The chair screamed under his weight.
Old Hope stood with his arms crossed, back against the wall, his cloudy gray eyes fixed on Su Wei.
They awaited Su Wei's actions.
Su Wei walked to the stainless steel counter on the left, opened the third drawer, and pulled out a brand new pair of nitrile gloves.
The sound of rubber stretching out was clearly audible in the quiet, temperature-controlled room.
Put on your gloves.
Su Wei placed the iron box on the side of the display stand and turned to face the skull of the Bear King skeleton.
He didn't rush to remove the eyeball.
He raised his right hand, and with his gloved fingertips, gently touched the upper edge of the left eye socket of the bear king.
The passive skill " Nimble Hands " is activated.
Through the thin rubber, he could feel the extremely fine textures and undulations on the surface of the bone wall.
Almost simultaneously, the sensory range of the Texture Reshaping extended inward from the fingertips, penetrating the surface bone and reaching the filling structure deep within the eye socket.
The eye socket is not empty.
When making skeletal specimens, the eye sockets need to be filled with a special rigid polyurethane foam to serve as a base for the glass eyeball.
The density, curvature, and depth of the foam directly determine the angle and protrusion of the eyeball after it is inserted.
Even a millimeter's difference can cause the eyeball to become crooked.
If it goes astray, the entire bear's spirit is ruined.
Su Wei's fingertips moved slowly along the inner wall of his eye socket.
He closed his eyes.
The perception of Texture Reshaping is actually clearer in the dark.
The signals transmitted through the fingertips are translated into a three-dimensional tactile map in the brain.
The left side of the foam filling is 0.5 millimeters thicker.
There is a tiny air bubble at the upper edge, less than two millimeters in diameter, which is invisible to the naked eye.
However, if the eyeball is pressed down for a long time, it can cause a very slight tilt.
Su Wei opened his eyes.
He picked up a miniature carving knife with a handle less than ten centimeters long from the tool tray under the display stand.
The blade is curved and only three millimeters wide, specifically designed for precision finishing.
The tip of the knife probed into the eye socket.
Su Wei's right hand was frighteningly steady, without the slightest unnecessary tremor.
The blade scraped away a layer of almost transparent debris very slowly, following the thicker area of foam.
I had three cuts.
He would stop after each cut and use his fingertips to feel the thickness again.
On the fourth cut, I felt it was right.
The fill density on both sides is exactly the same as the curvature.
Su Wei switched to a finer needle-like tool and inserted it into the two-millimeter-sized air bubble.
The air was expelled.
He pressed the surrounding foam with his thumb, allowing the material to spring back and fill the pinhole.
The entire repair process took eleven minutes.
There was absolutely no sound in the temperature-controlled room, except for the very faint "click" sound when a tool occasionally touched the bone wall.
Old Hope remained seated in his folding chair.
The posture remained unchanged.
With his arms crossed and back against the wall, his gray eyes followed the movement of Su Wei's every finger.
Old Hope remained silent.
This in itself is an attitude.
If Su Wei's methods were flawed in any way, the old man would kick him out in the first second.
We will no longer allow the Su Wei to desecrate this rare specimen of the bear king.
Even though Su Wei had already proven himself time and again.
Su Wei straightened up.
The left eye socket is now complete.
He used the same procedure to treat the right eye socket.
The filling on the right side is better than on the left, with only a very slight deviation in curvature, which can be fixed with two cuts.
Eight minutes.
Both eye sockets are healed.
Su Wei walked back to the display stand, opened the tin box, and very carefully picked up the first glass eyeball with his right thumb and forefinger.
The amber-colored sphere refracts a warm light under the cool illumination.
The hand-painted iris patterns exhibit subtle color variations from light yellow to dark brown at different angles, with an extremely natural transition.
Su Wei held the eyeballs in his palm and walked to the front of the Bear King's skull.
His gaze swept across the two empty eye sockets from the front, and a precise three-dimensional model was built in his mind.
When a brown bear is alive, its eyes are not facing directly forward.
They have a slight outward angle, about seven to eight degrees.
This angle gives brown bears a wider field of vision, while also creating a heavy, oppressive gaze when they look directly at you.
This is the angle that the Su Wei wanted to restore.
He aligned the first glass eyeball with the opening in the left eye socket.
The bottom of the sphere is aligned with the curved base of the foam.
Using fingertips, she very slowly pushed the glass eyeball millimeter by millimeter into the eye socket.
Texture Reshaping entirely online.
Su Wei could feel the pressure distribution between the sphere and the filling material with his fingertips.
The pressure at the front contact point is increasing evenly, without deviation or slippage.
Just then...
"Etc."
Old Hope's voice boomed in the temperature-controlled room.
Su Wei stopped moving.
She held the amber-colored glass eyeball in her hand and turned to look at him.
Old Hope didn't look at him.
The old man reached his right hand into a hidden pocket in the chest area of his leather apron.
It wasn't the one he was taking out the metal box from earlier; it was one deeper inside, one that Su Wei had never seen him open before.
Rough fingers groped in the hidden pocket for a few seconds, then pulled it out.
She held a small velvet pouch between her fingers.
The black velvet surface was worn smooth and shiny, with the edges frayed.
The bag was tied at the top with an old leather cord.
He had clearly opened and closed the small bag repeatedly, countless times.
Old Hope used his teeth to bite open the leather cord, and the velvet bag came undone.
He poured the contents into his left palm.
Two glass eyeballs rolled out.
It's completely different from the two in the tin box.
The diameter is about the same, but the color is darker; it's not amber, but a very deep burnt brown.
Under the cool light of the temperature-controlled room, something inside the sphere is refracting light.
Those patterns are not ordinary iris lines; they are layered, filamentous structures with a dark red background.
From certain angles, the dark red threads swirl against the deep brown background, like fire sealed within the core of glass.
The black in the pupil area is darker and deeper than the standard sample, and the transition at the edge is not a hard line cut by machine, but a gradient created by hand-dyeing.