With the new year approaching, the Gold Auction House at the Golden Sun Sect decided to hold a big auction. The event was widely advertised. A special building was constructed outside the sect, just for the purpose of allowing cultivators from across the continent to attend without having to let multiple unknown cultivators into the sect itself.

A week before the event, cultivators came pouring over, many of them taking the opportunity to arrive early to meet with past friends and acquaintances.

All of this had nothing to do with Wen Zhihao. It was that time of the month: the time to hand in his monthly quota of talismans.

When Wen Zhihao went to the Talisman Hall, Elder Liu Ru was there.

Her musing look put Wen Zhihao on alert.

“Good morning, Elder Liu,” Wen Zhihao said cautiously.

“Disciple Wen...Senior Cultivator Wen, would you like to help host some external cultivators? There are some talisman cultivators that will be arriving tomorrow.”

“Speaking plainly, I will admit that I’m not a good host,” Wen Zhihao said immediately. “Elder Liu, I am truly not suited to be called a ‘senior cultivator’ of the sect.”

“It is Sect regulation,” Elder Liu said wryly. Well, she never expected Wen Zhihao to agree. “Now that you have become a Nascent Soul cultivator, your monthly quota has changed. Please make 10 copies of five different talismans from this talisman manual.”

Wen Zhihao accepted the jade slip. It was delicately carved, the sign of an advanced cultivation manual. “Understood.”

“And one more matter before you leave, you have created some of your own talismans, yes?”

“...Yes?”

“Record them so that it can be archived with the Sect’s other talisman manuals.”

“Oh, I have my notes with me.” Wen Zhihao took out the stack of paper from his spatial ring, only to remember what he had titled it, An Idiot’s Guide to Talisman Cultivation. He coughed. “Ignore the title.”

Elder Liu’s lips twitched. “You are far from an idiot, Disciple Wen.”

Wen Zhihao smiled sheepishly. “It’s a little joke. If this is sufficient, I can make a copy so that someone else can inscribe it into a jade slip.” He had no idea how jade slips were made. Did jade-slip printers exist?

Elder Liu glanced through some of the pages. She gave a nod. “Good.” Despite Disciple Wen’s casual behaviour, the notes were well kept. “There are jade-slip inscribers in the Library, you can pass them a copy.”

...That meant that Wen Zhihao had another thing to do this month. He sighed inwardly. Such was the life of a senior cultivator. But he dutifully replied, “Yes, I will do so.”

---

In fact, since becoming a senior cultivator, Wen Zhihao had encountered a problem.

Not long after the wedding, various cultivators noticed a sudden feeling of sleepiness if they happened to pass by Elder Liu’s mountain in the afternoon or late at night, at the exact times Wen Zhihao was sleeping…and any mortals and Qi-Refining cultivators would directly fall asleep.

This was easily solved though: Cheng Yahui set up a fancy array around Wen Zhihao’s house to block most of the calming qi, by drawing it out of the air and condensing it into qi-storage units.

Taking inspiration from Cheng Yahui’s array, Wen Zhihao left out boxes of rocks in the bedroom, near his side of the bed. They naturally absorbed the surrounding qi, and once Sun Fuyu deemed them sufficiently strong, Wen Zhihao took them to the Equipment Hall for sale as calming stones.

So perhaps having to make a copy of his talisman reference guide wasn’t so bad, since he no longer needed to charm calming stones individually.

Thinking this, Wen Zhihao brightened and decided to start the copy first, since it was easier than reading an advanced manual on talismans.

 

---

 

“Husband…” Sun Fuyu said hesitantly.

The children had gone to sleep. It was just Wen Zhihao and Sun Fuyu in bed.

Wen Zhihao yawned and stretched his fingers—copying his notes neatly was hard work. “Mm?”

“Some cultivators approached me today...they want you to make a beautiful calming treasure to auction.”

“Did you tell them no?”

“Yes.”

Wen Zhihao smiled sleepily. “Good. Husband knows me well.”

Sun Fuyu let out a sigh of relief. “En, I try.” He pre-emptively snuggled closer to Wen Zhihao. Anyway, why were those auction people so obsessed with ‘beauty’? Wanting a beautiful calming treasure? They were clearly insulting Wen-ge’s calming stones!

 

---

 

A few days before the auction, Wen Zhihao was reading the advanced talisman manual outside, overlooking the training field where Hu Jingyan and Sun Fuyu were teaching the kids and teenagers martial arts. The afternoon sun shone weakly through the clouds.

“Wen Zhihao!”

Wen Zhihao looked up. “Hello?”

Zhou Sheng approached him, with two female cultivators following him. One of them was familiar: Hu Lingzhi, that multiple-swords cultivator who won the Nascent Soul Early-Stage bracket at the tournament.

“Wen Zhihao, this is Li Fanghua, the crafting cultivator who made that talisman drawing treasure. And this is Hu Lingzhi, sword cultivator. They’re both from the Phoenix Moon Sect.”

Li Fanghua was the taller of the two. She wore black cultivator robes in a masculine style, printed with the golden phoenix and moon emblem. If it weren’t for the emblem, she wouldn’t be out of place among demonic cultivators.

Did Zhou Sheng become friends with Li Fanghua because they had the same dress sense?

Hu Lingzhi, in contrast, wore robes with bright red with white accents. Hers was in the feminine style, paired with black boots, black shoulder armour, and black arm braces. Three swords hung diagonally across her back.

Wen Zhihao smiled. “Hello, I’m Wen Zhihao.”

Li Fanghua looked at him. “So you’re the one who made that printer design?”

Wen Zhihao’s snapped to Li Fanghua. “...Yes, that was the inspiration.”

The word ‘printer’ was not in the vernacular of this xianxia world.

Wen Zhihao looked at Li Fanghua.

Li Fanghua looked back at him.

A connection formed.

The other person had transmigrated, just like them. Their original world was modern too….was it the same world? Was it slightly different? What would be the best questions to ask to determine such a thing?

It was the first time Wen Zhihao and Li Fanghua felt the urge to talk to someone new like this.

“My house has some spare rooms, you can stay over,” Wen Zhihao offered. “I will ask the kitchen staff to make pizza.”

Li Fanghua swallowed saliva. She had been so busy with everything else that she had forgotten about pizza! “Yes, that would be very good.”

Hu Lingzhi looked at Li Fanghua in bewilderment. Why is she looking at the male cultivator like that???

Across the training field, Sun Fuyu was also frowning. Why did he suddenly invite that female cultivator to our house like that???

 

---

 

Zhou Sheng, and therefore Lin Yijun, joined for their pizza dinner at the kitchens. Afterwards, the two of them left together, while Li Fanghua and Hu Lingzhi followed Wen Zhihao, Sun Fuyu, and their six young children back to their house.

Wen Zhihao let the two Phoenix Moon cultivators settle into one of the spare rooms, while the children were put to bed. Then, the four of them headed down to the ground floor living room.

“Sun Fuyu knows everything,” Wen Zhihao said plainly.

Li Fanghua nodded. “Hu Lingzhi as well.”

Sun Fuyu and Hu Lingzhi gave each other suspicious looks.

Hu Lingzhi cracked first. She crossed her arms. “What are you talking about? Stop speaking in circles!”

Li Fanghua glanced at Wen Zhihao. Seeing his slight nod, she replied, “He also came from another world.”

Sun Fuyu’s and Hu Lingzhi’s eyes both widened.

“Please explain, Senior Li,” Sun Fuyu said politely. He preemptively wrapped an arm around his husband, just in case.

Wen Zhihao absently patted Sun Fuyu’s arm.

Li Fanghua glanced at their stickiness. It was relaxing not to have to worry about their relationship. So Li Fanghua began, “It started like this…”

 

---

 

Unlike Wen Zhihao, Li Fanghua knew partly what caused her to transmigrate, and had guessed the rest.

The Phoenix Moon sect was a predominantly female cultivator sect. Two of the cultivators, Li Fangmei and Yu Xiaomei, were embroiled in a love triangle with a male harem-wanting protagonist.

Yu Xiaomei hated Li Fangmei, and so she suppressed Li Fangmei’s spirit with poison and used a ritual to call a ghost over. Thinking that she had succeeded in calling a vicious ghost into Li Fangmei’s body, Yu Xiaomei smugly left with the male cultivator and his growing harem of beauties.

But rather than a vicious ghost, Li Fanghua had possessed the body instead,

Li Fanghua had died on Halloween due to being hit by a truck. Since transmigration was possible, perhaps it meant that other magical stories had a sliver of truth: namely, that the boundaries between worlds were slim on Halloween.

Li Fanghua didn’t have the memories of the original body’s owner, since the original spirit was still there. But that was no problem: she simply changed her clothing to match her personal style and pretended to be Li Fangmei’s sister.

No one realised the truth—after all, it was natural that sisters would look alike, and Li Fanghua’s temperament was different from Li Fangmei. Everyone believed that Li Fangmei was in secluded cultivation—this was the excuse that Yu Xiaomei had used to capture Li Fangmei without suspicion.

Li Fanghua threw herself into this new opportunity to craft qi and technology together. She made hoverboards and spatial storage devices and shields to block unwanted cultivators…

Along the way, she met sword enthusiast and cutie Hu Lingzhi, and so she tried her hand at making magical weapons too, like a giant cleaver sword, since Hu Lingzhi didn’t have one of those yet.

After learning about the male harem protagonist from others, Li Fanghua sighed in relief, glad to have escaped being embroiled in such a stallion novel—she was gay, and since these male protagonists had a certain reputation, she might have to kill him, and that was messy AF.

It was all going well, until one day, she overheard two male cultivators arguing. It was then that Li Fanghua realised...weren’t they embroiled in a BL dog blood drama? Won’t this lead to a big war?

Wasn’t she supposed to be in a stallion novel with an asshole male protagonist? When did it become a BL novel?

Dog blood BL novels might be fun to read, but they were not fun to live through.

So Li Fanghua gritted her teeth and helped them solve their problems.

And then it all went well with her crafting and Hu Lingzhi collected yet more swords...

—Only for Li Fanghua to encounter yet another dog blood BL couple. Then another, and another...

One day, on her way to attend a locally organised crafting competition, she encountered the male protagonist again with his enlarged harem.

Somehow, the stallion novel universe had merged with multiple BL novel universes. With the male protagonist’s advances, Li Fanghua suddenly missed all the dog blood BL.

It was a big headache for Li Fanghua.

After kicking the male protagonist’s butt, Li Fanghua developed a stabilised body-duplication method, and transferred her spirit into the new body, thus allowing Li Fangmei to reclaim her original body.

(Li Fangmei’s parents were extremely confused when they found out about this new ‘twin’.)

“Look, my twin sister is the one who liked your stinky ass!” Li Fanghua shook Li Fangmei in front of the male protagonist.

The male protagonist’s eyes flashed. “I don’t have twins in my harem yet—arrgg!” The male protagonist was sent flying with the flat side of Hu Lingzhi’s giant sword.

Male stallion protagonist dealt with, Li Fanghua returned to her life of crafting, spending time with Hu Lingzhi, and dealing with tragic male BL protagonists.

She had met Zhou Sheng when she was meditating yet another dog blood romance between a demonic-turned-rogue cultivator and a righteous cultivator. Li Fanghua didn’t have weird hang-ups about demonic cultivators, and Zhou Sheng didn’t seem to be embroiled in a dog blood BL drama…

 

 

---

By the way, the male stallion protagonist’s name is Lu Xiu but ehhh he’s not really that important, he’s just cannon fodder in Li Fanghua’s POV ╮( ˘ ､ ˘ )╭

Also, if you head to the CG discord server or Daily Eggplant server, you might see some sleepy art of Wen Zhihao drawn by val~

(also, twitter link to the artwork! )