"Does a dark wizard really live here?"
"That's what Old Man Atal said."
"But in my impression, a dark wizard's house shouldn't look like this." Zhang Jixin's gaze swept across the beautiful lawn and the neatly trimmed, round shrubs surrounding it. Then he looked at the lazy gate guardian beast and the somewhat stupid Door-ring Beast, muttering as he repeated himself, "...It shouldn't look like this."
"Then what should it look like?" Zheng Qing retorted. "A row of Man-hitting Willows planted outside, with several rows of Man-eating Flowers? A skeletal guard dog with a deformed head, drooling saliva that could eat through granite? And the Door-ring Beast should answer visitors' questions in a sinister voice?"
"It doesn't necessarily have to be a skeletal dog," the Red-faced Male Wizard corrected him solemnly. "It could be a Three-headed Dog, or a Hound of Hell, or some nameless monster stitched together from several creatures."
"Or a Sphinx." The topic caught Zhu Si's attention, freeing her from the Sleepy Bug's entanglement. She eagerly added, "You have to solve a riddle before entering. If you can't, the Sphinx eats you!"
"That sounds full of prejudice," Fatty Xin assessed objectively.
"But isn't that how everyone imagines dark wizards?" Zhang Jixin spread his hands and complained. "Solitary, gloomy, living somewhere far from people, keeping a hairless old cat, with three or four abominations as servants..."
"Creak!"
The old house's front door was pushed open, interrupting Zhang Jixin's rant and the uninvited guests' little discussion. Zheng Qing instinctively raised the talisman gun in his hand, as though an abomination dragging its sluggish steps and trailing pus and blood would appear before him the next moment.
But clearly, the owner of the beautiful lawn before the house did not share the dreadful aesthetic sense of ordinary dark wizards. What