When Long Zhanye woke up,
he found himself leaning against the trunk of a thick ancient tree.
Warmth and the crackling of burning wood reached him, while the air was filled with a scent... a mixture of charred fragrance and some kind of meat.
He slowly opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was flickering orange-red flames.
In the firelight,
Old Man Gu and Zhua Yun sat around the campfire.
Each held a huge skewer of meat, sizzling with grease, golden-brown on the outside, and richly fragrant.
They were wolfing it down, their mouths dripping with oil, looking utterly content...
"Grrrrumble..."
Long Zhanye's stomach let out a thunderous protest.
Hunger instantly washed over him.
Only then did he remember that from yesterday until now, he had fought continuously, absorbed Soul Rings and Spirit Bones, and expended enormous energy. He was already starving.
Those two bastards... They're secretly eating without me! Long Zhanye fumed inwardly as he struggled to sit upright.
As he rose, instinctively stretched his limbs, and surveyed his surroundings, a strange sensation welled up inside him.
His vision... had changed!
Everything within his gaze appeared with unprecedented clarity and detail.
It was not merely every deep wrinkle on Old Man Gu's face beside the campfire, or the grease staining Zhua Yun's hands.
He could even clearly see the fine veins on the undersides of leaves dozens of meters away.
The trembling of a beetle's legs as it crawled across a tree trunk a hundred meters away.
Even birds preening their feathers atop treetops a thousand meters away!
His gaze seemed able to extend endlessly, piercing through layers of forest and revealing the outline of distant mountains.
Even stranger was this.
Several nocturnal birds streaked rapidly across the sky, yet their movements seemed slowed several times over in his eyes.
Every flap of their wings and every turn was crystal clear. He could even catch the faint reflected light in their eyes.
This sensation of seeing through everything and perceiving the slightest detail
left him slightly dizzy, followed by indescribable shock and wild joy!
My eyes... have been reborn? No, have they... evolved?!
He muttered inwardly, sensing how utterly different his eyes felt from before.
Just then,
Old Man Gu, who was gnawing on meat, seemed to notice something.
He raised his head, and his gaze met Long Zhanye's in midair.
"Brat, you're awake?!"
"Quit sitting there like an idiot and come eat! This is Cyclops hind leg meat, a rare delicacy. It's got some real chew to it!"
Old Man Gu spoke indistinctly through a mouthful of food as he tore off a huge chunk of golden roasted meat and casually tossed it toward Long Zhanye.
Long Zhanye instinctively caught it. The meat was warm in his hand, and its fragrance filled his nose.
Holding the meat, he walked toward the campfire.
However, just as he drew closer to Old Man Gu and their gazes met again by chance—
Old Man Gu was still chewing meat, but his casual expression suddenly froze!
It was as if he had seen something utterly terrifying and unbelievable.
His eyes flew wide open, his pupils contracted violently, and the skewer in his hand dropped into the fire with a slap!
His entire body jerked backward. His legs went weak, and he nearly collapsed onto the ground!
"Y-you-you-you...!" Old Man Gu pointed at Long Zhanye, his lips trembling as his face turned deathly pale.
Broken, terrified sounds spilled from his throat. He could not even form a complete sentence!
Zhua Yun, beside him, also noticed something was wrong.
Following Old Man Gu's gaze, he looked at Long Zhanye's face, especially his eyes.
The next moment,
Zhua Yun's expression froze as well, and the chunk of meat in his hand slipped to the ground.
His mouth fell open, his eyes filled with extreme shock...
It was as though an invisible force had seized his throat, leaving him unable to utter a single word.
Long Zhanye was utterly baffled by their reactions and had no idea what had happened.
He subconsciously touched his face. "What is it? Is there something on my face?"
He recalled the strange sensation he had felt when using his eyes to observe the distance.
His heart stirred, and he hurried to the side, pouring some water from his canteen onto the ground to form a small puddle.
Then he crouched down and, by the flickering firelight, lowered his head to look at his reflection in the water.
The water rippled slightly, reflecting a young face that was somewhat pale yet could not conceal its heroic bearing.
And when his gaze focused on his own eyes, he too froze instantly.
In the reflection, those eyes that had once been distinctly black and white now...
each contained two pupils!
One large and one small, one primary and one secondary!
The primary pupil remained a deep black, while the secondary pupil—
the slightly smaller pupil—was an unusual pale gray.
It emitted an extremely faint glow, like misty Chaos fog.
"This... this is..." Long Zhanye's heart jolted violently, and even his breathing stopped.
Just then,
Old Man Gu seemed to finally regain a trace of his senses from his overwhelming shock.
His voice trembled with disbelief as he slowly said,
"One eye... with twin pupils?!"
"Th-this... could this be the legendary... Double Pupils?!"
Even though Old Man Gu was an "old monster" who had lived for more than two hundred years, with vast experience and profound knowledge,
all traces of his usual nonchalance and madness had vanished from his face.
In their place were unprecedented fear, gravity, and an almost reverent complexity of emotion.
"Double Pupils..." Zhua Yun repeated in a dry voice.
This term
was occasionally mentioned in ancient legends and certain secret records of Douluo Continent.
It was always associated with words like "destiny," "omen," and "invincibility."
A Double Pupil Bearer was destined to be extraordinary. Such people had been rare since ancient times, and every one who appeared had stirred the winds and clouds of the world, leaving behind endless legends.
It was the symbol of one chosen by fate, the embodiment of talent and fortune.
And now, this legend had appeared before them in the flesh!
Even more unbelievable was that this youth with the legendary "Double Pupils" also possessed the equally unfathomable "Heavenly Eye"!
The Heavenly Eye and Double Pupils—these two world-shaking wonders that seemed to exist only in imagination—had actually gathered within one person!
Old Man Gu and Zhua Yun were deeply shaken, unable to calm themselves for a long while.
They looked at Long Zhanye as though he were a walking legend, a living mystery.
Even if they racked their brains, they would never have dared believe that such a thing could exist in the world.
Long Zhanhai himself was also immersed in the tremendous visual shock and the revelation brought by Old Man Gu's words.
Looking at his double-pupiled eyes in the water, he felt a trace of unease, but even more than that, an excitement he could not suppress.
"So this is the form my External Soul Bone took... after fusing?" Long Zhanye murmured.
It had originated from the eyeballs of the Twin Cyclops and should have been called something like "Twin Cyclops Eyes."
But with this strange state of "one eye, twin pupils," it would be called—
Double Pupils!
He closed his eyes and sensed it carefully.
There was no discomfort in his eyes. Instead, they felt pleasantly warm, while a strange energy slowly circulated within them.
Enhanced vision was merely the most superficial manifestation. He vaguely sensed that these Double Pupils might also contain far more powerful spiritual power.
Not only that, after successfully absorbing that hundred-thousand-year Demon Eye Demon Tree Head Spirit Bone,
the Soul Power within his body surged forward like a force breaking through bamboo, directly reaching the peak of level fifty-four, only one step away from level fifty-five!
Merely absorbing Soul Rings and Spirit Bones had increased his Soul Power by so much!
This efficiency was simply horrifying!
One had to know that for ordinary Spirit Masters, once they reached the Spirit King realm, every level of advancement required tremendous time and effort.
Yet through the opportunities he had encountered in this short time, he had nearly made up for the three years he had spent unable to cultivate!
"Wonderful... At this rate, as long as I obtain a suitable Fifth Soul Ring, my Soul Power may even break through directly to level fifty-five!"
"In that case, I'll be able to make up for the three years I lost to injury and illness as quickly as possible!"
"I... am still that genius who is inferior to no one!"
Long Zhanye clenched his fists, feeling the surging power within his body as a resolute light flashed in his eyes.
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