A Single Leaf Blinds the Eye

So it was you...

The monster before him was none other than a bamboo rat, the most dim-witted and delicious creature in the bamboo forest.

The greatest food of the master of Rat-Killing Mountain Manor.

Looking up at it from beneath its feet was different from looking down at it from above as he used to. No wonder it had seemed familiar.

Xu Chunliang swallowed again. This thing would surely taste good roasted.

The monster sensed Xu Chunliang's hunger. Its chubby body trembled, and it hurriedly turned and ran, plunging its enormous head deep into the bamboo leaves, leaving only a pair of fat buttocks quivering outside.

It looked just like an ostrich.

This was no time to eat. Xu Chunliang paid him no more attention and led the other four onward.

After an unknown length of time, they went around a sleeping giant snake taller than a man and killed a huge white grub. The five of them stopped among the bamboo.

Xu Chunliang pinched the bridge of his nose and said softly:

"Something's wrong."

"It's not that the bamboo forest is too tall. We've gotten smaller."

As soon as he finished speaking, the bamboo forest rapidly shrank, returning to its original, normal height.

Another gust of wind blew past, and scattered bamboo leaves fell, briefly forming a line of words in front of them.

[First trial, a single leaf blinds the eye: cleared.]

Xu Chunliang rolled his eyes. He looked at the bamboo house not far away, then turned to look behind him. After all that time, they had only taken ten steps, and he had even been startled by a bamboo rat.

This Madam Bamboo really knew how to play.

He set off again.

At some point, rain had begun to fall in the bamboo forest. It pattered down, very romantic.

Xu Chunliang held a bamboo umbrella and walked through the bright bamboo forest, a woman in each arm.

The girl in white on his left had tears in her lovely eyes and looked pitiful, while the woman on his right was graceful and noble, with an extraordinary bearing.

Both of them nestled in Xu Chunliang's arms.

"Husband, what are you wearing on your wrist? It's digging into my shoulder." The girl, who had been silently weeping at the bamboo forest, reached out and raised his arm.

She rolled up his sleeve.

On Xu Chunliang's fair wrist, two small holes had been pierced through the skin, and a length of bloodstained hemp rope threaded through them.

A small scarlet counterweight hung from the rope.

"Huh? Husband? Why do you have one of these on your hand? It's so ugly!" the girl asked blankly.

Squelch!

A rusty iron hook pierced the girl's chest, drawing a gush of blood.

An illusory rusty hook scale appeared above her head. As if someone were holding the scale aloft, it lifted her up and left her hanging high in the air.

The graceful woman on the right was about to speak when-squelch!

A hook pierced her chest too. The yellow hemp rope slowly rose, leaving her hanging among the bamboo as well.

Xu Chunliang smiled faintly and reached out to touch the counterweight on his wrist.

The raindrops falling around him stopped in an instant. Every drop hung motionless, as though someone had pressed pause.

Xu Chunliang snapped his fingers.

The raindrops shattered, the hook scales shattered, the women shattered. Everything shattered.

The bamboo forest around him turned black again.

On the left, Shi Qin hugged a bamboo stalk tightly and kept waving behind him. "Don't come any closer. I'm not your husband. I have a child..."

On the right, Chen Ge, dressed in a fish-dragon robe, braced his hands against two black bamboo stalks and kept thrusting his hips into empty air.

Behind them, Li Jun, dressed in black, lay sprawled out fast asleep. He had probably already finished.

Ahead of them, Du Qiang, who had always been rigid and proper and whose son was said not to be his own, sat leaning back on the ground with his eyes tightly shut, holding his arms as though he had a woman on either side. Smiling, he said:

"Give it..."

"A kiss."

Xu Chunliang rolled his eyes.

His hastily assembled team really was a gathering of crouching dragons and fledgling phoenixes, one talent after another!

Xu Chunliang reached out and shook Shi Qin awake, then swung his arm in a wide arc and slapped Chen Ge, Li Jun, and Du Qiang across the face.

The blows woke them instantly.

The three men's faces reddened, and they all muttered to themselves: ...

"What a vicious weird entity..."

"Hee-hee~" A soft giggle rang out. More leaves fell.

[Second trial, tears of the Xiang consorts: cleared.]

"Hee-hee~" Another soft giggle rang out, and the bamboo around the five men began to sway wildly.

The giggling flitted from left to right through the dark bamboo forest, extremely eerie.

Listening closely, it also sounded like wind blowing through the bamboo.

"Xu Chunliang, do you think I look like a human or a god?"

Xu Chunliang turned at the sound. The black bamboo forest in front of him instantly parted, and the bamboo house hidden within it shot forward to stand before him.

The door opened. A yellow-faced woman sat on a bamboo chair inside,

Her figure was shapely, but many holes of the same size had eerily appeared all over her body.

A breeze blew past, making a buzzing sound through her body.

"Xu Chunliang, tell me, do I look like a human or a god?"

The woman blinked, and the holes in her body vanished in an instant. She became a beautiful woman wearing a tiny black dudou.

The dudou was so small that it failed to cover much of what it should have.

She held out a slender, fair hand and beckoned to Xu Chunliang, asking again, "Xu Chunliang, tell me, do I look like a human or a god?"

Xu Chunliang looked up at the sky.

When he lowered his head again, his face was wreathed in smiles. He slowly walked toward the woman:

"I really have seen gods. And I've seen many people. To tell the truth, you look like neither a human nor a god."

"You things are more like rats in a gutter..."

"You pretend to be gods and ghosts, yet you don't even know what a god really looks like... You're always playing ambiguous tricks to frighten people. What's there to be afraid of..."

"A real god-when you hear its name or see its form, you'll be annihilated instantly. Come on, I'm still busy. I'll send you to meet a real god right now. If you're fortunate enough to see it."

Squelch.

The small brass knife stabbed into her body, piercing her clean through.

Hm? Hollow?

The knife had passed easily through her body without meeting the slightest resistance. Xu Chunliang knew something was wrong.

He looked down and saw a person-sized, cylindrical lattice cage woven from bamboo hanging from the small brass knife.

It was a bamboo wife, the kind ordinary people held in their arms while sleeping to cool off in the heat of midsummer.

"Hee-hee, Xu Chunliang, tell me, do I look like a human or a god?"

Another woven bamboo chair appeared in front of Xu Chunliang, with a petite woman sitting on it.

She wore embroidered shoes on her three-inch golden lotuses, a green top and skirt, and a bamboo hairpin.

A stiff smile hung on her face as she smiled at Xu Chunliang. "Xu Chunliang, tell me, am I..."

"Tell you my ass!" A savage voice rang out. Du Qiang had already leaped forward, stabbing a knife into the woman's body.

But the woman turned into a bamboo cylinder again.

"Hee-hee, since you're in such a hurry, Du Qiang, tell me, do I look like a god or a human?"

"I think you look like a dead person!" Du Qiang spat.

"Hee-hee~, wrong answer. As punishment... be a dead person, then."