A coffin that was meant to bury the bones of a young lady, was an empty coffin;
In the pavilion overlooking the abandoned village, stood a scarecrow with a head filled of white hair;
Bowls can transform into demons, birds fly about collecting flowers, and there was a demon went about riding a huge, gigantic carp……
Beasts and demons, eerie, strange occurrences in the world –
[Ebook] [Eng Translation]
The Demon in the Mirror details the journey of our female lead, Xi Feng, the human demon catcher, as she battles and challenges various demons throughout the six realms (consisting, amongst others, the Human Realm, the Demon Realm, the Heavenly Realm and the Devil Realm) with the three other companions that she’s managed to pick up / attract along the way. One of the companions which Xi Feng conveniently uncovered along the way consists, of course, of our male lead, Qing Long, who is an ancient and extremely powerful Dragon who, out of boredom millions and millions of years ago, had sealed himself into a mirror in order to hibernate away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
The novel is structured as an episodic novel, with Xi Feng, Qing Long and crew encountering various demons (such as the demon riding a gigantic carp, a straw-man demon living in an abandoned village, a bowl demon that goes around begging for food), and learning about the demons’ back-stories and dealing with such demons as they best deem fit. Along the way, we find out slightly more about each of Xi Feng’s and Qing Long’s backstory, and how they came to be how they were presented to us at the start of the novel. As with most episodic novels, however, character development does take a backseat, so it is great that Xi Feng and Qing Long have great characteristics and quirks that endears them to the readers extremely quickly. In particular, the interactions between Xi Feng and Qing Long are hilarious as Qing Long is often so clueless about social propriety and social awareness (and yet, he is, at the same time, point-blank), resulting in various hilarious situations arising between Xi Feng and Qing Long. In short, The Demon in the Mirror presents great characterizations, along with sufficiently interesting demons and backstories to keep readers wanting more, but does suffer slightly from lack of character development.