This Was a Rebirth

After indulging in a long fantasy about the future, Bai Chuan finally calmed down and carefully calculated the time.

Four days. Just four more days. In four days, his points would be generated again, and the points he gained this time would mean that he could grow stronger faster from then on.

Thinking of this, he could hardly wait. He wished he could skip these four days right now!

To make sure nothing unexpected happened, Bai Chuan decided not to go wandering around for the next few days. Every day, he would eat his fill, then retreat into his cave and stay put.

Under these circumstances, two days passed in the blink of an eye, and Bai Chuan's previously jumbled sleep schedule finally returned to normal.

That day, after eating a Black-Tipped Snake as usual, Bai Chuan suddenly felt that something was wrong with him.

"Strange. Why do my eyes feel weird today? Did I not sleep well?"

He muttered to himself, then shook his head. The more he thought about it, the more he felt something was off.

Before, he hadn't been able to see everything perfectly clearly, but at least things within a hundred meters had been especially distinct. Now, though, it was as if something had coated his eyes.

Everything looked blurry.

Had he eaten something bad? After all, lately he'd been eating all sorts of living creatures he came across to acquire ability models, far beyond the bounds of the Eye King's diet.

Or was he sick? Had something parasitized him?

This was the first time in his snake life that he'd encountered anything like this. Bai Chuan had no idea what was going on, and his heart grew heavy.

With his mood weighed down, and his stomach full, he didn't hesitate any longer.

He headed straight for his nest. Since his eyes had suddenly developed a problem, he couldn't be sure what tomorrow would bring or whether he'd still be able to hunt. To guard against the unexpected,

he didn't activate Frenzied Digestion that day.

It was the first time since arriving in this world that he'd felt grateful for snakes' ability to go a long time on a single meal.

When he woke up the next day, Bai Chuan found that the problem had grown worse.

If yesterday his vision had merely been blurry, like seeing the world through the eyes of someone with two or three hundred degrees of myopia, today it was closer to five hundred.

Anything at a distance was now little more than a blur. The Eye King relied on his eyesight to hunt, so in this state, never mind hunting—he'd have to be careful even while crawling.

At that moment, he was suddenly glad he'd strengthened Danger Perception first. His keen hearing and sharp sense of smell kept him from losing all awareness of his surroundings.

Even so, a premonition rose within him, urging him to leave the tree hollow as soon as possible. It wasn't safe for him anymore.

What he needed now was a narrow burrow or underground den, just wide enough to hold him.

Bai Chuan couldn't tell whether the strange premonition in his heart was right, but after thinking it through, he felt it made sense.

First of all, his tree hollow was high above the ground, and it had originally belonged to a bird. He'd simply taken over the nest.

Now that his eyesight was almost gone, if he ran into a bird, he'd have a hard time seeing its pecks in time to dodge and strike back.

And if he didn't leave the tree hollow and return to the ground soon, he feared that if his vision went completely blind tomorrow or the day after, even getting down from the tree could become a problem.

If he misstepped and fell from the tree, leaving himself badly injured, that would be a joke.

After giving it serious thought, Bai Chuan followed his premonition and carefully climbed down from the tree.

Perhaps this strange premonition came from an animal's instincts?

Those instincts were truly mysterious!

He crawled along carefully the whole way. Although this area belonged to his territory, he was afraid an intruder might show up just then.

Fortunately, he'd been going out to hunt every day lately, and many animals had grown used to seeing him—and were afraid of him.

As soon as they spotted him crawling past so brazenly, they scattered in every direction in terror.

After searching all day, he finally found a long, narrow, deep burrow in the afternoon.

Once he'd crawled all the way inside, the nerves he'd kept taut for the entire day finally relaxed a little.

But by then, Bai Chuan had found that his eyesight had deteriorated even further, to the point of near blindness.

The discovery made his heart sink even more, and he grew increasingly on edge.

For a sense of security, he coiled up his body, keeping his head pointed toward the entrance at all times.

The two little bumps on his head constantly sensed the movements outside, while his tongue flicked in and out without pause.

His fangs stayed poised to strike. If anything unexpected happened, they could shoot out the very next second and inject venom.

He was sure that whoever barged into this burrow would face his frenzied attack.

The only thing he could be grateful for now was that aside from his blindness, he didn't feel anything else wrong with his body.

Time trickled by like this.

From the Golden Crow sinking in the west to the Jade Rabbit rising in the east, and then to the Golden Crow rising and setting again.

Day and night had passed through two full cycles.

After three days of painful torment, Bai Chuan finally saw the light once more.

At that moment, he was deeply moved.

At that moment, it was as if he'd been reborn.

At that moment, it was as if he'd been cleansed.

If someone had asked him to write a book right then, he was sure he could have written one that would move people to tears: Three Days to See.

And now, he finally understood what had gone wrong with him.

The strange tightness in his body, along with the soreness, itching, and pain, told him the truth.

This was a road every snake had to travel—their shed!

It was a hurdle every snake had to cross in order to grow!

The old skin grew worn; new skin took its place.

Don't be surprised that Bai Chuan had started shedding so soon.

The Song-dynasty text Illustrated Classic of Materia Medica, by Su Song, had once recorded: "Snakes shed at no set time; they shed when their skin grows dirty, or when they have eaten their fill."

In other words, when food was plentiful, snakes often shed their skin if their bodies became dirty or their scales were damaged.

Now that he understood, he thought about what he'd been doing lately.

Eating. That's right—eating every day!

Even if most of the energy from that food was converted into points by the Panel, people shouldn't forget that, as a snake, Bai Chuan's ability to absorb energy was poor.

Even though most of the energy in the food wasn't absorbed and converted into points, but instead dispersed, his body was still constantly surrounded by energy.

That was why he was shedding so soon.

Now that he'd figured that out, Bai Chuan knew the ordeal wasn't over. He'd only just completed the prelude to shedding. Next, he still had to peel off the old skin covering his body.

As soon as his body began moving again, Bai Chuan immediately felt that he'd grown quite a bit.

Before, he'd been a little over three meters long. Now he was already more than three and a half meters.

And over the next few days, he ought to grow even longer.

But that would come later.

Since the most difficult and vulnerable stage of the shed was over, Bai Chuan wanted to return to his old tree hollow.

Along the way, he sought out narrow places crowded with branches and shrubs, winding his body through them as he crawled. The old skin either split and fell away on its own or was scraped off by the branches.

He had to admit, the feeling of his skin slowly falling behind him as he moved was incredibly strange, yet oddly refreshing.

If Bai Chuan had to describe it, it was like a gust of wind suddenly blowing on a scorching day while you stripped all your clothes off.

Bare as the day he was born, he felt every gust of wind keenly, yet it was also as refreshing as having every bit of plaque cleaned from his teeth.