"Absurd! The mountain god is angry and needs to take a wife, and that mountain god is currently without one!"
Mu Anqi: "This isn't about taking a wife—it's about picking out a tender young girl to swallow whole, isn't it?"
"How dare you offend the gods—" The wolf-headed couple looked startled, then burst into tears the next second. The woman wearing human clothes grabbed her hand miserably and said, "Mother knows you're upset, but there's nothing we can do. We don't want this either…"
"I have a way." Mu Anqi was completely sincere as she turned her hand over and held the woman's. "Mother, I was made from your exact mold. If you go in my place, no one will be able to tell the difference!"
"..." The two wolf-headed people's crying stopped for a moment. Neither of them had expected Mu Anqi to say something like that.
Mu Anqi thought for a moment, then took out another 200 strings of coins, wrapped them in a red envelope, and stuffed it into the wolf-mother's arms: "Mother, this is my filial gift to you. Please go marry him in my place!"
"???"
There was still no notification that the skill had been successfully activated. Seeing the two wolves looking utterly confused about their very existence, Mu Anqi increased the amount to 500 strings of coins. "Mother, please marry the mountain god in my place!"
"What madness has taken you? Did you get possessed after going out? Hurry, hurry and get someone to take a look at her!"
Clearly, even five hundred strings weren't enough to make this NPC sacrifice her life. Mu Anqi sighed inwardly, reduced it back to two hundred, and changed her request: "While I'm here, you must treat me well—no mistreatment, no restricting my freedom, and you must help me as much as possible. That should be acceptable, right?"
[Skill activated successfully!]
The familiar black mist closed in, and Mu Anqi couldn't help but laugh. She still had 17,440 strings of coins left—she could probably bribe every NPC in this village. With the wooden puppets' behavior altered, she was curious to see how this play would continue.
Marry the mountain god? She wondered how many moves that so-called mountain god could last under General Ji. Speaking of which… where had General Ji gone? Why hadn't she seen her anywhere in the village? Could it be that this Black Mirror vortex was playing out multiple dramas at the same time?
Mu Anqi couldn't figure it out. After the reset, she didn't return to the very beginning of the game but instead to the scene inside the small house where the wolf-headed parents were trying to persuade her. In other words, as the plot progressed, no matter how many times she reset, she would not go back to the start. There were many "reset points" within the storyline—any deviation from the intended plot would trigger a return to the nearest reset point to start over.
The two wolf-headed people once again tried to persuade Mu Anqi, but this time she didn't say anything shocking like "go marry in my place." She let the story proceed smoothly. While she absentmindedly listened with one ear and ignored with the other, the couple soon finished their persuasion sequence. Because of the red envelope earlier, they didn't leave immediately and instead asked Mu Anqi what she wanted to eat.
"No need to trouble yourselves—just make a simple dish of boiled pork slices, a bowl of steamed sausage rice, and a plate of stir-fried greens. Oh, and add some garlic sprouts and a bit of lard to the sausage rice."
The wolf couple: "..."
You really don't see yourself as an outsider, do you?
But since they had accepted the red envelope earlier, they said nothing. They turned to go prepare the meal and didn't lock Mu Anqi inside the room. They acted as if they had forgotten all about that, placing no restrictions on her freedom.
Finally alone, Mu Anqi stretched a bit, sat down by the bed, and called out to Ji Huaichu: "General? Where are you?"
Ji Huaichu's voice quickly sounded in her mind: "On the mountain."
"???" Mu Anqi froze. "You're the mountain god?" Then marrying over there wouldn't be such a bad thing after all…
Sitting within a formation inside a mountain cave, Ji Huaichu looked around at the pitch-black surroundings and spoke helplessly: "I don't know. As soon as I entered the vortex, I appeared within this formation. The master of this Black Mirror vortex hasn't shown up, but they've used most of their power to trap me here."
"Most likely, they think I'm a significant threat." Ji Huaichu's tone was calm, completely unbothered by being trapped. Sitting inside the formation, she asked about Mu Anqi's situation. "How are things on your end?"
"Uh, pretty good actually, no real danger." Mu Anqi replied. "It's just that… I'm supposed to be married off to the mountain god in two days."
Ji Huaichu: "?"
"General, don't worry, I know what I'm doing." Mu Anqi didn't hear a response from the other side, so she added a word of reassurance. She wasn't some harmless little pushover anymore—she could protect herself. As long as that mountain god dared to appear, she'd dare to make the mountain god "transform like a magic fairy."
Only… her reassurance didn't seem to work. Mu Anqi suddenly heard a loud explosion from Ji Huaichu's side, followed by her general's calm voice saying, "I'll come find you soon."
"…Ah." Mu Anqi blinked, unable to hide the smile spreading across her face. "General, you should be careful too. The plot of this Black Mirror vortex keeps resetting—it's quite troublesome."
No sooner had she finished speaking than the scene around her shifted abruptly. The smile on her face froze as she watched the wolf-headed couple enter the room again to "persuade" her. Mu Anqi's expression gradually went numb…
No, looking on the bright side—at least she and the general were in the same storyline…
Mu Anqi tried to comfort herself, but in the next instant, the black mist gathered again. In the blink of an eye, the wolf-headed couple entered the room once more.
…
When the wolf-headed couple entered for the thirtieth time, Mu Anqi finally couldn't help but weakly call out to General Ji: "The wedding is in two days. Maybe the plot will change by then. The system will show a flaw eventually. General, let's wait for now…"
"Mm." Ji Huaichu's voice sounded a little stiff. Mu Anqi imagined what the general must look like every time she broke the formation world only to be thrown right back into it again… Having such immense power yet being unable to break free—it was probably the first time General Ji had ever suffered such a setback.
"General, maybe you could study how to break the formation properly?" Mu Anqi said, recalling various novel tropes. "Since it's a formation, there should be a formation core somewhere."
"I will. Be careful yourself."
Mu Anqi waited for a moment, expecting the general to say something like "Don't marry the mountain god," but surprisingly, she didn't. Still, thinking about General Ji's personality, Mu Anqi quickly let it go.
She was no longer the player who could only provide support—surely the general could trust her a bit more now. Never mind not marrying the mountain god; even if it came down to killing the mountain god just to liven things up, Mu Anqi would do her best to make it happen.
After casually getting through the persuasion scene again, Mu Anqi ordered another meal. Once the wolf-headed couple left with complicated expressions to prepare it, she immediately pushed open the door, planning to explore the village and gather some information. Hopefully, she could find that tiger-headed man she had bribed earlier.
Wandering around the courtyard twice, she found the village looked like an ordinary farming settlement. The houses were self-built, each with a small yard—hers even had a big yellow dog tied up out front. Mu Anqi crouched beside the edge of the dog's range. The yellow dog glanced at her, neither barking nor getting up, just lazily dozing under a tree.
Mu Anqi called out into the courtyard, "I'll be back later for dinner!" and then walked out. The wolf-headed couple didn't chase after her. Maybe the red envelope was still working its magic—or perhaps this part of the plot didn't have any strict restrictions.
As soon as she stepped out of the yard, she saw the tiger-headed man pacing back and forth outside her house for some reason. When he spotted her, he came over, scratching his head, looking like he wanted to say something but didn't know how to start.
The tiger's ears twitched. After an awkward moment of silence, he stammered, "I don't know why… I just felt like I should come find you, that you'd need my help? Uh, about earlier—when I caught you and brought you back… that was the mountain god's order, I had no choice. No one can escape fate. So—so aside from that matter, I can help you with anything else! Really!"
If it weren't for the bribe she'd given him, Mu Anqi would have thought this tiger guy was supposed to be her character's "lover" in the village.
"I do need your help, but first I need to confirm your sincerity. No matter what I ask, you have to answer truthfully." Mu Anqi straightened her expression, stared into the tiger's eyes, and asked seriously, "What is the name of this village?"
"I'm really not lying to you… don't look at me like that." The tiger's serious expression suddenly collapsed; he thought Mu Anqi was teasing him.
"You just said you'd help me."
"…Mountain God Village." The tiger looked helpless. "Our village is called Mountain God Village. The mountain god on that mountain protects us." As he spoke, he pointed toward the tall mountain to the east of the village.
"How long has the mountain god existed? Does the mountain god have a name?"
"How long… The mountain god existed even before the village was built, I think? I'm not really sure. The mountain god is just the mountain god… How could us mere mortals possibly know the name of a deity?" The tiger looked utterly confused by her questioning.
"How does the mountain god protect you all?"
"When the crops don't yield well, we offer sacrifices to the mountain god, and the next year's harvest turns out fine. If there's drought, flooding, or locusts passing through, we also have to perform sacrifices. Y-you were personally chosen by the mountain god, you know. After the last ceremony, that red mark appeared on your family's door—that's the mountain god's way of proposing marriage."
"?" Mu Anqi was utterly puzzled. "But my family doesn't just have me—why do I have to marry the mountain god? We don't even know if the mountain god is male or female. What if He took a liking to my father? Or maybe He prefers someone more mature and fancies my mother instead?"
The tiger's expression went blank, clearly shaken by Mu Anqi's words. He tried to argue back, but his limited vocabulary left him speechless. Refute her? He didn't even know how. Following her line of thought, he even felt there was some logic to it: yeah… who said the mountain god could only take a wife? "But—but it's always been this way. In the past, it was always young maidens who were offered to the mountain god… and the mountain god never got angry…"
"Just because it's always been that way, does that make it right?" Mu Anqi quoted Lu Xun with great solemnity, successfully sending the tiger into deep contemplation. "The mountain god didn't get angry—but He didn't bestow blessings either, did He?"
After talking the tiger in circles, Mu Anqi went on to ask, "Have you ever gone up the mountain and actually seen the mountain god?"