met along the way.

Some of them have passed through the elves' village and will give us guidance.

But when we followed the instructions, and after a long journey, we finally arrived at the place described by those people, what was waiting for us was only emptiness.

Deep in the forest, there are only towering trees, and no traces of village buildings can be found on the ground.

The strangest time was when we even met a young elf adventurer in a small town.

He talked to us enthusiastically about his hometown village, and we asked for the route in detail, and he pointed it out clearly.

We followed the route he told us to take and found the exact place he described.

However, there was nothing there!

There were no villages, no elves, not even any signs of life.

Sister Ella also felt very strange.

As an elf, she has a strong magical perception. She can vaguely feel the magical marks left by the elves' activities here, but we can't find any clues.

Teacher, this is so weird.