Eye-blocking Ghost

"An Eye-blocking Ghost is a very low-grade ghost. It has hardly any attack power. Even an ordinary person can deal with one." "But the way it acts is special. Do you know the first thing you have to do to deal with a ghost?" Zhou You shook his head. The only one he had ever dealt with was Nuomi, and he had dropped her with a single punch. What experience did he have? Not like Su Tingxue, born of Mount Longhu, orthodox to the bone when it came to dealing with ghosts. "To deal with a ghost, you first have to see the ghost." "See the ghost?" Zhou You didn't understand. It sounded like an easy condition to meet. Su Tingxue nodded. "A ghost has an absolute advantage over an ordinary person, because ordinary people can't see ghosts. A ghost can toy with them at will, or even kill them." "Only when you see a ghost can you touch it, fight it, seal it, or destroy it." "We disciples of Mount Longhu have all mastered the Yin-Yang Heavenly Eye. We have an absolute advantage against ghosts." "So that's how it is." Zhou You had learned something. As expected of someone from Mount Longhu—truly professional. And there was the Yin-Yang Heavenly Eye. Just the name sounded like an impressive skill. But why hadn't Su Tingxue used the Yin-Yang Heavenly Eye when she fought Nuomi that morning? Su Tingxue had no idea what nonsense Zhou You was turning over. She changed tack. "But an Eye-blocking Ghost covers your eyes." "Once it covers my Yin-Yang Heavenly Eye, I won't be able to deal with it. That's when I'll need you to pry its hands off." This was why Su Tingxue had to find someone else who could also see ghosts. Worried Zhou You might be afraid, she added, "Don't worry. An Eye-blocking Ghost has no fighting ability. Its attack power is even worse than an ordinary person's. You can handle it too." "Then what if my eyes get covered?" Zhou You asked. "That's even simpler. I'll throw a talisman and settle it." Zhou You nodded. Right now he had only one question. "Did we ride past it?" Su Tingxue was silent for a moment. A note of seriousness showed through her flat tone. "Actually, there's a place ahead with very good glutinous rice balls. It wasn't easy for you to come and help, so I wanted to treat you once." Chu Xiaoyao knew nothing about immortal cultivation in this world, so Zhou You would still have to ask Su Tingxue about the cultivation world later. With that in mind, he nodded with composure, showing he believed her. The place she meant was a little pushcart selling glutinous rice balls. Without her leading him, Zhou You truly could not have found it. "Auntie, one glutinous rice." "Oh, you're here?" The auntie selling rice balls smiled at Su Tingxue. Su Tingxue was a regular. These past two years she had often come here for glutinous rice balls. "Mm. Treating a friend. Extra glutinous rice." Su Tingxue made a point of saying so. Zhou You looked sidelong at her. Shouldn't a normal person ask for extra toppings? But Su Tingxue's face stayed blank the whole time. He couldn't tell whether she was hinting at something. Before long the rice ball was ready. The auntie made one cut, split it in two, and handed the halves to the two of them. Zhou You had scrolled past glutinous rice balls online many times. This was his first time eating one. The first bite was fragrant and chewy, mixed with the crisp, oily richness of the pork cracklings. Just when it started to feel a little greasy, the radish strips came through, cutting the richness and refreshing the palate. Delicious. "Here. Have some water." Su Tingxue handed him a bottle. Zhou You noticed she had actually twisted open an unopened cap with one hand! This was no one-yuan mineral water in a soft bottle. It was a two-yuan bottle of Nongfu Spring! When he was bored, Zhou You had noticed that everyone opened caps with both hands, and a whim had struck him: what if he tried an unopened cap with only one? The result was that a cap he could normally twist off with ease was now welded fast to the bottle. Countless little bridges locked the cap to the neck. One hand could not turn it at all. Su Tingxue opening it one-handed meant her fingers were extremely strong! "You noticed?" Su Tingxue was surprised he had caught a detail like that. "This is the mark the cultivation world recognizes for becoming a cultivator at the Qi Refining stage: opening an unopened bottle cap with one hand." "Isn't the cultivation world's recognized mark of a Qi Refining cultivator a bit..." Zhou You wrestled with the wording and couldn't find anything that fit. The moment he needed the words, he regretted how little he had read. Su Tingxue was not surprised by his reaction. She herself had been very surprised when she first heard the standard. But after her master explained the whole story, she had completely accepted it. "I heard that in the old days they used the strength of one ox and that sort of thing as the standard. But the great powers of the cultivation world looked into it and decided that many immortal cultivators of the new generation had never even seen an ox, so the strength of however many oxen wasn't intuitive enough. They changed it to opening a bottle cap with one hand." Zhou You thought back. He had grown up in the city. He had returned to his rural hometown a few times, but he had never seen an ox either. Put that way, the great powers had been quite considerate. But they had even investigated something like this. Didn't they have a bit too much time on their hands? "Becoming a cultivator at the Qi Refining stage has two main features. One is an all-around rise in physical ability, shown by opening a bottle cap with one hand. The other is inward vision of one's own body, and seeing one's own meridians." "No soul leaving the body?" Zhou You thought of his own changes, and of what Chu Xiaoyao had said: that reaching the Qi Refining stage meant the soul leaving the body. Su Tingxue showed a rare look of surprise. "The soul leaving the body? Isn't that just being dead?" "..." Given his own situation, Zhou You felt he ought to still be alive. As they talked, the two of them cycled back to the intersection on Zhonghua Avenue. "What do we do?" Su Tingxue had already settled on a plan along the way. "Besides covering eyes, an Eye-blocking Ghost has another trait. It comes and goes without a trace, and there's no warning at all before it appears. All we can do is wait for it to come to us. We keep cycling back and forth through the intersection and draw it over." "Won't the bait be too obvious?" Zhou You asked. The two of them cycling through the crossing again and again—even Nuomi would know it was a trap if she saw it. "No. An Eye-blocking Ghost isn't very intelligent. It won't be able to tell this is a trap." So the two of them began riding back and forth through the intersection, baking under the blazing sun. They drank four bottles of mineral water and were soaked in sweat. An hour passed. Zhou You didn't know whether the Eye-blocking Ghost was intelligent or not, but the two of them certainly weren't. "Stop a moment. This won't work." Zhou You couldn't take any more. His chest and back were drenched. He had never heard that catching ghosts was physical labor. He began to miss Nuomi. If Nuomi were here, it wouldn't be this hot. "Do you have another way?" Su Tingxue couldn't quite keep her composure. The plan did not match what was actually happening. Sweat slid over her pretty face in a lovely curve. Glug, glug— Zhou You drank half a bottle in one go and splashed the rest over his face. The heat receded for the moment, and his head cleared a little. "Think it through. An Eye-blocking Ghost covers a pedestrian's or a driver's eyes so they'll have an accident. The two of us are cycling side by side. Cover our eyes however it likes, and no accident can come of it," Zhou You said. "By rights, one of us should play the driver and the other the pedestrian. That would give us the best chance of tricking the ghost out. But we're both minors. We can't drive." "In that case, we'd better split up. You keep cycling. I'll be a pedestrian who suddenly steps out from the roadside." Su Tingxue thought it over and decided he was right. "It's a way." She had long been tired enough to want another method, only she had never thought of a good one. Now that Zhou You had come up with something new, she had no reason to refuse—especially since the new method sounded workable. They set to it at once. Zhou You parked his bicycle at the roadside, pretended to be a pedestrian, and walked along the road. Using the big trees by the curb, he made a blind spot in Su Tingxue's line of sight, then suddenly appeared. The first eight times, nothing changed. On the ninth performance of their collision, something did. The sun hung high ahead, glaring, hot and blinding. Suddenly Su Tingxue's vision went black. A pair of damp, cold, dark hands appeared out of nowhere, reaching out from behind her head, brushing across her cheeks, and covering her eyes! She couldn't see a thing. Su Tingxue braked hard and planted a foot, shouting, "Zhou You, it's here!" She didn't need to shout. Playing the pedestrian, Zhou You saw it perfectly clearly. He was only three steps from her. A long-haired female ghost covered in blood clung to Su Tingxue's back, blood-soaked hands covering her eyes. The ghost slowly turned her head. All at once her neck seemed to drop loose, spinning a hundred and eighty degrees, and she stared straight at Zhou You. The corners of her mouth split all the way to her ears in an eerie smile. "So this is an Eye-blocking Ghost." Zhou You drew two deep breaths to steady himself and recalled what Su Tingxue had said. An Eye-blocking Ghost looked frightening, but its attack power was worse than an ordinary person's. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be afraid of. He only had to pry its hands away. He had barely taken a step when his hairs stood on end. Something icy and yin was clinging to his back. A pair of big hands found the back of his head and slid along his cheeks to cover his eyes. His vision went black. He couldn't see a thing. Zhou You instinctively reached up to pull the big hands off his eyes, and grasped empty air. A pair of hands was clearly covering his eyes, yet he could neither see them nor touch them. Zhou You's heart sank. A second Eye-blocking Ghost.