Chapter 3: Space and Time

The data lay spread out on the desk in Luo Qi's dormitory; from the photos to the profiles, everything looked unremarkable, and Luo Qi quickly lost interest. He calculated that this social survey couldn't be called difficult, at most it was trivial. Besides, the main lead was that precocious Du Zhengyi; all he had to do was play the assistant, or to put it bluntly, be a lackey and do as he was told.

Liu Xing, however, was very interested. He kept flipping through the data Luo Qi had brought back, rearranging the photos on the desk. There had never been any secrets between Luo Qi and Liu Xing; as soon as he returned from the teacher's office, he had impatiently told Liu Xing the whole story. Liu Xing's enthusiasm was even higher than Luo Qi's, asking him to recount the events over and over again until Luo Qi truly couldn't squeeze out any new details, and ever since then, Liu Xing had been studying this data.

Luo Qi watched with little interest as Liu Xing obsessively rearranged the data once more, then finally turned around to speak to him, only to have the first words out of his mouth be: "This isn't right!"

"Boss, if you can tell what's wrong just by sitting in the dorm, can I just write the report directly without having to go do the field research?" Luo Qi replied listlessly.

"No, I understand the target event for this research. Every now and then, some clumsy people use their abilities and get spotted by humans, followed by some so-called supernatural sighting reports. It's just that humans are particularly fond of lying and showing off, so these kinds of reports are always a mix of truth and falsehood that's hard to pin down. From a Mage's perspective, studying how human society reacts to these things is definitely the kind of boring task that some academic types are willing to do," Liu Xing said with a thoughtful expression, looking a bit like he did when doing strategic analysis for games. "But why would this research project choose the two of you to participate?"

Luo Qi was startled and hesitated. He hadn't told Liu Xing the reason he was selected; it was truly a bit embarrassing to say. He wavered, beating around the bush, "Because I'm the only Third Grade student who might not make it to Fourth Grade and I'm in desperate need of credits?"

Liu Xing shook his head. "Of course I know you have a motive for participating in this social survey practice, but I mean, why would Du Zhengyi want to get involved in this at a time like this? He's a famous top student who doesn't need extra credits at all. Besides, he's graduating soon, so why would he participate in some social practice?"

So he wasn't asking why he himself was selected; Luo Qi breathed a sigh of relief. But then he understood what Liu Xing meant. His mind had been too tense, only thinking about his own problems, and now that Liu Xing brought it up, he remembered Du Zhengyi again. Indeed, with Du Zhengyi's grades and resume, he would have plenty of choices after graduation, including many very promising ones; there was no need for him to come and waste time on this.

Liu Xing ignored his belated realization and pondered to himself, "I think there's definitely something going on here, perhaps something good, otherwise he certainly wouldn't go. Tomorrow is the last day of exams, right? Then at the earliest, the day after tomorrow, you'll be going into the Otherworld with him."

Luo Qi's attention wandered again. Every time he heard Liu Xing say the word "Otherworld," he wanted to laugh. It was a rather old-fashioned term; Liu Xing had been raised by his Nainai and Mama, and from time to time, he would inadvertently use old-fashioned language.

In the old tongue, the Otherworld referred to the world of ordinary humans. They also lived in the world of the Otherworld, yet to humans, they did not exist, or perhaps they only drifted by like a fleeting shadow in distant human legends or children's stories.

There were always some Mages who called for their own kind to maintain their dignity, to reject the suicidal hedonism of humans, and to denounce the human destruction of the natural ecology. These views were highly accepted among the older generation who were not so strongly assimilated, and they always insisted on calling the human world the Otherworld.

Luo Qi scoffed at this notion; he believed in human evolution. Mages were merely a branch of primates on the evolutionary tree; their ancestors and human ancestors were very likely the same mother monkey. Perhaps it was more appropriate to use the name modern humans gave them—Ability User.

Luo Qi explained his theories on evolution and Ability Users, along with the Marvel Great Mage, to Liu Xing. Liu Xing raised an eyebrow at him until he gradually shut his mouth. "Is scattering your thoughts your Mage talent?"

"..."

"Don't you think this girl is quite pretty?" Liu Xing flicked the photo and examined it carefully.

Luo Qi sighed and took the photo Liu Xing handed him. Others were never interested in his theories, even though he thought they were quite good. He had already looked at this photo several times; the girl was decent, the feeling between her brows was very light, and she was indeed the type Liu Xing liked. However, when he looked at it just now, he felt something was off, and now that he looked again, he finally realized the source of the dissonance: the tips of her hair were a cutesy pink, which didn't match her facial style at all.

Liu Xing's speculation had also dug a hole in his heart, and by the time Du Zhengyi asked to meet him, he felt even more restless. He was worried that the good thing had come too abruptly. He sincerely hoped everything would go smoothly; whether he could graduate and whether he could get his Mage License almost depended on this one move.

The place Du Zhengyi asked to meet him was a teahouse run by a Mage, located in the center of the old city district of the human city. Even though Luo Qi often spent time in human communities, he wasn't very familiar with this kind of place. He circled around a patch of dilapidated residential buildings several times; it was an open-plan residential complex and also the territory of a group of stray cats. He wandered around and bumped into them for the third time before he suddenly found the teahouse. A giant sign for an e-sports internet cafe almost completely blocked the teahouse's cramped little sign; if you didn't look carefully, you wouldn't see that the teahouse was opened right above the internet cafe.

Luo Qi hurried into the unit door. His first impression of Du Zhengyi was that he was a very difficult person to deal with. It was said he had many talents, but tolerating other people's lateness was certainly not one of them.

While going upstairs, Luo Qi had other worries. Recently, it had become popular for merchants to show off their personality on their storefronts, and you had to put in some effort to figure out the way in. There was a famous ice cream shop that only sad people could open the door to; there was also a fantastic barbecue restaurant that only people in high spirits could open the door to—Luo Qi was a regular at this shop and could pass through successfully every time. Luo Qi speculated that both types of door locks were Medical Magic, capable of detecting hormones secreted by the body to infer the diner's mood. Of course, installing such locks was a gimmick for merchants to attract customers. But there was a jewelry store in Xi'an that was just ridiculous; to find the main entrance, you first had to solve a nine-linked ring, which was just nonsense! If you had to check your IQ before being allowed into a store, then it was no wonder that store later went out of business.

Luo Qi broke into a cold sweat, fearing that Du Zhengyi would find some bizarre shop to make things difficult for him. Who would have thought that as soon as he stepped onto the landing of the stairs, he would look up and see the teahouse door wide open, with a half-old cloth curtain printed with two beckoning cats hanging on the door—it was tacky to the extreme, yet it actually carried a touch of warmth.

Luo Qi approached the beckoning cat curtain tremblingly, guarding against the door lock appearing at the last moment. Sometimes, before and after a door lock was opened, the scene could be completely different; what he saw now was a beckoning cat teahouse, but after it was truly unlocked, it might reveal an exquisite Zen garden.

Luo Qi did enough mental preparation and walked forward slowly.

Then, nothing happened. Through the open door, he saw two tables of Old Mages playing mahjong—come to think of it, only this thing could span the two worlds of Mage and human, and even the old men who practiced isolationism couldn't refuse mahjong.

More importantly, Du Zhengyi was not hard to find; he was very conspicuous among a group of old men drinking tea, playing cards, and chatting. He was leaning back against the window, sitting sideways in a slouch at the innermost broken table, writing furiously on a pile of paper drafts. The background music was the old, melodious singing from the teahouse's tape recorder: "The beautiful night is so quiet, only my zither sound remains on the grassland, wanting to write a letter to the girl far away, yeah~~, pity there is no postman to deliver the love, eh eh eh."

Luo Qi covered his face. This person was either too unrefined or too damn pretentious. He had thought that the place where Du Zhengyi, the legendary "child of someone else," would stay must be extraordinary, but who knew this teahouse was quite consistent inside and out.

He walked over, threw his schoolbag on a chair, and pulled out the chair opposite Du Zhengyi, intending to sit down and talk. Du Zhengyi didn't even lift his head; he raised his left index finger and made a "wait a moment" gesture. "One minute."

Luo Qi sat down, entertained himself, picked up Du Zhengyi's teapot, and poured himself a cup of tea. While drinking the tea, he kept his eyes on what Du Zhengyi was writing, with ten thousand curiosities waiting to jump out of his throat to figure out what exactly Du Zhengyi was writing.

The time had long passed one minute, it was almost five minutes, but Du Zhengyi still hadn't finished writing. Luo Qi quietly reached out and flipped to the bottom page of the draft pile, pulled it out, and looked at the cover. On it, written in bold, sweeping calligraphy, were a few large characters—Non-linear Cyclic Multi-dimensional Space Conversion.

He pondered; this must be Du Zhengyi's graduation thesis.

"If you drip tea on it, I will kill you."

Luo Qi was startled and looked up at Du Zhengyi. The latter was still racing against time to write, looking impatient as if he were in a hurry. However, Luo Qi was never someone who could hold back from speaking. Having finally broken the ice, he struck while the iron was hot and asked cheekily, "What does this mean? Can you explain it to me?"

The fountain pen in Du Zhengyi's hand paused. He looked up and glanced at Luo Qi. "Don't you read books usually?"

Luo Qi shrugged and picked up his teacup to take a sip.

Du Zhengyi looked at him again, as if evaluating whether he was playing dumb. Luo Qi wanted to help him out; smart people always thought too much, but he couldn't say it directly, "Big Brother, I'm truly stupid, so can you be more direct when working with me?"

Du Zhengyi seemed to have guessed his thoughts, sighed deeply as if giving up, and prepared to answer him.

Luo Qi suddenly remembered how good the academic types were at blathering on and hurriedly interrupted his breathing, "Big Brother, keep it simple, say something I can understand."

The expression on Du Zhengyi's face suddenly became very interesting; he seemed to smile, but still opened his mouth to explain, "When traveling through the Subspace, you need to first calculate the location of the Beacon. What I am researching is a new calculation method."

Luo Qi understood, "You are very good at Spatial Teleportation?" This was the biggest advantage in Mage duels.

Du Zhengyi looked at him. "You can't?"

"Theoretically I can, but I haven't taken the lab class yet." Luo Qi blushed and argued forcefully.

Du Zhengyi nodded, writing while saying, "Improvements in the Beacon Algorithm can allow the traveler to see the destination faster, or... to put it in more common terms, it reduces the Mage's chanting time. However, during actual operation, the Mage's sense of direction is the most crucial factor in completing Space Travel. In 1851, when a wealthy family in Gansu was tearing down a courtyard wall, they dug out a mummified corpse from inside, which even alarmed the local government at the time. The terrified host family couldn't explain what was going on, suffered a lawsuit for nothing, and spent countless silver just to barely save their lives. That family couldn't stay in the area anymore, and a few years later they decided to move the whole family. Who knew that when they were crossing the Yellow River, they encountered a flood, and the whole family drowned. Ah, of course, that's a later story, I've digressed."

Luo Qi felt a chill out of nowhere and shivered. "Was that mummified corpse a Mage?"

"Yes, that doomed Mage had been missing for a few years. The Mage Supreme Committee at the time received this ghostly news and also sent people to investigate, eventually confirming the identity of the deceased and the cause of death." Du Zhengyi said it lightly. "The reason was that the deceased had poor spatial awareness and got stuck in the wall during Teleportation, and just died like that."

Luo Qi was silent; this way of dying was truly too stifling. Perhaps the person was still alive when they passed into the wall, only to slowly suffocate in the compacted rammed-earth wall. "Why did he..." he asked half a sentence with a clumsy tongue.

Du Zhengyi understood what he was asking and nodded very intelligently. "He wanted to enter the inner quarters of that wealthy family to date their young lady. You know, many Mages like this sort of thing, pretending to be fox spirits or something to seduce human girls." After finishing, he even looked up and gave him a meaningful glance.

Luo Qi came back to his senses and cursed Du Zhengyi in his heart. What did he mean? Did he look like a frivolous Mage with a lecherous face? But thinking back, his Mama had warned him seriously several times that his spatial awareness was very poor and he should never have the idea of traveling through space in the future. But in this world, besides space, only the research field of time was the coolest.

"Then... do you know about Time Studies?" Luo Qi thought for a moment and said hesitantly, "How is the major of Prediction?" "The future is unpredictable," Du Zhengyi said in a low voice, but his tone was unusually firm.

"Have you heard of Great Mage Chu Jin?" Luo Qi asked carefully.

"Of course," Du Zhengyi said. This time he stopped his pen, looked up at Luo Qi, and said slowly, "Chu Jin is a famous Calculator; of course I've heard her lectures."

"She is my Mama's youngest sister," Luo Qi said. "My aunt has always believed that the future is predictable; as long as one can complete massive calculations, one can predict an accurate future. She is very interested in human computer science; she thinks the working principle of computers is a good line of thought. But I don't know if she succeeded; she has rarely come home in the last few years, and we don't know what she is doing."

Du Zhengyi looked at Luo Qi, his right hand still holding the fountain pen, pressing on the bottom of that page of manuscript. Luo Qi suddenly realized that Du Zhengyi's expression at this moment was actually serious, and he couldn't help but feel a bit flattered. Du Zhengyi's attitude toward him had always been like teasing a pet. He hadn't resisted yet; after all, there was a gap between them smashed open by age, experience, ability, and knowledge, and he wasn't that overestimating of his own capabilities. But who would have thought that he could force Du Zhengyi to be serious inadvertently? This made him feel a bit puffed up. "I also like computers very much. I think technically speaking, prediction can be realized sooner or later."

"I didn't say it couldn't be realized technically," Du Zhengyi said. "I just think prophecy is meaningless."

This was a bit like sophistry, Luo Qi thought secretly, surprised that Du Zhengyi had such a "chuunibyou" moment.

Du Zhengyi seemed to see through his thoughts again and shook his head. "Unless your aunt decides to be a bystander of the world for the rest of her life, just staring at the results for her own amusement, then I have nothing to say. The future is always dynamic—you know the predicted result, you make a change, and the predicted result no longer holds; all observation points are invalidated, and the ending remains unknown."

Luo Qi was stunned.

Du Zhengyi returned to the starting point of the topic. "There are only two branches of Time Studies. Besides Prediction, which faces the future, there is Observation, which faces the past. Time is a non-cyclic path; past time points can be observed, but the past cannot be changed, so this also doesn't have much significance. Like Prediction, not many people are willing to study it. These are the reasons why Time Studies is a niche subject for Mages. Having said so much, Junior, you aren't about to enter Fourth Grade, needing to choose a major, and ending up confused, are you?"

Luo Qi didn't deny it. He now felt some genuine admiration for Du Zhengyi, just like a little boy looking up to an older boy who was cooler than him whether playing games or skipping school; he began to be somewhat willing to be a lackey for Du Zhengyi.

Just as he wanted to say something else, Du Zhengyi's gaze drifted behind him. He hurriedly turned his head and happened to see the beckoning cat half-curtain hanging on the teahouse door frame being lifted, and an old man in pajamas walked in. The man seemed a bit sleepy, his gaze dull as he walked in, one hand still tucked in his pajama pocket, dragging a pair of half-old cotton slippers on his feet. If it weren't for a small mask-like tattoo on his face and a hairstyle as cool as a lion's mane, Luo Qi would have really thought he was a dementia patient wandering around the residential complex.

The old man saw Du Zhengyi and nodded at him. Du Zhengyi nodded back at his elder with a slight lack of courtesy, which served as his greeting, then ignored Luo Qi, burying his head in his thesis and writing furiously once more.

The old man shuffled over, sat down in the empty chair next to Luo Qi, and stared silently out the window. Luo Qi was overwhelmed by his presence and felt a bit at a loss, so he followed his gaze to the window; in the center of the glass, someone had stuck a Santa Claus poster in a human-like fashion. Yet, the shopkeeper seemed to feel that wasn't enough of a disguise, so they had superfluously pasted five "Fu" characters around it, and hung a carp streamer on top in a completely incongruous manner. Through the glass window, one could see a two-story hot pot restaurant across the street, filled with many diners, the steam from the boiling hot pot blurring the window.

Luo Qi didn't see anything worth looking at in the window, so he picked up an empty cup, grabbed the teapot, filled the cup with water, and presented it to the Old Mage. "Please."

The old man seemed to suddenly notice there was a living person beside him and turned his head to size Luo Qi up. Luo Qi hadn't expected the old man to wake from his dull contemplation, his gaze unexpectedly sharp as a hawk's; he felt uncomfortable being stared at and gave a dry laugh. He thought of Du Zhengyi again, stretched his arm out as far as it would go while leaning on the table, finally touched the teacup by Du Zhengyi's hand, pulled it over, and diligently refilled it with tea.

Du Zhengyi cursed casually, "You're so lazy, can't you stand up to get the teacup? Is your butt glued to the wheelchair or something?"

"Yes, Mother." Luo Qi pushed his teacup back, turned his head to look at the old man again with a nonchalant air, and gave him a shameless, silly grin.

"Who are you?" the old man asked, his voice somewhat dry and raspy, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time.

"Oh—him?" Du Zhengyi said lazily, drawing out the sound. He raised his eyes to glance at Luo Qi, revealing a hint of a wicked smile. "He is my mascot."

Oh, screw you! Luo Qi greeted him sincerely in his heart.

"Mage Liu Li asked me to bring him along this time," Du Zhengyi explained. "She said as long as I bring him, I'll turn bad luck into good and encounter auspicious signs..."

"... with longevity as constant as the heavens and a youth that lasts forever," Luo Qi couldn't help but tease, finishing the sentence.

Du Zhengyi shot him a sidelong glance.

A slight smile appeared on the old man's serious face, and he asked Du Zhengyi, "You don't know the source of his words?"

Du Zhengyi's face looked a bit sour, and Luo Qi laughed out loud; he could see that Du Zhengyi was not used to being ignorant. He turned his face, smiling as he introduced himself to the old man, "My name is Luo Qi, and I'm a Third Grade university student."

The old man nodded, thoughtfully extending both hands with palms facing upward, as if holding a handful of invisible water. Luo Qi immediately noticed he was wearing a ring, and the lines on his palms were very chaotic. He knew he was focusing on the wrong thing, but then thought of the old man's exceptionally long fingers and prominent knuckles—oh, this would be perfect for a legendary swordsman, like the Golden-Haired Lion King. Regaining his focus, he finally felt that the old man was summoning some kind of power; the radiated magnetic field was extremely strong, so much so that even someone as dull as him could feel a faint static prickle.

Something was taking shape in the Golden-Haired Lion King's hands. Luo Qi couldn't see it clearly; it was as if light and shadow were flowing rapidly. His eyes followed in vain, but in the end, he failed to identify a form, and everything returned to nothingness in those hands. He looked at Du Zhengyi in confusion, but the latter seemed to turn a blind eye to it all, focusing intently on scribbling a badass, exaggerated signature at the end of his thesis. As if sensing the question mark over Luo Qi's head, he looked up, swept a glance at him, and said casually, "Information extraction based on infinite data."

Luo Qi felt these words were very familiar; he thought for a moment and suddenly remembered it was the topic of tomorrow evening's academic report. He couldn't hold back and blurted out, "Humans use the internet to connect data resources, and information retrieval can be completed through search engines."

Du Zhengyi ignored him. Luo Qi hadn't expected the Golden-Haired Lion King to be the one to explain it to him. The old man lowered his hands, as if the task he was doing was finished, and said to him gently, "Even humans understand that the brain's speed at extracting data from Chaos is extremely fast, a point that even their most advanced computers cannot compare to. We are slightly luckier than humans in this regard; our brains are very good at processing information, which is our advantage."

Luo Qi nodded in awe. The old man possessed an indescribable power, hidden behind a Barrier of humility, unfathomable. But Du Zhengyi seemed immune to all authority; he stacked his thesis on the table, tapped it into alignment with a "clack-clack" sound, and threw it in front of the old man. "Submitting my thesis."

Luo Qi couldn't help but admire Du Zhengyi even more; he was so bold and reckless, not afraid of being struck by lightning.

The old man picked up the thesis, carefully found the page with the curled edge from the stack of drafts, and slowly pressed it flat. Luo Qi watched him slowly stroke the paper, then carefully stack the student's thesis more neatly. Somehow, he drifted off again, remembering how his grandfather used to collect the toys he threw everywhere when he was a child, and how he would slowly repair the broken parts bit by bit just like this. When the old man spoke to him, he didn't hear it at all.

Du Zhengyi unceremoniously stretched out his long leg and kicked his chair, giving him a start.

"The teacher is asking you a question," Du Zhengyi said naturally, as if he weren't the one who had kicked the chair, and added, "King of Daydreaming."

The Lion King was much more patient than his student. Seeing that Luo Qi was confused, he repeated what he had just said, "You are very knowledgeable about human culture?"

"Very knowledgeable? Culture?" Luo Qi scratched his head, not knowing how to continue. "Are you talking about me?"

A gentle smile appeared on the old man's face again. "Your thesis cites a large number of human classics, and your explanation of the experimental environment includes movie tropes. Your advisor doesn't like your verbose descriptive style, thinking your thinking ability is average and your reasoning weak, which is why your grades aren't high. But I think that's just because your ideas are more like a human's than a Mage's. You are familiar with human society, perhaps you even have some human friends, and you spend a lot of time in human society. You perhaps often take shortcuts by using human tools to replace Mage skills that consume mental energy, so the Mage part of your brain has never been properly developed."

Luo Qi stiffened in embarrassment, his face flushing red. Thinking that he was being criticized by an old man in sloppy pajamas in an old teahouse made him feel a mix of shame and anger. Indeed, Mages would never make up stories and waste mental energy, and being addicted to the world of human novels from time to time like he was, was probably like human children being addicted to the internet—it was something that would get you a beating.

"I am not criticizing you," the old man said soothingly, sighing. "Most Mages have too narrow a vision; we all need a broader perspective."

After the Lion King finished this sentence, he fell silent, gazing at the teacup on the table. Luo Qi realized he had fallen back into the trance-like state he was in when he first entered the room, as if his soul had wandered out of his body. The Lion King's nose was very flat; Luo Qi thought of the Sphinx statue again and almost laughed out loud, hurriedly turning back to look at Du Zhengyi. Du Zhengyi seemed accustomed to this state of the Lion King; he held his teacup in his left hand, drinking tea with self-contentment, while the long, slender fingers of his right hand fluidly guided a bamboo spoon on the table to spin around his fingers in mid-air, passing the time while waiting for the old man to come back to his senses. Luo Qi watched with envy; some people used their abilities as naturally as a mountain spring overflowing from its source, but he himself was like a dry well, having to use all his strength just to squeeze out a spoonful of water.

The Sphinx finally woke up and was actually able to pick up on the previous sentence. "Zhengyi knows very little about the human world; you can just happen to make up for his shortcomings in this area."

The two of them looked at each other. Luo Qi could see that neither of them took the old man's advice to heart, and he couldn't help but laugh. Fortunately, Du Zhengyi wasn't some bookworm without a sense of humor; a hint of a smile flashed in his eyes as well.

The teahouse's cassette tape reached the end, the old song stopped, and the room suddenly went quiet. The speakers at the entrance of the hot pot restaurant across the street took over, sending an exceptionally affected male singing voice through the window: "The little sister sends off my lad, sends him to the south gate, from my waist I pull out two big silver dollars, this one is for my lad to buy a train ticket, this one is for my lad to buy a Zhonghua cigarette."

Du Zhengyi's face darkened, and the old man was also stunned for a moment; only Luo Qi laughed out loud. He got up to flip the tape in the recorder, and the classic old song began to play again, suppressing the new song by Yue Yunpeng from across the street.

The atmosphere became a bit more casual—at least that's what Luo Qi thought. The old man didn't reproach him for anything, so he felt he could chat with the old man freely.

"You must be a Great Mage, but I don't remember any Great Mage as cool as you, not only keeping long hair but also having a tattoo on your face," he said casually.

It was as if a bomb had been dropped on the tea table; both of them glared at Luo Qi at the same time. Luo Qi froze, looking at the old man at a loss. The old man's gaze was so piercing it felt like it wanted to pierce his soul, making him very uncomfortable. He looked at Du Zhengyi for help; Du Zhengyi's expression was softer, but his gaze was one of Calculation, as if he were frantically collecting parameters from his face and body to perform calculations.

Luo Qi sat awkwardly, feeling like an idiot. He must have said something taboo to the old man; he didn't know the etiquette of asking names upon entry, and Du Zhengyi didn't tip him off. He laughed dryly and bit the bullet to continue, "May this student have the honor of knowing the teacher's name?"

"My name is Pei Shu," the old man answered him generously.

He was greatly shocked; this was a thunderous name. Even a Mage Apprentice like him who was just drifting through life knew it. Now he finally became nervous, his palms sweating, completely not knowing what to say, and almost started shaking his legs.

It was Du Zhengyi who rescued him from his panic; he asked him from across the table, "Can you see the teacher's hair and the tattoo on his face?"

Luo Qi didn't know what he meant, swallowed his saliva, and nodded. Could it be that he could see something others couldn't? According to ghost stories, that should be seeing souls or spirits or something. Being able to see hair and scars on skin wasn't anything to be proud of.

Du Zhengyi glanced at Pei Shu. "I guess the teacher isn't dressed to the nines right now either?"

Luo Qi nodded and said weakly, "Pajamas, and slippers."

Du Zhengyi nodded with satisfaction. "I guessed as much."

"What's wrong?" Luo Qi asked him weakly, hoping he would show some kindness and answer the question properly.

Du Zhengyi sized him up again and smiled maliciously. "I'm not telling you."