An Shengming seemed to be somewhat afraid of his father, but was closer to his mother.

He said with a hint of complaint and concern: "Your health isn't good, why are you still outside?"

The young woman smiled and replied, her tone and manner as if she were an old woman, comforting him, "What's wrong with that? I'm old, aren't you going to let me out for some fresh air? Are you trying to suffocate me to death?" An Shengming's expression softened, and he said, "I didn't mean that."

"Alright, alright, I know you didn't mean that."

The woman in red smiled and shifted the topic to Wei Yuan and Jue, saying:

"You haven't told me yet, are these guests your friends?"

Mentioning this, An Shengming seemed a little awkward, unsure how to begin. His father snorted coldly, seemingly displeased. An Shengming stammered an explanation that they were indeed friends. The woman in red smiled and told him to fetch some tea and fruit, then soothed the old man beside her, smiling and telling Wei Yuan and Jue to take a seat first.

Whether it was her expression, movements, or tone, the woman was no different from an old lady.

Yet, her true form was completely unmasked in the eyes of Wei Yuan and Jue.

Wei Yuan sat down. Next to him, Jue's lips moved, and Wei Yuan heard the sound of the girl stifling a laugh, jokingly saying:

'How can there be an old woman of sixteen or seventeen?'

This was a line from Qiao Feng in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.

Jue seemed to have been reading a lot lately.

She jokingly brought up this line at this time.

However, the woman in red before them only looked young. She might be much older than she appeared. Wei Yuan subconsciously felt that another line would be more appropriate, such as, 'Old woman, why do you feign the airs of a maiden?' But he only thought it over in his mind. Putting aside the fact that saying this aloud would be rather impolite,

Jue was sitting right next to him.

If Jue didn't say anything, the white-haired eldest sister might really beat him and hang him on the wall while maintaining a gentle smile.

And he wouldn't even be able to tear himself down.

Wei Yuan's lips moved, and he relied on the mark Jue had left on the back of his hand to reply:

"Now that I have arrived at your esteemed residence, I will follow the old lady's instructions in all matters."

This was also Duan Yu's response to the disguised A Zhu in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.

It was quite appropriate to use it as a response to Jue's reference. The girl was surprised for a moment, then her eyes curved slightly, realizing the pleasure of someone catching her reference and responding so perfectly, and she couldn't help but smile.

Wei Yuan's pupils narrowed as he looked at the woman in red, but he didn't detect any evil or turbid aura of a spirit on her. From this, it seemed she wasn't the kind of monster that enjoyed consuming blood and using humans as cultivation resources. But this didn't explain the things An Shengming had seen and experienced.

Wei Yuan picked up the tea that An Shengming had brought, took a sip, and said:

"I came today because I heard that you have an ancient painting here? I happen to run a small museum, and it's missing some collectibles, so I came to take a look. If you two are willing, we can talk about the price and I'll buy the painting."

Wei Yuan spoke calmly and confidently.

Because An Shengming had said before that he would be the one to pay the price.

This was just a formality.

An Shengming also chimed in, "That's right, Dad, Mom, I remember there was a painting in our old house. Anyway, no one lives in the old house now, and it's a waste to leave the painting there. We might as well sell it and get some money to buy you two something."

The old man was a little angry, saying, "Sell, sell, sell! You can sell anything!"

"That's an old thing that's been with me my whole life, older than you are! These old things were treasures back in our day, things to be passed down in the family. How did it get to the point where you can sell anything, exchange anything for money?!

"Why don't you just sell me off while you're at it?!"

An Shengming was taken aback, his face flushed red, unable to speak.

The woman in red smiled and comforted the old man beside her, then said to An Shengming, "Your dad's just stubborn, you know that. Alright, alright, don't look so miserable, you're a grown man, don't you feel ashamed?"

"You go back to your room first. The painting belongs to the two of us, and we'll take care of it."

An Shengming saw his father's stern face and had no choice but to go back.

Only Wei Yuan, Jue, the old man, and the non-human woman in red remained in the living room.

The woman's lips didn't move, but a sound that ordinary people couldn't hear echoed in the room. She assumed that the young couple before her were just ordinary people, so she spoke frankly to the old man beside her, "You and your stubborn temper, it hasn't changed in fifty years. Alright, alright, I'll handle this matter."

Seeing that the old man was still somewhat unconvinced.

She said, "Don't worry, these two children are just ordinary people."

"I'll use magic to make them forget about this, then tell Shengming that the painting has already been sold. If that doesn't work, we can just give them any painting and use an illusion."

Seeing that the old man's expression had softened, the woman in red smiled. If one were seeing with mortal eyes, they would still see the old couple sitting on the sofa. In reality, the old woman's image and appearance were just illusions. The real woman in red had already appeared before Wei Yuan, reaching out her slender fingers to touch him.

But the spell formed, and before it could get close, it shattered on its own.

The woman in red was slightly startled.

She subconsciously lowered her head and saw the pale, sickly-looking young man looking up, calmly watching her.

His pupils were deep and serene.

A faint sound of a tiger's roar echoed softly.

For some reason, just hearing this sound made the woman in red panic, and her movements froze involuntarily. She could no longer cast spells like she had just done. She suddenly remembered something she had heard from other monsters, that there were certain existences on the land of China that one should never provoke. Her lips trembled.

After a two-second eye contact, Wei Yuan turned to look at the old man and smiled:

"Old sir, you are very fortunate."

The old man reacted. His face changed immediately. He hurriedly got up and tried to pull the true form of the woman in red away. Wei Yuan didn't continue to release the aura of the Crouching Tiger Token, causing the woman in red to stagger backward. The old man's eyes widened as he stood in front of the woman in red, glaring at Wei Yuan.

In that moment, he was like a young man.

When protecting the one they love, even the oldest and most cowardly of men can be heroic like knights.

Wei Yuan took out the weapon usage authorization given to him by the Special Operations Team and flashed the shell, saying:

"I am a member of the China Action Team."

"Please cooperate."

The old man's face turned red, and he said:

"Investigate, investigate, investigate? Investigate what?! We're married, we have a marriage certificate from the government, we're legal!"

But the Civil Affairs Bureau couldn't yet conduct marriages between humans and non-humans.

Wei Yuan said silently in his heart, but his expression remained calm as he said, "We just want to investigate. If possible, we hope you two will cooperate."

An Xuyang stared at Wei Yuan. After a long time, he seemed to deflate, sitting back on the sofa. The woman in red sat beside him, removing her previous illusion. The elderly, gray-haired old man and the young, beautiful woman like a painting sat together, their hands clasped tightly, looking somewhat incongruous.

"If you want to hear it."

The old An Xuyang sighed and said:

"Then the story actually begins fifty years ago."

……………………

His family had lived in Spring City since he was a child.

An Xuyang got this painting when he was young.

The person in the painting was too beautiful. Even at the age of ten, An Xuyang could feel that the person in the painting was beautiful, like a fairy. He often stared at the painting, so his family couldn't help but joke with him, saying, 'When you grow up, the person in the painting will come down and marry you as your wife.'

This was the teasing and joking of adults.

But the child believed it.

At that time, An Xuyang had no other thoughts. He just felt that if there was such a beautiful person living with him, that would be a good thing. His personality was too serious, so every time he ate, he would put a bowl of rice in front of the painting, as if there really was a person there.

This almost sacrificial act lasted for a very long time.

Even when he grew up and knew that it was just a joke from the adults, An Xuyang still cherished the painting. He even secretly brought it to school. At that time, he was a day student and sometimes didn't come back at noon. He would just lie down in school for a while. His family would pack him lunch, but several times An Xuyang found that his lunch was missing from his schoolbag.

An Xuyang was curious. One night, he prepared his lunch for the next day in advance.

He secretly went to check while he was sleeping and saw a woman in red eating his lunch.

He was so shocked that he sat up, but when he looked closely, there was nothing there, the lunch was still there, and the woman in red in the picture was still as usual. He had no choice but to go back to sleep suspiciously. This didn't happen for several days afterward, and the lunch was still there. But later, the lunch disappeared again.

An Xuyang made up his mind to keep watch with his eyes closed. When the person in the painting appeared, he jumped up. A sixteen or seventeen-year-old boy, when his courage rose, he didn't care about anything, and he wasn't afraid of any ghosts. He hugged the woman in red, saying, "So you're the one stealing things?"

The woman in red blushed and said, "Let go, this, this, this is outrageous! I won't run away."

Only then did An Xuyang realize that what he had done was out of line, and he let go in a hurry.

Then he saw the woman disappear directly into the painting, glaring at him.

She was the spirit of the painting. Ordinary monsters cultivated either by absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth or by absorbing the essence of the human race. But she had been nourished by food when An Xuyang was young, gaining food energy and gradually cultivating a form.

An Xuyang was curious and asked, "Then why didn't you come out to see me before?"

The woman in red blushed slightly and said, "You said you wanted me to be your wife, but you were too young before. Now that you've grown up, I've come out to see you."

So a human and a monster got married, even having children.

Just because she had become a spirit from the painting, the woman stayed at home, and An Xuyang worked hard outside.

But An Xuyang's personality was too rigid and unyielding. He followed the rules but didn't know how to be flexible. Later, he offended the local snakehead and was captured. The woman didn't see her husband come home for a long time, so she had to risk going out. Finally, she left her then five-year-old son at home, crying as she said:

"I'm going to pick up your father. From now on, it will only be you and your father. You have to listen to him." That night, the woman barely managed to use her magic to find An Xuyang, who had been beaten half to death, and brought him back.

An Xuyang vaguely felt that his wife seemed to have opened the door and walked out.

He was startled awake, turned around, and saw that the traces on the painting had become extremely blurred, no longer looking like they used to. No matter how hard he searched, he couldn't find his wife anywhere, so he could only raise his child alone and never remarry.

Men often have to be hurt before they can really learn to grow.

He no longer had his original stubborn temper.

He was busy pulling the family together all by himself.

One day, when he returned home, it was too late. He was worried that his son would be scared alone. When he went back, he saw his son smiling. He asked, "Aren't you afraid being alone?"

The child, who was only seven or eight years old at the time, said:

"I'm not afraid. Mom will tell me stories in my dreams."

………………

The gray-haired old man paused, saying:

"It took her thirteen years to come back."

"It was so hard to wait for her to come back. No, she's actually been here all along."

"In those thirteen years, although she wasn't by my side, she didn't leave me either. She would come to me in my dreams, she would take care of Shengming in my dreams, she would drive away his nightmares, she would tell him stories... she's always been here."

Wei Yuan and Jue listened to the story quietly.

Wei Yuan whispered in his heart.

The spirituality of things is the essence.

Even spirits can empathize with humans…

He said, "There's one more thing. Mr. An said that he once saw an evil spirit in the old house, and it even followed him back, intending to attack him."

The woman in red replied softly, "…I discovered it. He was being followed by a ghost. I barely managed to drive it away. When Shengming woke up, I wanted to tidy up his quilt, but when I saw him being frightened, I remembered that my appearance at that time was not human in his eyes, let alone his mother."

Her face was complex.

The old man patted her hand comfortingly, then stared straight at Wei Yuan, saying word by word:

"Do you understand?!"

"She is my wife, I don't recognize anything else!"

Wei Yuan heard the low hum of the Crouching Tiger Token in his ear.

'Detected a painting spirit, can be used as raw material for the Weird Tales and Strange Phenomena scroll.'

'Can also be exchanged for corresponding merits.'

In that instant, Wei Yuan understood why the Crouching Tiger was so feared by the world's spirits. The Crouching Tiger was the Crouching Tiger of the imperial court. In addition to capturing those demons that disturbed the human world, it would also hunt down those useful spirits, just like humans killing tigers for their skin and hunting deer for their meat.

This was tradition.

The woman in red's face turned pale, and her body trembled slightly.

An Xuyang wrapped his arm around her shoulders, comforting her softly, and the woman subconsciously shrank into his arms. If Wei Yuan had felt that this scene would be a little strange before, he felt that it was very normal at this moment. He stood up, the woman's body stiffened, and the old man stood in front of her, "What are you going to do?!"

Wei Yuan tapped the Crouching Tiger Token and said, "Nothing."

"This is just a routine check, and by the way, uh, happy golden anniversary to you two."

The woman in the painting was stunned and said, "You, you're not going to take me away…"

Wei Yuan carried the sword box on his back and replied gently, "Times are changing."

"There will be more and more cultivators. You are also a creature born in China. As long as you follow the laws and rules of this era, then China and Huaxia, at least, have the capacity to accommodate harmless spirits. The sea accepts all rivers, we have never lacked these."

The woman in the painting said, "This is... a new law?"

Wei Yuan said, "No."

He thought of everything he had experienced in the past, everything he had seen in this era, and replied:

"This is the pride we've always had."

After a moment's thought, Wei Yuan looked at the couple, but then thought that the Civil Affairs Bureau might have to launch different ethnic marriage laws, and...

He didn't know why, but he suddenly thought of the scene of the plucked Ionia bird holding a banner protesting the action team, and that creatures like the painting fairy were also mixed in, holding banners, strongly demanding to enjoy the same retirement age and treatment as humans.

With the recovery of spiritual energy, this kind of scene is very likely to appear.

The corner of Wei Yuan's mouth twitched. When he was about to call Jue to leave, he suddenly thought of something and asked, "Mr. An, where did you get this painting?"

"It's not an ordinary thing to be able to raise a painting fairy."

An Xuyang's expression softened a lot. After thinking about it, he said, "It was fifty years ago, when I was getting out of school, an old man on the roadside sold it to me."

Wei Yuan was slightly stunned. This statement gave him a familiar feeling.

The mirror spirit incident before.

The mirror was also picked up in this way.

He subconsciously clenched his fingers, and the ghost-expelling supernatural power was naturally displayed. Through the slight spirituality that overflowed from the old man's memory, he saw the scene he recalled from a bystander's perspective. Even because this was a method directly aimed at spirituality, what he saw was clearer and more real than what the old man remembered.

Wei Yuan saw a series of pictures and saw the young An Xuyang.

He saw him walking on the street after school. There was an old man with sparse white hair, a receding hairline, large bags under his eyes, yellow teeth, and a face like a soft, rotten carrot sitting by the roadside. He was smoking a pipe.

There were all kinds of books on the carpet, a simple mirror, and rolled-up ancient paintings.

The old man's appearance was exactly the same as what the child who bought the ancient mirror had seen before.

However, this had happened fifty years ago.

Wei Yuan sensed an extreme sense of strangeness. An Xuyang was guided by a mysterious attraction to walk over and squat down to pick up the painting. Wei Yuan also saw the things on the stall more clearly. His gaze froze slightly. He saw that in the pile of books, in addition to the paintings, bronze mirrors, and wood carvings, there was also a simple bronze artifact.

It had a taotie pattern from the Shang Dynasty.

ps: Today's second update..., five thousand words, a little late, update first and then modify~

Then the shared bicycle character card has been added~