"Why not practice grabbing a pen a little more?" Nuomi suggested.
"How do I practice?"
"Practice with your body. Repeat it over and over until your soul remembers the movement."
Zhou You thought Nuomi's suggestion was actually pretty sound this time.
He imagined a pen in front of him, reached for it, and repeatedly closed his hand around empty air.
"Doesn't that movement Zhou You's doing look familiar?" Ma Changcheng and Zhao Zhuo whispered in the seats ahead of him.
Ma Changcheng wholeheartedly agreed. "My great-grandpa has dementia, and he does that all the time."
As a cultivator, Zhou You had exceptional hearing and caught every word of their quiet muttering.
He flew into a rage, even forgetting to hide his identity as a cultivator. "I'm cultivating!"
Ma Changcheng nodded in understanding, then continued whispering to Zhao Zhuo. "He's worse than my great-grandpa."
Zhou You was about to explain when he saw their homeroom teacher, Lao Gao, enter the classroom with an unfamiliar girl. Exclamations of surprise rose throughout the room.
Normally, the students knew to shut up when their homeroom teacher entered, but this time was different.
The girl stood prettily in front of the podium. Unaccustomed to so many eyes on her, she instinctively took half a step back, her gaze darting away like a startled fawn. Coupled with her innocent looks, it was enough to win over boys and girls alike.
"She's that pretty?" Zhao Zhuo was stunned. He had only heard they were getting a new female classmate; he hadn't expected her to be so beautiful.
Zhou You raised an eyebrow. Perhaps he was imagining it, but had the new girl given him an extra glance?
Their homeroom teacher had excellent handwriting. He wrote the girl's name on the blackboard: Tang Shiyin.
"This is Tang Shiyin, our new transfer student. She'll be part of our class from now on," their homeroom teacher introduced her.
"Go ahead and introduce yourself to everyone."
"H-hello, everyone. My name is Tang Shiyin," Tang Shiyin said timidly. It was an overly brief introduction, but judging by her demeanor, she had already needed all her courage just to get out a complete sentence.
"You can sit over there." Their homeroom teacher pointed to an empty seat at the back.
Uncomfortable with so many people watching her, Tang Shiyin hurried to the last row and let out a small sigh of relief, feeling a little less nervous.
During the few short steps from the podium to the back row, quite a few students followed her with their eyes.
Their homeroom teacher's voice drew their attention back to the podium. "All right, class starts now. Take out yesterday's test papers."
The first lesson of the morning was math.
By the end of math class, the whole room was lifeless. Even students who hadn't been tired were now nodding off, their heads drooping and threatening to hit their desks at any moment. Not even the Free and Unfettered Female Emperor was an exception.
Riiing-
The shrill bell signaling the end of class rang, but the whole room remained lifeless because their homeroom teacher kept teaching past the bell.
Six minutes later, their homeroom teacher finally declared the torture over. "All right, that's it for this lesson. Let me give you today's homework."
As their homeroom teacher left the classroom, the students gradually revived, stretching like tender shoots receiving rain after a long drought.
Tang Shiyin was popular with her classmates, and a circle of people soon gathered around her.
"Where did you go to school before?"
"Are you from around here?"
"Do you need to borrow any textbooks?"
"If you run into any problems, just come to me."
Tang Shiyin answered in a fluster, at a complete loss for what to do, which only made her seem cuter.
Zhou You merely glanced in Tang Shiyin's direction. He wasn't particularly interested and continued focusing on training his soul, hoping to manage to grab the pen.
Cultivating was more interesting anyway.
After three lessons, Zhou You felt he had practiced enough and used Soul Projection to try grabbing the pen.
"Cough, cough-"
Tang Shiyin-or rather, Lian Yi-broke into a sudden coughing fit at the sight.
Lian Yi was proficient in the Transformation Technique. She could imitate all sorts of people perfectly without ever giving herself away. She even put her all into impersonating animals and had never slipped up.
But she simply couldn't keep her composure at what Zhou You was doing.
Weren't you at the qi refining stage? How could you already use Soul Projection? Was that a skill someone at your level should have?
Ever since Lian Yi had been inexplicably tormented to the point that she couldn't even return home, her desire for revenge against Chu Xiaoyao had reached unprecedented heights.
Zhou You and the other two had worn their school uniforms to Ji Sen's house, making it easy for Lian Yi to identify their school. She hadn't even needed to investigate their year. Anyone still going out in uniform during summer vacation had to be a senior-year student still attending classes.
She had gone to great lengths to arrange her transfer into Senior Class 3, all so she could observe Chu Xiaoyao up close.
She hadn't yet figured out how to get revenge. For now, she was gathering intelligence.
Ever since arriving in Class Three, she had witnessed one thing after another that defied common sense.
"I can touch it a little now!"
The Gel Pen wobbled, proving that Zhou You had just managed to affect it.
"I told you this method would work."
Nuomi was just as excited as Zhou You. This was her first time teaching someone, and she had already gotten results. She felt she had the makings of a good teacher.
And what was the deal with this female ghost?
Lian Yi had wanted to ask that question from the moment she arrived. Before she even stepped into the classroom, she had felt a chill. A ghost domain had actually formed here?!
She had also noticed that the yin energy the female ghost emitted perfectly canceled out the yang energy of the Class Three students. The yin energy wouldn't affect the students' health, and their yang energy wouldn't harm the female ghost.
An expert in the arts of yin and yang must have arranged this, Lian Yi thought. Someone capable of maintaining a perfect balance between yin and yang had to be an expert. Even she was awed by such control.
Who could it be? It certainly wasn't Su Tingxue from Dragon-Tiger Mountain. She wasn't capable of anything this impressive.
Could Chu Xiaoyao's Dao Protector, that guy who used flames, have done this? Or did the Carefree Sect have another expert?
The thought of the Red King gave Lian Yi a headache. Her cultivation was certainly inferior to his. His flames had the power of a golden core.
When it came to concealment techniques, Lian Yi feared no one. Yet despite carefully searching the school and its surroundings for the Red King, she had found nothing.
The only things she had found were a telescope and an illegally built room on the roof of a residential building. It didn't look like somewhere a mighty figure like the Red King would stay.
What an incredible concealment technique. I couldn't find so much as a trace!
Lian Yi repeatedly reminded herself that Chu Xiaoyao's Dao Protector was watching her every move. She had to be extra careful and absolutely couldn't give herself away.
"Not bad. You've found the right way to train." Chu Xiaoyao praised Zhou You's progress.
"What we call imagination can also be called mental power, or the power of conviction. People with exceptional mental power can manifest an opponent out of thin air and fight them. This lets them familiarize themselves with their opponent and gain combat experience while also improving their mental power. Two birds with one stone."
"You can do that too?" Nuomi found the idea fascinating.
She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her fists, and tried to imagine an opponent. Who should she pick?
I'll imagine that Ghost King Zhenyue. Of all the people and ghosts she knew, he was the strongest after the Grand Supreme Elder.
Nuomi made strained little humming noises, then opened her eyes. The space in front of her was empty. She hadn't managed to conjure anything.
"I failed..." Nuomi felt dejected. She had just been laughing at the Sect Master's poor imagination, only to discover that her own was nothing special either.
Watching this, Lian Yi was inwardly dumbfounded. She nearly wanted to expose her identity just to ask Chu Xiaoyao what was going on.
Never mind that this way of using mental power sounded completely absurd. Let's just say your Carefree Sect had a rich heritage, and I was too ignorant to have heard of it.
But how could a mortal like you see ghosts?!
I could assume that Zhou You had yin-yang eyes, but how were you seeing ghosts? Not even Dragon-Tiger Mountain had a technique for that.
Lian Yi's expression grew grave, her brow tightly furrowed. Coming to gather intelligence had been the right decision. She had expected the Carefree Sect's situation to be complicated, but it was even more complicated than she had imagined.
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