Shi Mu was utterly shocked. It took him a long while to come back to his senses and lower his head. What he saw made his expression change dramatically once again.
The withered tree below, which had been on the verge of death, was now lush and green. Its branches and buds had spread out, flourishing as though it had come back to life in an instant.
Shi Mu opened his mouth, barely managing to suppress his shock. After steadying himself, he carefully examined the tree.
When he found that, aside from having been completely rejuvenated, the tree showed no other abnormalities, he wasted no time. He sprang from the branches and jumped straight down.
Thud!
Shi Mu landed heavily on both feet. Dust scattered around him, and only then did he let out a long breath. Still bewildered, he raised his head and looked up at the sky once more.
At last, he was certain that he had indeed spent the entire night perched on the branch.
Shi Mu recalled how he had been unable to control himself in the dream, and the muscles in his face twitched.
Daydreaming!
At last, he truly understood the meaning of the word.
Although he had not been dreaming during the day, the fact that he had been fully conscious in the dream left him no other way to explain the strange experience.
Thinking of the scene in which the White Ape's eyes had absorbed countless specks of light, Shi Mu involuntarily raised a hand to touch his own eyes, gently rubbing them through his eyelids.
Aside from some soreness, his eyes seemed no different from usual!
Shi Mu pondered this silently, then glanced around the courtyard.
"This... This is..."
An indescribable look of astonishment suddenly appeared on the youth's face!
Only then did he realize that by merely focusing his mind a little, he could clearly see an ant on the grass seven or eight zhang away. He shifted his gaze slightly, and even a pea-sized spider on a tattered web in the corner of the courtyard came sharply into view.
Shi Mu sucked in a breath and abruptly raised his head, looking toward a leaf high in the tree.
Every pale vein in the leaf was clearly visible, as if it were right before his eyes.
Shi Mu was stunned, standing motionless where he was.
After an unknown length of time, he suddenly burst into loud laughter! His laughter was unrestrained, instantly rousing more than half the servants in the estate from their sleep.
Roused from their dreams, the servants were understandably angry. But once they realized that the laughter belonged to Shi Mu, the estate's master, they could only grumble inwardly and go back to sleep without a word.
After laughing his fill, Shi Mu excitedly hurried back to his bedroom and shut the door again.
Whoosh!
He strode to the bedside and yanked down the iron saber hanging there. After a moment's thought, he turned his gaze to a candle on the table, already burned down by more than half.
His wrist flicked. A blurred saber shadow flashed over the candle's top, and its flame went out in an instant.
Seeing this, Shi Mu immediately swung his saber again with a backhand slash.
Whoosh, whoosh! The sound of blades cutting through the air rang out as a swath of cold light swept across the table. Yet the candle on the candlestick still stood perfectly still.
Shi Mu smiled faintly and tapped the tabletop with the back of his saber.
Thump!
The candle trembled, then fell onto the table in nine pieces. Every segment was identical in size, shape, and thickness, as if it had been measured with a ruler.
"Eight slashes in a breath! I was right. If I can perfect the precision of my swings, I can immediately increase the speed of my strikes. My control still can't keep up with my eyesight. Otherwise, reaching Nine-Slash Breath wouldn't be impossible." Shi Mu looked at the candle, now cut into pieces, and murmured, a glint of fervor in his eyes.
As soon as he finished speaking, he swung the iron saber repeatedly through the empty air nearby.
Amid the whooshing, each slash seemed to split into seven or eight saber shadows.
Shi Mu's eyes grew brighter. His arm kept moving, and for a while, he showed no sign of stopping.
Several days later, at night.
The bedroom window stood open, and pale moonlight spilled over the head of the bed. Shi Mu tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep.
With a sigh, he suddenly sat up, pushed open the door, and stepped outside. He let the moonlight bathe him, as if silently sensing something.
A moment later, he moved, climbing the tree in the courtyard with both hands and feet. He settled with practiced ease on a branch and raised his head to gaze at the sky.
After the time it took to brew a cup of tea, Shi Mu's body trembled slightly. Then he became completely motionless in the tree.
The next moment, he once again transformed into the White Ape in his dream. He was still crouched on the same dream-tree as before, using his golden eyes to absorb the specks of light drifting down from the sky.
Unable to move a muscle in the White Ape's body, Shi Mu could only use the corner of his eye to observe everything around him.
"There used to be a green worm three feet away, but it's gone now. One, two, three... seventeen. Yesterday, there should have been nineteen leaves on that branch to my left; the day before, there were twenty. So it really isn't the same dream repeating. Time is passing day by day in the dream, too."
Shi Mu thought in silence, but he felt more and more at a loss.
Ever since he had experienced seven days of strange dreams and his eyesight had suddenly become astonishingly sharp, he had not been able to deliberately enter those dreams again while in bed. However, on nights with moonlight, if he climbed the tree in the second half of the night and gazed at the moon, he could still passively enter the dream in the form of "daydreaming." There, the White Ape would continue absorbing the specks of light that appeared in the moonlight.
These past few days, whenever he awoke from the dream, he found that his eyesight had grown sharper and could reach farther. Still, the increase was no longer comparable to what he had experienced on the first day.
Even so, Shi Mu could now easily make out the legs of a flying mosquito more than a dozen zhang away. If he stood atop the tree and looked into the distance, he could even clearly see a pea-sized insect hole in a tree fifty or sixty zhang away.
One day, when there was no moonlight, Shi Mu had spent the entire night in the tree but still could not enter the dream.
By then, he had vaguely guessed that the specks of light absorbed by the White Ape in his dreams were probably some kind of essence contained in moonlight that benefited eyesight.
Based on his estimate, if the White Ape continued cultivating its eyes in the dream day after day, and the effects continued to flow back into his real eyes, his eyesight still had plenty of room to improve.
The thought delighted Shi Mu, but it also gave him another idea. Perhaps he ought to cultivate an additional martial skill.
Three days later, Shi Mu received two familiar visitors in the estate's main hall.
"Brother Shi, we've brought you the things you had Master Ma make. And this other item—we managed to get it for you after you sent someone to pass along your message."
The older of the two young men smiled as he handed two heavy bundles to Shi Mu.
It was Feng Li of the Black Fox Society!
Before you continue