My Little Ghost

Volume 1.2.1 — The Transmigration

Bai Bing Wen gasps for air, trying his hardest to keep his head up to no avail. “I c-can’t... s-speak with a-all the... p-pressure...”

The consort slowly releases Bai Bing Wen’s body and when he gets the chance, he stands up to his feet and whispers a few enchantments of protection. Fortunately, the enchantments he’s learned from the modern world are seemingly working here, too, but in full force with no cracks due to the dense spiritual energy around him. Glowing letters in solid golden light surround him in a beautiful array, making Bai Bing Wen look around in surprise, too.

“Level eight?” he mumbles to himself.

“What? How is this possible?” the lady exclaims. “You have low cultivation practice before this. Who are you?”

“Look, lady. We’ll talk but you have got to keep your aura to yourself. I’m no threat to you. Compared to your cultivation, I’m nothing.”

“Lies. How is it possible that you can build an array with a few spells? An eighth level one, no less.”

“Spells? No. They’re called enchantments. Okay, look, I’m going to remove my array as soon as you take your aura back. And then, we’ll talk.”

The lady looks at him with all doubts and disbelief in her eyes but takes her aura back, anyway. “Talk.”

Bai Bing Wen heaves out the breath he doesn’t realize he’s been holding until now. “Okay, first off, you don’t just trust people like that when they tell you they won’t harm you. Keep your guard up, Your Highness. And I will keep mine. Let’s talk like that to be safe.”

The lady summons her level eight weapon out of her storage bracelet and places it on the table under the bronze mirror. “Talk or fight. You choose.”

“So aggressive,” Bai Bing Wen mumbles under his breath then clears his throat and carefully walks back to his bed. He’s still in awe at the fact that he has successfully made a protective array beyond his level and a high class at that. His mother would have been so proud. “What do you want to know?” he asks, extending the protective array around the bed as he sits on it.

“I already asked. Who are you and what did you do to the Crown Prince?”

“If I tell you who I am and where I came from, would you kill me?”

“Depending on who you are and where you came from, I would not. And whether or not you stole the Crown Prince’s body.”

“Your Highness, you seem pretty concerned about the Crown Prince for someone who never even talked to him once before.”

The lady’s face pales at this and she instinctively takes her weapon back, readily infusing it with her spiritual force. “How long have you been spying on the Crown Prince? Was it you who poisoned him?”

“You should really be careful with the words you choose to use against me, Your Highness. If I’m going to tell you who I am, you’re going to tell me who you are, too. Because I don’t believe that ladies in the ancient world would be allowed to handle spiritual weapons once they are married into a royal family. I know all that because...” Bai Bing Wen points at his right temple. “I have his memories.”

“Who—”

In a split second, Bai Bing Wen throws a binding talisman at the lady, using the amulet in his hand as a temporary material—a trick he learned from his great-grandfather. The talisman would last for at least half an hour until it turns back to what it originally was before being used as a weapon for misdirection. Golden strings surround the lady’s body up to her neck, the red light glowing around her quickly depleting. It can bind any high-leveled cultivator as long as they are not immortals but the time it can bind depends on the talent of the one being captured.

“Reveal!” Bai Bing Wen casts a spell, writing the letters in the air and flourishing his golden spiritual energy towards the bound lady. The lady tries to move away and successfully does so with a kick on the table’s post, but the light has reflected against the bronze mirror and hits her. She’s sent flying forwards towards Bai Bing Wen’s direction.

Bai Bing Wen quickly removes his array, lest he hurts the lady with the active array filled with spiritual force. He catches the lady just in time, making both of them swarm in clouds of golden spiritual energy. Slowly, the golden strings around the lady’s body melt, and from the pink and white robes and that delicate face, her body changes from the bottom to the top.

More and more questions flood Bai Bing Wen’s mind.

Transfiguration is not uncommon in his world. It is, however, the first time he’s seen someone looking so differently from his true form. Bai Bing Wen’s arms around the person in his embrace have gone stiff, while he stares at a different person’s face. The pink of the robes has turned a beautiful gradient of navy blue from the tip to a lighter shade of blue towards the top, and the white of the robes has turned to light gray. There are patterns of constellations on the darker parts of the robes in silver dots and lines. Everything... Everything is different.

Just like the young boy who’s now in his arms.

The boy’s face is like a delicately sculpted jade used in those monuments with expensive entrance fees—usually made by the sculpting masters in the modern world. He has pale white skin and cherry red lips that are so thin. There’s an adorable mole on top of his upper lip, on the left corner. He has a cute button nose that is turning as red as his cheeks, probably due to embarrassment.

But the most prominent difference is his cute, pointy ears.

“Ah. You dare to trespass the royal palace of the Crown Prince, you impostor,” Bai Bing Wen sneers at him with a smug smile. He’s seen so much in the past few hours that he’s no longer too stunned by seeing magic like this.

The boy summons a white jade sword and quickly pushes Bai Bing Wen away. He uses an impressive qinggong as he flies as far as he can within the room, pointing the sword that glows a bright blue as soon as the boy’s spiritual energy is infused in it towards Bai Bing Wen. “What kind of evil sorcery are you practicing, impostor?”

By his form, his posture, and weapon handling, Bai Bing Wen can tell that the boy is no ordinary swordsman. He’s most probably a master of martial arts and a powerful cultivator with a high level, too. But to think he’s just disguised himself as the Emperor’s consort suggests that he’s up to no good, too.

Bai Bing Wen simply reactivates his protective array with a snap of his spiritual force. He looks around him in awe, still in disbelief that this world is indeed abundant of spiritual energy that he can quickly form arrays without having to wait for his own magic core to produce the amount of energy he needs. “Fifty steps laughs at one hundred steps,” he mocks. He infuses his spiritual energy into the hairpin he’s been holding, turning it into a temporary talisman. “If you can call me an impostor with such brazen accusations after revealing your true form, how are you to prove to my royal empire that you have not abducted the Emperor’s consort? Do you want to see which of us can prove a more believable story to the people waiting outside?”

“You shameless scum,” the boy seethes, throwing his sword against the golden array around Bai Bing Wen. He bravely runs forward in an attempt to attack as soon as the array cracks, but Bai Bing Wen has long been prepared. In fact, he intentionally creates an opening for the boy to get back into his area of formation.

But when the boy is just an arm away from Bai Bing Wen, he suddenly disappears like a ghost and apparates right behind him in a split second. “What are you?” he complains. The boy is grabbing and pulling on his hair to the side, exposing the skin on his neck. He feels a sharp object threatening to puncture on his vital meridian. “You have not given me an answer, impostor,” the boy says through gritted teeth right next to his ear.

At this, Bai Bing Wen notices that the boy is almost a head shorter than him. “You know, your soft voice doesn’t really fit well with your fierce approach to a crisis. We can just talk it out without trying to harm each other. Simple and rational,” Bai Bing Wen suggests, trying to distract him.

The boy fishes out a spirit binding rope out of his storage bracelet and is ready to tie up the captured Bai Bing Wen...

If not for Bai Bing Wen’s quick, practiced reflexes against threats.

“Sleep well, little ghostie,” he mumbles right after completing his enchantment and activates the formation he’s been preparing underneath his feet while the boy is still preoccupied with binding him. A few seconds later, the object poking on Bai Bing Wen’s neck falls on the floor with a resounding clang, followed by the person who’s been trapped in his formation. He catches the boy in his arms just in time before he falls face-first on the floor.

“You... You’re courting d-death,” the boy grumbles weakly, closing his eyes.

“This is the second time you’re falling into my arms and not once have you thanked me,” Bai Bing Wen grumbles to himself, too, lifting the boy in his arms easily and placing him carefully in his bed. He notes that the boy smells faintly like a good mix of vanilla, creamy wood, and a bit of citrus-sweet fragrance. Where Bai Bing Wen came from, this scent is exactly like the Winter Daphne in his mother’s garden—beautiful and fragrant flowers, yet highly poisonous to both humans and beasts. “Okay. Bind you now, interrogate you later.”

Bai Bing Wen sets a few arrays around the bed with the unconscious boy in the center. He makes sure to create a few tricks and traps in case the boy easily escapes his arrays, seeing that the boy’s cultivation is not low for his age.

“I hope ancient people know about acupoints,” he tells himself, quickly pressing the acupoints on the unconscious boy’s body to temporarily lock his spiritual force. “Lest, you’ll think I’m onto some voodoo again.”

The boy looks about fifteen or sixteen, at least. The innocence commonly present at this age is more prominent now that his face is at ease. His hair is a gradient of dark blue from the roots and striking silver towards the tips, straight and almost glowing. There’s a blue jade hairpin set on top of his head with silver chains, holding almost half of his hair up in a bun. This reminds Bai Bing Wen of that immortal he’s last faced in the modern world before being sent here. By any chance, Bai Bing Wen is considering the possibility that this boy is connected to whoever that is, seeing that they have the similar glowing blue aura and facial features. The only difference is, that cultivator he met in the modern world had burning blue eyes filled with killing intent, while this boy’s eyes, despite trying to look fierce, are simply too innocent and gentle.

Bai Bing Wen checks around the room once more and tries to see if, by some miracle, he’s at least taken Starflame with him. He tries to summon his sword, staring intently at this ancient storage bracelet. He remarks with regret that his sword is not in his unfamiliar storage which is filled with useless rocks. He starts missing the modern world’s storage rings which are more convenient to carry for their almost unnoticeable size with huge and organized spaces inside, contrary to this world’s attention-seeking colorful bracelets with small storage capacity. Now, aside from trying to find a way to go back to his world, he also needs to make more useful talismans and charms to protect himself in this unfamiliar place. He starts by improvising weapons using the hairpins, golden bars, belts, and everything he can find in the room and decides to keep these rocks in his storage in case he would need them in the future. What for, he doesn't know yet.

After half an hour of making talismans and charms out of these things he finds and half an hour of silent observation, the boy has finally come to and the first thing he does is search for his storage bracelet while trying to summon a spiritual weapon. When he realizes that he doesn’t have any of them anymore, especially his spiritual force, he frantically sits up and looks around only to finally notice that Bai Bing Wen is just sitting calmly next to the bed.

“Welcome back, little ghost,” Bai Bing Wen greets with an impassive face, crossing his arms over his chest. “Are you ready to talk or do you need more sleep?”

“What did you do to me?” the boy asks with a fierce glare, his shaking hands forming fists against the golden sheets.

“Please, be at ease. I find consent more attractive than your pretty face so don’t worry about yourself when you’re unconscious around me.”

“Your shamelessness is excruciating.”

“You should be grateful that I haven’t harmed you yet.”

“You’re a level five mage. You cannot possibly harm an eighth level martial cultivator like me.”

“And yet, here we are. You’re trapped in my array and your release is at my mercy. You can’t even use your spiritual force so just talk to me when you’re ready to compromise.”

There’s a flash of helplessness in the boy’s eyes before it fades to determination. He looks around once more then looks back warily at Bai Bing Wen. “Who are you?”

“I will answer your questions honestly but for each answer I give, you have to answer a question of mine, too. Do we have a deal?”

“How do I know you’re not going to lie to me?”

“I have not lied to you so far. You’re the one who’s been lying here. Look at this.” Bai Bing Wen takes out a small jade hairpin and places it on the bed, next to the boy. “I am wearing blue,” he says while looking at the improvised talisman. The hairpin starts glowing in a golden light. “See? It glows when we lie to it. Come on. Try lying to it.”

The boy does not speak. Instead, he just stares at Bai Bing Wen, seemingly still unwilling to cooperate.

“I am wearing white,” Bai Bing Wen states in a firm tone, looking back at the hairpin. The golden glow instantly disappears. “My name is Bai Bing Wen,” he adds, still staring at it.

The boy glances at the hairpin and looks back at Bai Bing Wen with a complicated expression. “I am the Emperor’s consort,” the boy states.

Surprisingly, the temporary talisman doesn’t light up.

 *****

Qi Deviation: Traditionally used to indicate that something has gone wrong in cultivation practice / common symptoms are delusions, obsession, power greed, and intense paranoia

Talent: A cultivator’s level of cultivation / The higher the cultivation level, the more talented they are considered to be

Qilin River: A body of water surrounded by colorful trees / when night falls, the trees glow in bright colors and the ghost of the Ancestral Qilin Royal Beast fly over to grant immortality

Shadow Guardians: A group of elite assassins protecting the royal family in the dark

Qinggong: Lightness Skill / ability to move at a superhuman speed / gravity-defying ability

“Fifty steps laughs at one hundred steps.”: A Chinese idiomatic phrase equivalent to the English idiom—“The pot calling the kettle black.”