Later, under the cover of the music, they spent a blissful night on the incredibly spacious bed.

Lu Yuan woke up and ate, just like any other day.

Su Liyan, however, didn’t want to get out of bed. She was exhausted from the previous night’s activities and wanted to doze a little longer.

Lu Yuan kissed Su Liyan on the forehead, pulled the covers up for her, and said, "Sweetheart, you get some more sleep."

News of the newly appointed Prefect had already become the talk of Dongchang City.

Many of the common folk were even cheering for him!

Lu Yuan strolled through the streets with a few of his close confidants, idling away half the day with nothing to do.

At noon, while Lu Yuan was having lunch in the Prefecture Yamen, a subordinate official came to the door bearing congratulatory gifts. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Lu Yuan exchanged a few pleasantries with the gift-bearing subordinate before seeing him out the Mansion Gate.

The moment Lu Yuan turned back into the mansion, he had already forgotten what the subordinate looked like.

Accepting one gift wasn’t a big deal, but it was immediately followed by more officials arriving with gifts that afternoon.

Lu Yuan accepted them all without question and arranged for a close confidant to record each item on the gift list in a ledger.

Su Liyan asked, perplexed, "Honey~ is it really okay to accept all this?"

Lu Yuan stroked his wife’s beautiful black hair and said, "It’s fine. Let’s just take them for now."

That night, Lu Yuan finished his preparations and was about to head out for a stroll on the deserted streets.

After dinner, Su Liyan had disappeared to busy herself with something.

So Lu Yuan left a note on the table in their room. It said something along the lines of: *Go ahead and sleep without me tonight. I’ll be back late. Sweet dreams, my dearest darling.*

With everything ready, Lu Yuan was re-tying his boots to make sure the laces wouldn’t come undone if he had to run.

Suddenly, the door was pushed open and someone walked in without a word.

Lu Yuan, who was looking down as he tied his laces, glanced up casually and saw a dashing young man.

’Anyone entering my room, other than my wife, is supposed to knock, even my close confidants.’

Lu Yuan didn’t acknowledge the person at first. After finishing with his laces, he stood up and finally took a good look at them.

The young man spun around on the spot, the hem of his loose, long robes whirling with him.

’Seeing this young man’s odd behavior, he must have escaped from a mental hospital or something.’

’This young man might be fair-skinned and handsome, but I’m not interested in men.’

"Honey, what do you think? Does this outfit look good?" the young man asked in a distinctly masculine voice, spinning to a stop and striking a pose.

If it weren’t for that "Honey," Lu Yuan would never have believed this young man had any connection to his wife.

This was a testament to Su Liyan’s art of disguise; it was like she had a completely different skin.

Lu Yuan stared, looked again, and realized—wasn’t this his own wife?

Lu Yuan stepped forward and pinched the bulky padding at her waist. "What did you stuff in here?"

Su Liyan slapped his hand away. "Sponge, of course."

Without some material to pad out Su Liyan’s slender waist, an experienced eye could tell from behind whether she was a man or a woman just by looking at her waist-to-hip ratio.

Su Liyan had been very thorough, concealing her more curvaceous areas and padding the leaner ones.

She had picked out a clean, elegant set of white robes and coiled her hair up with a hairpin.

Continuing in her masculine voice, Su Liyan said, "Honey~ I feel like I look even more delicate than you in this getup. That Fox Spirit will definitely find me more appealing."

Su Liyan, holding her fingers in a delicate pose, playfully tapped her man.

Lu Yuan felt goosebumps crawl all over his skin.

He knew it was his wife in front of him, but hearing that male voice was just too much to bear.

Lu Yuan pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "Sweetheart, can you please change your voice back first? It’s starting to get to me."

Hearing his words, Su Liyan let out a laugh like silver bells. Switching back to her original voice, she said sweetly, "Alright, honey. So, can I go out with you tonight?"

Lu Yuan nodded. "Let’s go together. Can’t let this elaborate disguise of yours go to waste!"

Seeing that he had agreed, Su Liyan was overjoyed. She looped her arm through his and started walking out.

The two of them arrived on the cold, deserted streets, where the doors of every household were tightly locked.

The faint moonlight illuminated the entire street. Without using a Technique, they could just barely make out the brick-and-tile-paved road.

Lu Yuan and Su Liyan walked side by side. An autumn breeze blew past, sending a chill through them.

The street was unusually quiet, nowhere near as lively as in summer, when at least the cicadas would be chirping.

"Honey~ we’ve been around several times already. How come we haven’t seen so much as a shadow?" Su Liyan asked impatiently.

Even when the two of them activated a Spell, turning on their "radar" scanning mode, they detected no unusual movements within a radius of several dozen meters.

Lu Yuan muttered, "Could it be that there are no Xingzi causing trouble in Dongchang City?"

The city was protected by many officials; an unlisted Xingzi wouldn’t be able to get in.

Lu Yuan and Su Liyan wandered around until the early hours of the morning without any discoveries, so they returned to the mansion.

For several days in a row, the pair went out for a stroll every night but came back empty-handed each time.

On the evening of the fifth day, the two of them once again appeared on the streets of Dongchang City.

Lu Yuan said to his wife, "If we don’t find anything again tonight, we might really be looking in the wrong direction."

"Mhm, honey~ I get it. How about this? Let’s split up. I’ll search the west side of the city, and you search the east."

Su Liyan thought that if they were together, the Fox Spirit might think it couldn’t handle two men at once and wouldn’t dare to show itself.

Lu Yuan hesitated for a moment but agreed with his wife’s idea. He said worriedly, "If you run into anything, you have to protect yourself. Don’t be reckless."

Su Liyan nodded and replied, "Don’t worry, honey. You too!"

Lu Yuan untied the Celestial Master Sword from his waist and handed it to his wife.

Su Liyan refused to take it. "Honey, you should keep it. How can you not carry a single weapon?"

After her atavistic transformation, Su Liyan’s own hands and tail were her weapons; she didn’t need the Celestial Master Sword.

Lu Yuan thrust the Celestial Master Sword into her hands. "Are you going to defy my orders now?"

Seeing this, Su Liyan attached the Celestial Master Sword to her own waist. After a few more sweet nothings, the two of them finally split up.

Lu Yuan took out a radio; the complete silence was unnerving.

Lu Yuan hated these Wandering Evils the most.

He had been here for over a year and had gotten used to a lot of things.

When Lu Yuan first transmigrated here, he found these things to be absolutely disgusting.

Lu Yuan and Su Liyan walked away from each other, their backs turned.

Not long after they left, a thick fog began to rise from the ground at the spot where they had separated, cutting them off from each other.

By the time Lu Yuan and Su Liyan were twenty or thirty meters apart, they could no longer see one another.

Lu Yuan listened to the music from his radio, strolling nonchalantly, every bit the picture of a carefree young master.

Su Liyan, on the other hand, clutched her sword and scanned her surroundings, afraid of missing anything.

About ten minutes later, Lu Yuan felt something was off. Billowing clouds of thick fog drifted in from behind, about to envelop him.

Lu Yuan thought to himself, ’Could it just be fogging up now that it’s autumn?’

He walked on and on, when he suddenly realized something was wrong. A dagger had already appeared in his right sleeve.

Lu Yuan stood perfectly still, recited a Spell, and closed his eyes to feel the changes in his surroundings.

It seemed as if something behind him was tugging at the ground, causing a faint, wave-like disturbance in the air.

He carefully sensed this pulsating disturbance, like a doctor listening to a patient’s heartbeat with a stethoscope.

If Lu Yuan hadn’t recited the Spell, he wouldn’t have been able to feel this fluctuation at all.

Standing motionless, Lu Yuan felt the strange disturbance drawing closer and closer.

In an instant, Lu Yuan felt the hair on every inch of his skin stand on end, and goosebumps erupted all over his body.

Before, the ground disturbance had been closing in on him slowly, two meters at a time.

But just as it was seven or eight meters away, the disturbance suddenly reappeared directly half a meter behind him.

Lu Yuan’s reaction was lightning-fast. He leaped into the air, spun 180 degrees, and turned to face the way he came, cursing inwardly, ’What the hell! I’ve really seen a ghost!’