Fantasy in the Mirage
At the foot of Mt. Mang, there is a forgotten town where everything feels wrong.
Books are read aloud in vacant rooms. Tea boils, fragrant, and the pot pours on its own.
This splendid land, this deep-seated love. One laments this life, yet cannot bear to leave its taste behind. All one could wish is to stay.
- Hu Jun (Interlude)While making her way back to the Tianshi Bureau for study, Lin Qingyan receives a letter from Zuo Le, asking her to investigate Yun Qingping's disappearance. Doing so, however, gets her sucked into a strange little town, and a different, utterly baffling case involving the theft of a secret tome of martial arts.
- Mr. Pu (Interlude)At Mr. Pu's school, Lin Qingyan encounters talking brooms, walking scrolls... and finding out the truth of this town from Mr. Pu, she pieces together that in the fight for the secret tome, an altogether greater mess is brewing for Mangshan Town.
- The Story of the Stone (Interlude)While investigating a robbery, Lin Qingyan retrieves a stone for a dying old man, one that has accompanied him his entire life. After losing and regaining the stone, the old man thinks back on his fated encounters with that collector, scattered throughout his life.
- Bai Jin (Interlude)Yun Qingping learns that the one who 'invited' him to Mt. Mang is currently atop the mountain proper. While climbing, he helps rescue a wandering lady's husband from a game of weiqi. Only then does he learn that the game has been ongoing for many years, waiting for someone who could resolve it.
- Errant Swordsman (Interlude)The swordsman loses his sword, but meets someone after his own heart—the one whom Lin Qingyan is chasing for the theft of the tome. Thunder breaks the woman's geisthood, and it turns out the swordsman never lost his sword, after all.
- Reaching the Top (Interlude)The secret tome that all jianghu seeks turns out to have been stolen by Huai Tianpei at the behest of a Shanhaizhong member by the name of Mo Yi. Mo Yi uses it to summon a massive illusion in the form of Shuo, which Huai Tianpei duels.
- Town Chronicle (Interlude)A hundred years ago, Mangshan Town was destroyed by the awakening of the bestial Sui. But with destruction comes rebirth. With the help of Yi, master of the Garden of Grotesqueries, the newly-born geists helped returning townsfolk rebuild their home. They live together in the new Mangshan Town to this day.