Vision's Anomaly

Shi Mu was utterly shocked. It took him a long moment to come back to his senses, and when he lowered his head, the sight before him made his expression shift dramatically once more.

The withered tree that had been on the verge of death below him was now verdant green all over, its branches and buds stretching out luxuriantly, as if it had suddenly come back to life.

Shi Mu opened his mouth, barely managing to suppress his astonishment. After steadying himself, he carefully examined the large tree.

As a result, he found that aside from having completely regained its second spring, the tree truly had no other abnormalities. Without further hesitation, he leaped down from the tree in one swift motion.

With a "bang"!

Shi Mu's feet landed heavily on the ground, kicking up a ring of dust. Only then did he let out a long breath, raising his head again to look at the sky with lingering doubt.

At this moment, he finally confirmed that he had indeed spent the entire half-night perched on the branch.

Recalling the helpless situation he had been in during his earlier dream, the muscles on Shi Mu's face involuntarily twitched.

Daydreaming!

He had finally truly experienced the meaning of that phrase.

Although he hadn't been dreaming during the day, the fact that he had been completely lucid within the dream still left him with no other word to explain the bizarre experience.

Thinking of the scene in the dream where the White Ape's eyes absorbed countless specks of light, Shi Mu couldn't help but raise his hand to touch his own eyes, gently rubbing them through his eyelids.

Aside from a slight soreness, his eyeballs didn't seem to have any major abnormality!

Shi Mu pondered inwardly as he swept his gaze around the small courtyard.

"This... this is..."

A look of indescribable shock suddenly appeared on the young man's face.

Only now did he realize that when he slightly focused his mind, his eyes could clearly see an ant on the grass seven or eight zhang away. When he shifted his gaze slightly, a bean-sized spider on a tattered spiderweb in the corner of the courtyard was also distinctly visible.

Shi Mu drew in a sharp breath of cold air. He abruptly raised his head and looked toward a certain leaf high up on the tree.

The faint veins on the leaf were clearly visible, as if they were right before his eyes.

Shi Mu stood frozen in place, motionless.

After who knows how long, he suddenly burst into loud laughter! The laughter was extremely joyful, instantly waking most of the servants in the manor who were still sound asleep.

These people, startled awake from their dreams, could only imagine their inner anger. But when they recognized that the laughter came from none other than Shi Mu, the master of the manor, they grumbled inwardly but could only swallow their resentment and continue sleeping with their heads buried.

After his loud laughter, Shi Mu excitedly returned to his bedroom and closed the door again.

With a "whoosh".

He strode to the bedside in a few steps, pulled out an iron blade hanging there, and after a moment's deliberation, turned his gaze and fixed it on a candle on the table that was already more than half burned.

With a flick of his wrist, a blurry blade shadow flashed past the top of the candle, and the flame was extinguished in an instant.

Seeing this, Shi Mu did not hesitate and slashed out again with a backhand.

With the sound of "whoosh, whoosh" cutting through the air, a large swath of cold light swept back across the table. The candle on the candlestick remained standing there without moving a hair.

Shi Mu smiled faintly, then tapped the tabletop with the back of the blade.

Bang!

The candle trembled once, then split into nine segments scattered across the table. Each segment was identical in size, shape, and thickness, as if they had been carefully measured with a ruler.

"Eight cuts in one breath! Just as I thought. If I can perfectly improve the precision of my swings, I can immediately increase my slashing speed. This is still because my current control can't keep up with my eyesight; otherwise, even nine cuts in one breath wouldn't be impossible." Shi Mu murmured to himself as he looked at the candle now turned into slices, a hint of fervor on his face.

As soon as he finished speaking, the iron blade in his hand slashed repeatedly into the nearby air.

Amid the bursts of cutting sounds, each slash vaguely transformed into seven or eight blade shadows appearing.

Shi Mu's eyes grew brighter and brighter as he swung his arm without pause, showing no sign of stopping anytime soon.

A few days later, at night.

The bedroom window was open, and faint moonlight spilled onto the bedside. Shi Mu tossed and turned on the bed, unable to fall asleep no matter what.

With a sigh, Shi Mu suddenly sat up from the bed, pushed open the door, and walked out of the house, letting himself bathe in the moonlight outside, as if silently sensing something.

After a moment, he moved his body, climbed up the lush green tree in the courtyard using both hands and feet, and very skillfully crouched on a certain branch, raising his head to look at the sky.

After the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, Shi Mu's body trembled slightly, and then he became completely motionless on the tree.

The next moment, he once again transformed into the White Ape in his dream, still crouching on the same large tree from the previous dream, using his golden eyes to absorb the specks of light falling from the sky.

Shi Mu's consciousness was trapped inside the White Ape's body, unable to move at all, but he couldn't help using his peripheral vision to observe everything around him.

"Originally, there was a green caterpillar three feet away, but it's gone now. One, two, three... seventeen. Yesterday, on the left-hand branch in the dream, there should have been nineteen leaves. The day before, it was twenty. It seems this isn't a repeated dream; rather, time passes day by day within this dream as well."

Shi Mu thought silently, but his mind grew more and more confused.

Speaking of which, ever since he had the strange dream for seven days and his eyesight suddenly became astonishingly sharp, he had not been able to actively have that strange dream again in bed over the following days. However, when there was moonlight in the latter half of the night, if he crouched on the tree and looked up at the moon, he could still passively enter the dream in the form of a "daydream," allowing the White Ape to continue absorbing the specks of light revealed in the moonlight.

Over these past few days, every time he woke up from the dream, he would find that his eyes could see farther and more clearly, but the increase in eyesight could no longer compare to the first day.

Even so, Shi Mu could already easily see the legs of a flying mosquito more than ten zhang away. If he stood at the top of the tree and looked into the distance, he could even clearly see a bean-sized wormhole on a large tree fifty or sixty zhang away.

On one of those days, when there was no moonlight, Shi Mu stayed on the tree for an entire night but still couldn't enter the dream.

By now, he had vaguely guessed that the specks of light absorbed by the White Ape in the dream were likely some kind of beneficial essence for eyesight contained within the moonlight.

Based on his estimation, if he continued to let the dream White Ape train its eyes day after day, the feedback to his real-world eyes should leave considerable room for further improvement.

If so, while Shi Mu felt pleasantly surprised, it also gave him another idea. Perhaps he should train in yet another martial technique.

Three days later, in the estate's main hall, Shi Mu received two acquaintances.

"Brother Shi, we've brought the items you had forged at Master Ma's place. As for this other thing, after you sent word, the two of us went through no small trouble to get it for you."

One of the young men, slightly older, smiled and handed two heavily wrapped bundles directly to Shi Mu.

It was none other than Feng Li of the Black Fox Society!