Proving one's status starting with magical girls

Yuan An had a very long dream. He dreamed of clear waters in a vast marsh, of the waning moon's shimmering light, of a figure as beautiful as jade, of immortal swords, of a young man, of the Yuan family... and of himself.

"If I can fool my friends, what's wrong with fooling my master too..."

The boy's faint voice rang in Yuan An's ears, but when he looked up, all he saw was darkness.

......

"Bang!"

The violent shaking startled Yuan An awake.

He tried to turn over, but his body seemed to be bound by something, and he couldn't move.

It's like being in a dark, sunless cage, unable to see or know anything.

"who I am?"

In this endless darkness, Yuan An tried hard to recall the past, but the memories slipped through his fingers like flowing water, and he gained nothing except a few vague images.

In the end, only the name "Yuan An" remained.

It may be a quarter of an hour, or it may have been several hours, days, months, or years. Time does not exist in this dark and sunless cage.

Only when a faint light fell did the world in Yuan An's eyes slowly come to light.

stars.

The first thing that catches the eye is the misty night sky filled with countless stars, which still shimmer with starlight.

A full moon hung high in the night sky, its cool, clear light spilling onto a cracked, antique mirror in the green belt.

"This is me..."

The perspective seemed to rise infinitely, allowing Yuan An to immediately identify the mirror, while also giving rise to new doubts.

"How can I be a mirror? I should be a person... at least have a human body."

But before he could have any more questions, a dazzling light came from afar, accompanied by a piercing horn.

"Beep—!"

The car sped past on the road, leaving Yuan An stunned for a moment.

"What...what is this?"

Noisy music and colorful rainbows filled his vision. A gray-brown road several meters wide ran through rows of tall buildings. Square iron boxes passed through the road. Strange people dressed in strange clothes walked side by side, chatting and laughing.

Hanging on the tallest building directly in front is a painting ten feet wide and several feet long. The figures in the painting seem to have come alive, incredibly vivid, yet without a trace of mystery. The figures in the painting are radiant with a purplish-red hue, like a body of cold jade, with a light makeup that reveals their elegant and refined features.

Looking at the things around him, Yuan An suddenly felt at a loss.

"Could it be that demonic cultivators are in power, leading to such moral decay?"

As he pondered, a strange sense of familiarity and a dissociative sense of alienation intertwined in his mind, until he tried to reach out and touch this world, he remembered that his current physical form was just a mirror.

Yuan An looked at the full moon in the sky with a feeling in his heart.

He woke up in the mirror. Although most of his memories had faded, he still vaguely remembered that he had once been a powerful cultivator closely associated with the Taiyin sect.

Now the full moon hangs in the sky, and even a ray of yin light shines on the mirror, but Yuan An has no sense of yin at all. How could this not make him suspicious?

"It's moonlight... It seems the full moon, drawn by the mirror, cast a sliver of yin light, allowing me to briefly escape from the mirror's body... But why can't I sense the yin energy?"

"No, that's not right... Although it's very similar, this isn't the Taiyin light I remember. If we're talking about something else... it seems to have more of the Jueyin, the wonder of the female water..."

Looking at the colorful world around him, Yuan An was completely bewildered, his mind filled with countless questions, but no one could answer them for him.

He sighed.

"I only regret that I am not born as a human; this world and I are like the moon's reflection in water, a mirror's reflection!"

Since I can't figure it out, I might as well stop thinking about it.

He wandered around casually, sometimes peeking into fast food restaurants, sometimes standing in the middle of an intersection, taking advantage of the fact that no one could see him, and brazenly observing the vehicles waiting at the red light and their drivers. He found it all very novel and still felt a sense of lingering curiosity.

He pondered to himself.

"These characters are completely unfamiliar to me, yet I understand their meaning at a glance. How astonishing!"

He wanted to observe a little longer, but the world in his eyes suddenly seemed to shrink a little, or rather, become a little farther away. Although it was only a tiny bit, it still alerted him.

Yuan An had previously measured that his field of vision was about fifty meters around the mirror, and he could not see clearly beyond that. Now that his field of vision had been extended, it could only mean one possibility.

The mirror has been moved!

He quickly turned his gaze back and saw a black-haired girl of about fifteen or sixteen years old, wearing a school uniform, squatting by the roadside green belt, her hands raised high, curiously looking at the bluish-gray bronze mirror in her hands—it was the mirror that housed his original body!

"Huh, is that a mirror?"

The girl tilted her head, and under the colorful neon lights, the bronze mirror in her hand seemed to be covered with a layer of gray shadow, yet a bluish-white light reflected the full moon in the sky, emitting a few points of clear light.

The faint light appeared very weak under the artificial light source. The girl rubbed her eyes, and the light immediately disappeared.

"It's just a reflection, I must be seeing things... But this mirror looks really broken, is it a fake?"

The girl looked at herself in the mirror with suspicion, but couldn't figure out what the design was.

"Hmm, I'll take it to the antique market tomorrow and see if I can sell it for some money."

The girl casually stuffed the mirror into her schoolbag, stood up, and looked up at the figure with waist-length hair and wearing a gorgeous trailing dress on the screen above the street, a hint of longing in her eyes.

"Magical Girl Purple Peony...the hero who protects the city, I really hope to see her in person..."

But when she looked at her somewhat worn school uniform and her slightly pale fingers, her eyes dimmed again.

Amidst the bustling crowds and the incessant honking of horns, the young girl walked alone into the throng, embarking on her journey home.

The girl boarded the last bus, sat by the window, and stared blankly at the receding crowd outside until the bus announced its arrival. She then got off the bus and walked into the alley behind the station.

The girl wandered through the alleyways, past a small shop under the dim yellow light, and past a sign that said "ten yuan for a haircut." She stood in front of a very old building and stepped into the dark stairwell.

Many years ago, the lights in the stairwell worked, but after a monster appeared in the area, the building was labeled as a dangerous building. Although water and electricity are still supplied, no one has maintained it since.

After climbing to the fifth floor, the girl was already panting a bit. Fortunately, her destination was right in front of her. She took out her keys, went into her home, and found the house completely dark.

She's home.