Myriad Stellar Eye

"Ugh..."

Ji Xinghuo let out a groan, then regained consciousness. "I'm not dead!"

He jolted upright and found himself sitting on the floor, surrounded by his familiar bedroom. A patch of congealed blood lay where he had been lying.

Other than a slight dizziness, he felt no other discomfort.

A wave of lingering fear washed over Ji Xinghuo.

Before losing consciousness, he had truly thought he was going to die. He was still so young, with so much of life left to enjoy. The vast Milky Way and the Star Realm, countless magnificent sights he had yet to see, thrilling adventures yet to begin—dying like this would have been far too regrettable.

"It's good to be alive!"

Filled with relief at having survived the ordeal, Ji Xinghuo tried to find the culprit behind it all. He looked around and, sure enough, the gemstone was nowhere to be found.

"So it really was an Ability Seed, and I successfully fused with it?" He was both startled and delighted. Although he had no idea why the gemstone had fused with him the moment it touched his eye, it was still a good outcome.

"Where's the ability?"

Climbing to his feet, Ji Xinghuo realized that he did not seem to have gained any supernatural power.

He swayed as he stood upright, clutching his head as the dizziness grew worse.

His vision was flickering too.

Everything before his eyes trembled, like a screen with an unstable signal. Every few seconds, his vision went black for an instant, then turned blurry before quickly returning to clarity. The cycle repeated endlessly, making him feel miserable.

"There's something wrong with my eyes!"

Ji Xinghuo realized that this was most likely the ability he had fused with.

Staggering along the wall, he entered the bathroom. Standing before the sink, he saw his reflection in the mirror and immediately jumped in fright.

His face was covered in blood. Blood had streamed from his eyes, nostrils, and ears, mixed with some unknown fluids—white, red, and gray—that had congealed over half his face. It looked as though his brains had been blown out, a terrifying sight.

Splash...

Ji Xinghuo quickly washed the filth from his face. Finding no wounds on his head and no bizarre growths, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Good thing I'm not disfigured." He touched his face.

He was not the kind of devastatingly handsome guy everyone loved, but he was certainly pleasant to look at. His features were sharply defined, and he had a sunny yet resolute air about him. Quite a few female classmates at school had admired him, so he could be considered a fairly handsome young man. If things did not work out for him in the future, he could always consider making a living with his face.

Ji Xinghuo checked the time. He had been unconscious for about half an hour.

By now, the dizziness in his head had eased considerably, and his vision was gradually no longer blurry or flickering. It seemed that everything was returning to normal.

No!

Ji Xinghuo noticed something strange. Nothing was normal at all! His vision was indeed no longer flickering or blurry, as though the signals from his optic nerves had stabilized—but instead, they had begun to strengthen.

The world in his eyes was becoming clearer and clearer, and he could see more and more details.

Countless tiny droplets floated in the air of the bathroom. The floor, which had seemed spotless, was actually covered in a thin layer of dust, much of it flakes shed from his own skin. Raising his hand, he saw that the skin on the back of it resembled parched, cracked earth, its grooves crisscrossing everywhere. Every fine hair was visible in perfect detail, and he could even see the tiny specks of dust clinging to them.

The entire world had changed in Ji Xinghuo's eyes.

"Eagle Eye?"

The first thing Ji Xinghuo thought of was Eagle Eye. After fusing with it, one gained long-distance vision several times greater than an ordinary person's, as well as extremely sharp Dynamic Vision, comparable to an eagle's eyesight—hence the name.

Eagle Eye was an Outstanding Ability and not particularly rare.

Ji Xinghuo was somewhat disappointed.

If it was only Eagle Eye, then he had gotten the short end of the stick. The gap between an Outstanding Ability and a Super-Limit ability was enormous; they could not be compared at all.

"It probably isn't Eagle Eye."

Ji Xinghuo quickly noticed the difference.

Eagle Eye's most obvious trait was its long-distance vision, but what he was seeing now was close up, as if his eyes had become magnifying glasses.

"This is... See the Minute?" Ji Xinghuo was somewhat puzzled.

Like Eagle Eye, See the Minute was also an Outstanding Ability. One saw far away, while the other saw up close. However, See the Minute was better. Besides enhancing vision, it provided extremely powerful assistance in close combat and was more valuable than Eagle Eye.

How could two completely opposite abilities manifest at once? More importantly, how could one Ability Seed contain two abilities?

Ji Xinghuo returned to the bedroom.

The apartment he rented had a common minimalist design. There was no living room; beyond the entrance was a spacious bedroom of over sixty square meters. The remaining forty square meters had been divided into a study and a Training Room, which were connected to each other and completely open to view.

There was very little furniture in the apartment. In the middle stood two rows of sofas and a coffee table. To one side was a simple bar counter that doubled as a dining table, with a kettle and several other food-related utensils on it.

There was also a virtual platform login pod in the corner.

Other than that, there were no decorations. The whole apartment looked empty and desolate.

A broad bed stood near the balcony, with an entire sheet of adjustable glass set into the wall behind its headboard.

"Open the view window."

Ji Xinghuo spoke softly.

At once, the glass wall turned transparent, revealing the scenery outside. Brilliant neon light streamed into the apartment. Looking out, he saw the glow cast by one skyscraper after another. In the night, the buildings resembled peaks of varying heights, blocking out the sky.

The hundreds of residential floors in the high-rises were brightly lit, while enormous screens outside the buildings played advertisements on a loop. Multicolored lights intertwined, dreamlike and surreal.

Looking down, he could see multiple layers of Superconducting Highways erected between the buildings.

Maglev Cars sped along them, their taillights stretching and converging into several streams of light that vanished beyond sight. They wound around the skyscrapers like the veins of this super-metropolis, crisscrossing in an endless, turbulent flow.

Ji Xinghuo had long since grown accustomed to the sight.

Standing before the glass window, he gazed into the distance, his eyes quickly locking onto a building three thousand meters away.

The night was especially clear tonight, with no clouds or mist to obstruct the view.

Ji Xinghuo could clearly make out the four glowing characters atop the building: Transcendence Group.

In the past, he could only vaguely tell that there were four large characters there, without reading what they said. Now, not only could he see them clearly, but he could also clearly read the smaller slogan beneath them: Transcendence Group is wholeheartedly at your service, helping you break through bottlenecks and achieve an extraordinary life! "Heh heh..."

Ji Xinghuo could not help but smile.

Transcendence Group was immensely famous, one of the nation's top companies helping Aberrants train and achieve breakthroughs. It had been publicly listed for decades, and its market value had long surpassed a trillion.

However, because the name Transcendence Group sounded like "giving birth beyond the limit" in Chinese, it formed a stark and rather ironic contrast with the country's population situation and birth policy, making it a frequent target of jokes.

"It really is Eagle Eye, but it's more than just the Eagle Eye ability."

Ji Xinghuo withdrew his gaze and looked down at his hand. Feeling an extraordinarily fine sense of touch, he also sensed that his thoughts seemed to have become slightly faster. This is clearly the effect of 'See the Minute.'

Eagle Eye and See the Minute, two abilities merged into one.

And that was not all! After sensing it for a while, Ji Xinghuo discovered that when he focused his gaze on a target, it produced an effect similar to a mental lock-on. He had an intuition that if he had something in hand to throw, then as long as the target was within range, he would definitely hit it.

"It really is 'Precision'!"

Ji Xinghuo was pleasantly surprised.

Precision greatly increased the hit rate of shooting and throwing objects.

With training, one could even achieve perfect accuracy when shooting stationary targets. It also allowed one to precisely control the amount of force they used, making any physical movement related to precision more accurate.

Although Precision was only a high-quality ability, beneath the Outstanding tier, Eagle Eye plus See the Minute, followed by Precision—three visual abilities layered together—were absolutely enough to rival a Super-Limit ability. Perhaps they were even better.

"Seems like there are more than three abilities..."

Ji Xinghuo closed the scenic window and continued exploring his abilities.

Sure enough, he soon discovered that he could see in the dark. With no light source at all in the room, a strange image formed in his vision. It could not be described in terms of color, and its brightness was low, but the outlines and movements of objects were extremely clear, almost no different from normal vision.

"It should be Infrared Vision!" Ji Xinghuo was exhilarated. "That's another Outstanding Ability, and it's also a perception-type ability."

"What kind of Ability Seed is this gem, exactly?"

Next, Ji Xinghuo grew increasingly astonished as he uncovered other effects.

Even with his eyes closed, as long as he willed it, he could still "see" the scene around him clearly.

Moreover, he had an intuition that it was as if he possessed an invisible eye, constantly monitoring every movement around him, allowing him to make the right response under any circumstances.

Ji Xinghuo had never heard of an ability like the former, nor could he find anything similar in the Ability Seed database.

As for the latter, it was somewhat similar to the high-quality ability "Intuitive Reflex," but it was clearly even more powerful than Intuitive Reflex! Five abilities, all related to the eyes.

Ji Xinghuo immediately formed a guess: could it have originally been a single ability, only one of such unimaginable quality that it possessed the functions of several lower-tier abilities at once?

That an Ability Seed contained only one ability was common knowledge to everyone.

He leaned close to the mirror and examined his eyes.

His black eyes were no different from before. His irises were normal in shape, with no visible abnormalities whatsoever, and there was no trace of the gem to be found.

"Hm?"

Suddenly, Ji Xinghuo noticed a faint anomaly.

Around the pupil of his right eye—the small round opening at the center of the black iris, the passage through which light entered his eye—there was a faint flicker, revealing a delicate ring of light!

The edge of this ring was extremely narrow, less than half a millimeter wide. An ordinary person would never be able to see it clearly, but it was visible to him in every minute detail.

The ring was very dim, yet still brilliantly colored. It fit his pupil perfectly, encircling it within.

Several nearly invisible cracks emerged deep within the pupil.

Ji Xinghuo was incomparably familiar with that nebula-like shape. Over the past week, he had observed the gem countless times, knowing every detail by heart.

"It merged with my right eye!"

Just as Ji Xinghuo was about to continue studying it, the ring around his pupil flashed. In an instant, a human image appeared in his field of vision. The image was made of pale dashed lines, revealing both the external and internal structure of the body. Its facial features and appearance were exactly the same as his own.

"What is this?"

Ji Xinghuo was startled. He waved a hand in front of his eyes, but the human phantom was completely unaffected. Clearly, it was not an illusion.

No matter which direction he turned his head, it remained fixed before his eyes.

He calmed himself and examined it closely, discovering several lines of strange symbols beside the human phantom. They appeared to be writing, but he could not recognize them.

The moment that thought arose, all the text blurred. At the same time, dizziness washed over his mind. When everything became clear again, it had turned into Chinese characters.

Myriad Stellar Eye Master: Ji Xinghuo

Race: Earth Human

Rank: None

Ability: None

Spirit Source Energy: 0

After seeing the contents clearly, Ji Xinghuo could not help drawing in a sharp breath. He was shocked beyond words and remained speechless for a long time. The information interface was simple, much like the attribute panels in games he had played, but the way it appeared completely overturned his understanding. "I've struck it rich!"

"Holy shit, this is incredible! I really hit the jackpot this time!"

Ji Xinghuo nearly jumped up. Fortunately, he had always been much calmer than his peers since childhood, and his emotions settled within minutes. He began studying the information interface carefully.

The most crucial piece of information was in the first line: Myriad Stellar Eye Master.

"So the gem is called the Myriad Stellar Eye!"

Realization dawned on Ji Xinghuo. The name suited its form perfectly. Abilities like Eagle Eye, See the Minute, and Precision probably all came from the Myriad Stellar Eye.

The term "myriad phenomena" referred to all things and sights in the universe.

When the text had been converted earlier, he had felt dizzy. The Myriad Stellar Eye must have been drawing upon the knowledge in his mind and presenting it in a way its host could understand.

From this, it could be inferred that the Myriad Stellar Eye had to be an artificial creation.

It was not an Ability Seed at all! Ji Xinghuo's heart chilled. He could not imagine what civilization or race had created the Myriad Stellar Eye. One thing was certain: their technological level far surpassed Earth's. Could they be one of the most powerful hegemonic civilizations in the Milky Way?

How had the Myriad Stellar Eye come to Earth? Would it bring disaster in the future? "There probably won't be any consequences." Ji Xinghuo did not panic too much. If some real trouble descended upon Earth, it would not be something he could solve anyway. Worrying was useless.

He cast aside those unfounded fears and continued examining the information interface.

There was nothing to say about species.

Rank was probably the stage of a lifeform's evolution.

The many civilizations and nations of the Milky Way and the Star Realm each had their own ways of classifying strength and naming levels, but there was also a universal standard that applied everywhere: the number of times one had evolved. One evolution was Rank One, two evolutions were Rank Two, and so on.

He was not yet an Aberrant, so naturally he had no Rank.

Likewise, he had no abilities.

The Myriad Stellar Eye was an artificial creation, a tool. It did not count as an ability he possessed, which meant he could still fuse with another ability! But what exactly did that final "Spirit Source Energy" mean? Ji Xinghuo thought about it for a long time but could not figure it out.

He also had no idea what the human-shaped phantom in the interface was for.

Before he knew it, dawn had broken over the horizon.

Ji Xinghuo closed the information interface, lay down on the bed, and quickly fell asleep.

This time, he finally did not have another nightmare.

When he woke at noon, Ji Xinghuo felt completely refreshed. The exhaustion of the past several days had been swept away, and his physical condition was better than ever. He got up briskly, washed up, ate a quick lunch, changed into clean clothes, and left home.

After a night of thought, Ji Xinghuo understood one thing: to determine the Myriad Stellar Eye's exact functions, he first had to become an Aberrant.

That would not be difficult for him.

Ji Xinghuo's apartment was on the forty-fifth floor. He took the elevator down to the parking garage, where a self-driving Maglev Car approached and stopped steadily in front of him. He opened the door, got into the back seat, and fastened his seatbelt. The car immediately started soundlessly and drove out of the garage.

After leaving the building, the car traveled several hundred meters along the ground before entering an on-ramp and rising rapidly. Soon, it merged onto a Superconducting Highway elevated dozens of meters above the ground.

Cars howled past outside the window, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Bzzzz...

The electric engine gave off a faint hum, and Ji Xinghuo felt a push against his back. The Maglev Car accelerated steadily in the acceleration lane while changing lanes to the left in succession.

More than ten seconds later, when the car reached 350 kilometers per hour, its four tires retracted into the chassis. The entire car lifted into the air and switched into the cruising lane.

Ji Xinghuo looked out the window.

The buildings lining both sides of the Superconducting Highway sped backward. Even in daylight, the enormous advertising screens and neon lights remained dazzlingly bright. As the car raced onward, they formed streams of colored light in his vision, brilliant and dreamlike.

In the past, Ji Xinghuo would have struggled to make out the sights along the road at such speed.

Now, with a casual glance, every scene entered his eyes in perfect clarity, as though a high-definition camera had captured every frame. "This feeling..."

Ji Xinghuo sighed inwardly in heartfelt admiration. "It's absolutely amazing!"