“Then, I took a look at the layout of Liang Kaifeng’s villa,” Zhu Xuan said. “The villa is large and symmetrically designed, it was built with the central hall on the first floor as its axis. All the rooms and furnishings are basically symmetrical on every floor. On top of that, there are no conspicuous large buildings nearby, that is to say, no matter where you are, the view when looking out of the window will always be similar.”

I looked out of the window as Zhu Xuan said and found that the view outside the window was basically similar, and it was hard to recognize which floor I was on.

“The building itself has a kind of invisible magic barrier. We can use it to play a sly trick on the monster. I don’t think even deities could notice the difference, not to mention demons and spirits.” Zhu Xuan slyly winked at me.

“Even so, you can’t experiment on me, okay?” I complained. “You almost scared the shit out of me!”

“I’m sorry about that,” Zhu Xuan smiled and apologized to me. “But it’s the only way to see if it works.”

“Damn you!”

After the experiment, I explained to Liang Kaifeng and Mr. Xu who were waiting outside about our plan and I also told them Zhu Xuan’s true identity.

“So, basically, this is the whole thing,” I explained. “The demon your father met may be the one Zhu Xuan and I have been looking for. We’re not sure about that, but with a little luck it might be the case.”

“But, but..” Liang Kaifeng stammered. He pointed to Zhu Xuan, who was inside the room carefully studying something. “You mean, he’s not human? And you.. you’ve been working for that exorcist since the beginning of this semester, and that exorcist isn’t human either?”

I scratched my head. “Yeah, sort of.”

Liang Kaifeng looked like he had a mental breakdown. “What the..? But this is impossible! How can there be a mythical beast called Bai Ze in this world? And there shouldn’t be monsters able to kill humans!”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Then how can this world have someone who’s still breathing even after his heart stopped beating, and it should be impossible for such a person to still be alive even after his body was covered with mold?”

“No!” Liang Kaifeng raised his voice again; he pointed at Zhu Xuan and said, “That guy certainly looks younger than me. It looks like he’s still undergoing puberty. There is no way he’s older than me!”

....His egoism went beyond my imagination and has reached a new high level.

“Damn! If I knew I was going to be dragged into so many troubles in advance, I would have never come to you from the beginning!” Liang Kaifeng showed a painful expression and kept rubbing his face in pain. “I should let that bastard die. I don’t fucking care about demons as long as they don’t want my life..”

Liang Kaifeng’s cowardness made me angry, but before I could say something, Xu Yingchen jumped out to be a peacemaker.

“Don’t say that. It’s okay, we just need to fix this problem.” Xu Yingchen always looked positive. “Have some faith in your classmates.”

Liang Kaifeng glowered at me with disgust, muttering, “Those weirdos are not my classmates.”

I became furious. “Liang Kaifeng, what did you say? When you were hanging on the electric fan in the school classroom, half-dead, don’t forget it was me and Shi Yitong who saved your ass!”

Liang Kaifeng snorted and turned his face away.

“Alright, alright. You’re so childish, getting angry so easily,” Mr. Xu said, trying to ease the tension. “Let’s focus on our current problem.”

Mr. Xu was such a person, who was always poised and calm no matter what troubles he faced as if he was never afraid of anything. What’s more, he could act as a go-between to calm us down. I was so curious that I asked if he wasn’t scared.

“Scared?” Xu Yingchen smiled and waved his hand to show that he was not that kind of people. “It’s just when you grow older and have seen a lot of things, nothing can surprise you anymore.”

.... Surprise? I became speechless. I was not sure what kind of experience he had been through to make him say something like that.

“I’ve experienced way more than what you youngsters can imagine.” Xu Yingchen blinked, which made me even more confused.

“Gu Yu.” At this moment, Zhu Xuan suddenly called me. I raised my head and saw him walking down the corridor towards us.

“I’ve set the magic barrier, but there is one last step. Can you come over for a moment?” Zhu Xuan said.

“Oh, sure.” I got up from my chair and followed him. He took me to the elevator and pointed at it.

“I’ve already set the magic barrier. It should fool that demon,” Zhu Xuan said. “I don’t know why, but this building has some kind of demon power. Because of this power, I can’t set up a magic barrier large enough to cover this whole area, otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself.”

“Magic barrier? Where is it?” I looked around, confused. Nothing had changed; everything was exactly the same as before.

“It wouldn’t be a magic barrier if you could notice it so easily.” Zhu Xuan gave me a sly smile, he then snapped his fingers, and a door on my left suddenly opened.

I was startled, but as I looked carefully, I noticed this was just an ordinary empty room.

“Is it really just an ordinary room?” Zhu Xuan whispered in my ear with a deep voice. “Gu Yu, look carefully, there is a body over there.”

I blinked confusedly, and then my mouth was wide open.

The body ..

In an instant, a corpse suddenly appeared in that empty room. No, it was not accurate to say ‘it suddenly appeared’. It was more like that the body was lying there, but I didn’t notice it in the first place, and it took Zhu Xuan’s reminder for me to find it.

But how was it possible? It was not a coin or a key on the ground. How could I miss it?

Yet, such an incredible thing happened right in front of me. Then, Zhu Xuan’s ghostly whisper came again,

“There’s more.”

After he said that, all the doors in the corridor were suddenly opened. Those doors just opened one by one, and for the first time, I notice all of those identical rooms in Liang Kaifeng’s villa, and all of them had a similar layout.

The man’s rotting corpse was lying on the bed with flies buzzing over it.

I couldn’t help but scream out, but just at that moment, his voice pulled me back to reality.

“Gu Yu, Gu Yu? Open your eyes!”

I opened my eyes, gasping. Beads of sweat had poured over my forehead in a short time. His face was just inches from mine, I let out a cry and pushed him away.

“What the hell!”

Zhu Xuan smiled pleasedly. “It seems like my barrier works pretty well.”

Magic barrier? Oh, those rooms I saw..

I hesitantly looked back, but none of the doors were open and there were no corpses as well. I mentally prepared myself and suspiciously opened the closest door on the left side, but it was completely empty.

“Was that illusion magic?” I looked at him and asked.

“It’s not very accurate to say that it’s illusion magic.” Zhu Xuan slightly lifted up his chin, which showed me that he was very confident about his work. “Although I can use illusion magic, it only limited to a small area. I should say, this magic barrier is the combination of magic and psychological suggestion.”

“Psychological suggestion?” It seemed that we were going to talk about some profound knowledge again.

“Yes, psychological suggestion. It’s the most wonderful sorcery discovered by human beings,” Zhu Xuan said. “Both monsters and human beings need to use their physical senses to feel the surrounding environment, without their physical senses, they can’t perceive the world around them. However, in reality, physical senses are not reliable.”

“Urm, not reliable?” I barely kept up with him.

“Yeah. Both humans and demons are just a grain of sand in this big world. For example, the visual field of our eyes can only extend to 188 degrees at most, and our ears can pick up sound about 100m away. They all have limitations. And there are other things that we can’t sense even within the range,” Zhu Xuan said. “For example, the thing you’re looking for is obviously in front of you, but for some reason, you just can’t see it. You must have had this kind of experience before, right?”

I nodded, that kind of situation has happened to everyone.

“But in fact, your eyes must have seen it already. The thing that prevents you from noticing is your brain,” Zhu Xuan explained, pointing at his head. “For example, when you think about something, it’s easy to ignore the things in front of you, or when you’re focused on your work, you probably won’t notice any sound around you. It’s the brain, not your senses, that controls what types of information you receive. The human brain, as well as the demon’s perception system, can easily be deceived. Even if you see and hear something, as long as the central processing system—your brain, ignores it, then even if it truly exists, you won’t notice it. This is the so-called psychological suggestion.”

I began to understand what he was trying to tell me. I nodded. “That is to say, if we give hints to the brain, then we can trick the brain into believing false information, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Zhu Xuan explained. “The scene you saw in the room just now certainly doesn’t exist. But as I said, I made your brain believe that there was a corpse in the room, then even if you didn’t see it, you still firmly thought you saw that corpse. Of course, if I use a little magic trick as well, then the illusion will be perfect.”