Even through a thin layer of beaded headdress, the beautiful and lovely smile of the girl in the mirror seemed to brighten the gloomy room a bit.
The pretty girl was about fifteen, at the age when hairpins are first worn, with a phoenix gold hairpin, ready to take flight, nestled in her shiny, ebony hair.
On her white jade-like forehead, a pair of fiery red phoenix wings spread out, outlined with noble gold thread embroidery.
It was like a mysterious rune, and also like the popular forehead decorations of the time.
Eyebrows like distant hills, eyes as clear as autumn waters, skin as ice and bone as jade, her wrists like frost.
Her figure was like that of an unsurpassed beauty carved from fine jade, flawless, so perfect it hardly seemed real.
Dressed in a brilliant vermillion luan robe, the formerly splendidly-dressed maids paled in comparison, like sparrows puffing up their feathers before a phoenix.
Upon seeing the visitor, Wang Yuan immediately ignored her exceptional beauty, quickly covered his critical parts with the clothes in hand, and cursed under his breath:
"Little Huang Wu, you dare to peep at a man bathing..."
Unexpectedly, the girl in the mirror beat him to the punch, giving a retort. She pursed her delicate, moist, rosy lips disdainfully and said:
"What are you blocking for?
Wang Xiaoyuan, take a good look at yourself in the mirror, what else do you have besides being handsome?
Aside from your cousin me, who else would covet a glance at you?
Moreover, have I not seen everything when you were running around in split pants as a child?"
Wang Yuan was momentarily stunned, struggling to discern whether she was complimenting or belittling him.
But knowing the girl's nature all too well, Wang Yuan understood he must not show weakness before her, or she would only become more presumptuous.
So, he raised an eyebrow:
"You're drooling."
"Eh?"
The bride in the mirror subconsciously wiped the corner of her mouth, and to her surprise, found a trace of glistening, quickly wiping it off in a fluster.
Seizing the moment, Wang Yuan swiftly donned his garments.
Clothes make the man, and although Wang Yuan already had a good foundation, this moon-white undershirt teamed with a blue long gown still added a scholarly elegance to him.
Even the Wang Family members from Daling Village might find it difficult to associate this refined young man with the fool from the village.
Huang Wu, having hastily made herself presentable, saw Wang Yuan's current appearance and her cheeks reddened slightly, but she quickly snapped fiercely:
"Do I look like someone who cares about appearance? What I want is your Yang Energy, yes, your Yang Energy.
Come on, hand over your Yang Energy to sister obediently!"
Far from the relatives of Daling Village, in front of this girl in the mirror from "Wangren Town," Wang Yuan finally seemed to shed the hefty shackles, letting his nature free, showing a bit of the vigor that a young man should have.
The same goes for a transmigrant; a brand-new body and life naturally bring different changes in mindset.
Of course, this might also be a compensatory reaction after a long period lacking a sense of security.
He flicked the hem of his garment, and a surge of Qi-Blood, fully developed in his "Bone and Flesh Outer Appearance," arose, and a wave of heat swelled up in the room.
With a smug smile, he stood his ground and said:
"Times have changed."
The so-called "abide by the precepts and be unharmed" was utterly useless against this girl.
If not for the urgent life-or-death matter at hand, cousin Huang Wu would be the first 'Great Demon King' Wang Yuan would need to defeat.
Whoosh—!
A gust of cold wind suddenly rose in the room, mixed with a piercing chill like proud snow and cold plums.
"Rebel, you've really gone too far!"
The enraged bride was already shouting loudly, disappearing from the glazed mirror.
However.
The petite, fiery red figure failed to appear in the room. Instead, she flickered in the reflection on the surface of the bathwater and directly fell into Wang Yuan's pupils through the reflected light.
The surging heat wave dissipated instantly, and his body stiffened, having been successfully invaded by the ghost.
"Uh..."
Wang Yuan sadly realized that even with his "Bone and Flesh Outer Appearance" fully developed, reaching the limits of a normal human, he still had no power to fight back against Huang Wu. The road of resistance was long and arduous.
Without a word, the little ghost opened her small mouth and took a deep breath, then another.
She then unexpectedly discovered that this boy, who would have been drained after two breaths in the past, now seemed unaffected after the same treatment.
The girl's radiant, glistening eyes suddenly lit up:
"Wang Xiaoyuan, not bad at all.
I'm very pleased with you, big sister here."
"Can you be a little bit more reserved? Does that sound like something a girl should say?"
As the only living person who could freely enter and leave Wangren Town, Wang Yuan would bring some storybooks and novels from the outside world for Huang Wu to alleviate her boredom each time he visited.
Or he'd rack his brains to tell her all sorts of stories and fairy tales he had read in a past life.
The girl, who was nothing more than a simple-minded young lady before her death, had naturally turned a bit... dark, under his years of subtle influence.
But that did not stop Wang Yuan from scolding her.
Upon hearing his words, Huang Wu, now manifesting in his pupils, appeared like an innocent girl fresh to the world, blinking her watering, large eyes with a face of pure innocence:
"Eh, isn't that actually a good thing to say?
Didn't you teach me all this? I'm just a fifteen-year-old girl who doesn't understand anything complicated."
Wang Yuan immediately nodded vigorously in agreement:
"Yeah, yeah, you're indeed only fifteen years old.
If I didn't know that you were already fifteen when you first became a ghost, I might have believed your tall tales."
Huang Wu seemed to be poked in the raw spot by a knife and took another deep breath of yang energy.
"Your grandma, time to die!"
"Your grandma, roll, roll, roll, get out of my body right now."
"My grandma is also your grandma!"
Rustle, rustle, rustle...
At this moment, a rustling sound of leaves quivering softly reached the ears of Wang Yuan and Huang Wu, causing their bodies to freeze simultaneously.
They quickly turned their heads and joined their hands in prayer, bowing three times respectfully to the massive Dragon Claw Locust tree at the center of Wangren Town, sneaking in a complaint against each other:
"Granny, please don't blame us, Granny, please don't blame us. If you must blame someone, blame Little Huang Wu (Wang Xiaoyuan)!"
They then glared at each other and huffed, neither daring to curse the other's grandma anymore.
Indeed, it was clear that their grandma was... a tree demon.
At the same time, she was also the Earth God in charge of managing Wangren Town on Beimang Mountain, and the ghosts who resided there revered her as Granny Longhuai.
The very essence of Wangren Town was the Divine Domain of Granny, the Earth God.
Granny had two daughters, Huang Wu's mother was her own first daughter who had married far away from the mountain many years ago.
While Wang Yuan's mother was an orphan girl adopted by Granny Longhuai from a young age, who eventually became the Temple Priest at the Ancient Locust Temple on Beimang Mountain and later married Wang Yuan's father.
In short, for Wang Yuan, on his maternal side, apart from his deceased mother, he could only describe his relatives as "my kin, non-human."
Unfortunately, his maternal side was not much luckier than his paternal side.
By the time Wang Yuan first visited this place, the Earth God Granny, who managed Wangren Town, had already fallen into silence.
Only the half-withered, half-thriving husk of the Dragon Claw Locust remained, capable of making some instinctual responses.
Apart from that, there was only the cousin Huang Wu, one family member, who for some unknown reason was trapped in the mirror and could not leave.
And the one thing that made Wang Yuan feel his family wasn't utterly cursed was probably that Granny was just their own granny and not the shared "Granny" of all the mountain spirits and wild ghosts.
After acquiring the Small Book of Life and Death, Wang Yuan often thought that if his inborn Qi Fortune were a bit higher.
Not needing something as grandiose as "Purple Qi Comes from the East" like Yili King, but just one level lower, "Green Cloud Ascending," or even the next level down, "Red Light Shielding Life."
Perhaps he could have hit the jackpot, becoming the esteemed young master of the Wang Family and enjoying a dream start as the third-generation divine of Beimang Mountain's Earth God.
However, now, thinking of his own granny, Wang Yuan's mind suddenly flashed with a bolt of insight.
Before the terrifying night of the "Corpse Sacrifice," he never imagined that the story behind his parents' death hid such a colossal secret.
But after going through the "Corpse Sacrifice," interrogating the Tomb Guardian, and escaping the Owl God Tomb, he couldn't help but be more suspicious of any anomalies.
So, when he returned to Wangren Town, he immediately realized a problem he had previously overlooked.
Both Granny and his cousin had already been in their current state when he first met them, but "as is" did not necessarily equate to "as sho
uld be."
He hadn't pursued these questions in the past, but now the circumstances were quite different.
After a round of playful banter to relieve the pressure of a near-death experience, Wang Yuan's expression solemnly returned, and he asked Huang Wu:
"Cousin, I have a very important question for you.
Do you know when exactly and why Granny suddenly fell into this silence? Has our family ever provoked any powerful enemies?"