"I'm tired of holding it up, you sit down," Yao Yao said.
I slowly sat down. Yao Yao's fingers followed (making sure the shadow of her fingers fell between my eyes). She knelt in front of me, placed her fingers on top of her head, and with her other hand, opened a bag of potato chips and started to eat and drink.
Ten minutes passed, and there was no sign of it being over. I couldn't help but ask, "How much longer will it take?"
"Oh, just keep watching. I'll tell you when the time comes."
Half an hour passed.
An hour passed.
"Keep watching, and the sun will set..." I said.
Yao Yao glanced back at the sun, flicked the chip crumbs from her hands, and said, "Alright, it's about time. Watch my fingers carefully!"
As she spoke, she brought the fingers of her other hand to the top of her head as well, and the two fingers slowly came together.
"Did it block the sun?"
"Not completely, there's a gap in the middle," I replied.
"That's right. Stare at this gap until the two fingers grow longer, then tell me."
"How can they grow longer?" I asked, confused.
"Don't ask, just stare," Yao Yao chuckled. Her teaching style was quite perfunctory.
My eyes were sore and swollen, and tears had long since streamed down my face. After another ten minutes of persistence, I finally couldn't bear it any longer and was about to give up, when suddenly, I saw Yao Yao's fingers suddenly double in length!
I thought it was some kind of magic, but upon closer inspection, it wasn't. They had actually grown longer, as if two more fingers had been copied and pasted onto the tips of her own!
"They've grown, they've grown!" I shouted.
"Congratulations, you've succeeded," Yao Yao suddenly pulled her hands down from her head, and the bright sun appeared directly before my eyes, making me instinctively close them. However, the image of those two fingers remained, and it was even clearer than before. What was the principle behind this?
I shifted my gaze slightly downward and "saw" Yao Yao sitting vividly in front of me – even though my eyes were closed!
However, this Yao Yao was pink and semi-transparent. Her clothes were gone, but inside her body, a lot of vein-like structures were visible, though not in the usual positions of arteries and veins. They formed strange patterns, some dark, some light. I then looked up slightly and discovered that on each of Yao Yao's shoulders, two streams of flame "grew," surging upwards, becoming longer and longer, reaching straight for the sky!
Ah, I remembered. This was what Yao Yao called "Xiang Qi Shu" (Aura Sensing Technique). The number of these "flames" was used to distinguish between demons and humans.
Humans have three, two on their shoulders and one on their head. Demons have two on their shoulders. Ghosts have one on their head.
Yao Yao appeared to have two, but she was definitely human, not a demon. Perhaps because my cultivation wasn't high enough, there was actually a transparent flame above her head, drifting about, like when you look far away on a hot summer day and see the air shimmering.
"Did you see it all?" Yao Yao asked.
Afraid that this wondrous sight would disappear, I merely nodded, not opening my eyes.
"First step complete. Let's rest for a bit," Yao Yao stood up. The semi-transparent Yao Yao also stood up, and the aura on her shoulders rapidly receded, finally becoming two very small flames, equivalent to turning a lighter to its maximum setting.
They were about that tall. However, as she moved, the flames on her shoulders did not waver but remained straight and firm, like the intense flames from a two-dollar butane lighter. It seemed her two flames were worth at least six dollars.
"You can open your eyes now, it's fine!" Yao Yao said, strolling around and waving her hands. She had been holding her fingers up the whole time, even more tired than I was.
I slowly opened my eyes. Yao Yao's semi-transparent figure merged with her real one, and the two flames also vanished. The Xiang Qi Shu disappeared, but everything around me became incredibly clear. Looking into the distance, it was as if I had put on a pair of binoculars, able to see extremely far.
I could even see a squirrel on a tree on the peak of a mountain opposite, defecating – a distance of at least one kilometer away.
Even an eagle demon's eyesight wouldn't be much better than this...