At the moment, the house spirit could only manifest the old two-story home with an attic. Most of the interior furnishings were still beyond its current abilities.
In the meantime, Song Miaozhu only had the little spirit manifest the bookshelf wall in what used to be the study on the first floor. It was filled with small cubbyholes. The little paper servants were busy transferring the spirit-gathering dolls from the mountain cave, moving them here through the ghost shop's storage network.
As for the rest of the furniture, she would have to wait until the house spirit grew stronger.
So for now, the study was the only room with anything in it. The others were all empty.
Upstairs, the room that used to be her bedroom was now temporarily used to store the blooming paper vines. Once the house spirit could manifest the courtyard, or once she had protected Xiaozhu Mountain with the Secret Art of Paper Crafting, she would move the paper vines outside.
She even planned to break through the floor between the study and the upper room to turn the two into one tall duplex hall, specifically designed to house the spirit-gathering dolls.
The second-floor living room would eventually serve as her new bedroom. The spirit house was well hidden and secure, so it didn't really matter which room she slept in.
The room above the old paper workshop would still serve as her closet, where she stored Yang Paper Clothes she had made for herself and her paper servants.
The kitchen, bathroom, and similar spaces were removed. That space was merged into other rooms.
After all, she now nourished her body daily with spiritual energy. She no longer needed to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. She didn't sweat, her skin didn't grow oily, and even her monthly cycle had vanished. With the Yang Paper Clothes she always wore, not even a speck of dust could cling to her.
There was no longer any need to bathe or do laundry. Otherwise, she wouldn't have lasted so long living in a crude mountain cave.
The attic still had enough space for her to work on large paper constructs.
All things considered, the current spirit house was already more than enough for her to live in.
It was just a little cramped for Little Coal, Little Snowball, and Little Goldie. Compared to the old courtyard, it was definitely less comfortable.
Standing on the balcony of the second-floor living room, Song Miaozhu looked outside and felt like she had shrunk. Her surroundings now resembled the perspective of one of her little paper servants.
The house spirit had been installed inside a shallow hollow in the tree. Yet the tree trunk outside now looked wider than a four-lane highway. A cluster of locust blossoms hung above the eaves. Each flower bud appeared as large as a washbasin. The leaves looked as wide as a windowpane.
She felt like a tiny creature tucked away in a tree, and the feeling was both strange and delightful.
This visual difference came from the spatial distortion between the inside and outside of the spirit house.
The spirit house was manifested inwardly, and though the house spirit itself was only palm-sized, it could project this entire home into that small space. Song Miaozhu herself hadn't shrunk, nor had the locust tree grown enormous. It was simply that her perception was altered by being inside the spirit house.
A locust blossom was shaken loose by the wind and fell toward the rooftop. As it dropped, it looked like it might smash a huge hole into the house. But once it landed, it was barely the size of a fingernail, rolling off the eaves. Once it reached the tree trunk below, it resumed its original basin-sized shape.
That was the clearest proof of the spatial difference between the inner and outer realms of the spirit house.
Inside, the house was its own world, yet still linked to the real one.
"Meow~"
Hearing a familiar cry, Song Miaozhu looked down toward the base of the tree.
The paper soldiers had returned with the cats.
After dismissing the paper soldiers, the little paper servants floated onto the cats' backs, herding them up the tree.
From where she stood, watching the cats climb up was like seeing elephants scale a tree. But as soon as they neared the spirit house and stepped inside, they instantly returned to normal size.
Song Miaozhu had to lean over the balcony to see the dazed cats milling around below. She went downstairs and opened the large front door of the first-floor living room.
Once the cats came in, she locked the door behind them. Then she secured the windows and balcony doors as well.
Seated in the empty living room, she cuddled the cats and fed them red fasting fruits.
"You'll have to stay indoors for a while," she told them gently.
Xiaozhu Mountain was still unprotected. Around the locust tree, only waist-high weeds offered the slightest cover. If the cats kept climbing up and down the tree to enter the house, they could easily give away its location.
They would need to stay inside for now, at least until she finished setting up the paper mist barrier around the mountain.
The "Veil of Paper Mist" was created using a paper-based obscuring technique known as the "Paper Shroud Maze." It was the only large-scale territorial Secret Art of Paper Crafting she could currently attempt.
To cast it, she needed not only spiritual paper and bamboo strips but also black dog blood, cypress ash, camphor powder, and thick yellow paper.
She had long since prepared those materials in bulk, and now she simply took them out and got to work.
First, she mixed black dog blood with cypress ash, then soaked the thick yellow paper in the mixture. Once the paper was fully saturated, she dried it and cut it into a mesh pattern. This became the Obscuring Paper.
Next, she crafted a paper stake using bamboo strips and spiritual paper. On the shaft, she wrote the character "Hidden" [隱]. This became the Ground Anchor Stake.
She then wrapped camphor powder in spiritual paper to create an incense sachet, known as the Mist-Attracting Incense.
After that, she affixed the Obscuring Paper to the stake, lit the Mist-Attracting Incense, and let the paper mist smoke bathe the components.
Once the incense had completely burned away, she used the maze technique's spirit-infusing ritual to imbue the combined stake and paper with energy. That completed one Veil of Paper Mist.
Burying the finished veil into the earth would shroud the surrounding area in white fog. No light, no matter how strong, could penetrate the barrier.
However, the Veil of Paper Mist could only obscure sight. Unlike other territorial paper constructs, it offered no protection, defense, or alarm functions.
It would also interfere with the user's own field of vision.
At its current size, it would take at least a hundred such veils to conceal the entire Xiaozhu Mountain.
So Song Miaozhu worked while cultivating, crafting and nourishing the veils one by one.
Before she finished making all one hundred, the very first veil had already matured into a spirit item. Once infused, the veil no longer blocked the vision of the one who had made it. Its fog still obstructed outsiders, but the user and those they permitted could see clearly both inside and out.
With that success, Song Miaozhu decided that every veil would be raised to the spirit level before she buried them.
Half a month later, she finally had enough spirit-infused veils. One night, under cover of darkness, she sent her paper soldiers to dig out the soil across the mountain and plant them one by one. They even restored the surface to its original state afterward.
Once the veils were buried, a soft white fog rose across Xiaozhu Mountain.
Only then did Song Miaozhu unlock the door to the spirit house.
The cats, who had been cooped up for half a month, shot down the tree like arrows loosed from a bow and dashed into the bamboo forest to play.
Like her spirit items, the cats were unaffected by the Veil of Paper Mist.
Aside from the ones planted in the mountain, she kept one veil close by, planning to continue nurturing it slowly.