Chapter 19 Has the Nearsightedness Been Cured?
[Snake Gall: Clears the liver and brightens the eyes. After consumption, it can restore damaged eyesight and increase resistance to toxins.]
“That gave me a fright—it’s only a snake gall!”
Realizing that the black orb wasn’t something filthy, Ye Da finally reached into the ball of light and took it out, swallowing it whole. The gall was rather large, but Ye Da didn’t dare bite into it. Snake gall was notorious for its bitterness; if he didn’t want to suffer, swallowing it whole was the only way.
As a child, he remembered the elders in the village wrapping it in pickled vegetables to mask the fishy smell, but even then, it was only possible to swallow it down.
Luck was on his side—the gall slid down smoothly. But moments later…
He burped. Oh, that sour and bitter sensation!
“Ugh!”
The bitterness surged up his throat, overwhelming and nauseating. Yet, after the initial sickening aftertaste, Ye Da felt a coolness rising from his stomach and surging toward his eyes. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, only to discover, to his astonishment, that everything before him had become clear.
He could even see the individual stray hairs on the little wolf cub. Wait—wasn’t he severely nearsighted? One eye at six hundred degrees, the other at seven hundred.
“Could my nearsightedness be cured?”
Ye Da was incredulous. Nearsightedness couldn’t be cured except by surgery—yet now, after eating a single snake gall, his eyesight was restored? If snake galls truly worked such miracles, snakes would have long gone extinct.
Despite the newfound clarity, Ye Da, still skeptical, put his glasses back on to confirm whether his nearsightedness was truly gone or if this was some strange illusion. But the moment he put on the glasses, his surroundings became blurry, and focusing made him dizzy.
It felt just like wearing a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription.
He removed his glasses again—clarity returned instantly.
“My god, is my nearsightedness really gone?”
Holding the analyzer glasses in his hand, Ye Da didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If his regular glasses were useless now, how could he analyze anything?
Perhaps he could try using the analyzer glasses despite the blurriness—if they still worked, he might use them in special situations, like scanning his surroundings before heading out, then removing them.
Or maybe, when he couldn’t find a treasure chest, he could use them to analyze its location…
It was worth a try.
When Ye Da put the analyzer glasses back on, before long, they began to clear up. It was just like being in the optician’s office, staring into the refractor at the hot air balloon image—the world came back into sharp focus. It seemed the analyzer glasses were auto-adjusting the prescription, truly as intelligent as a device that had been upgraded and enhanced.
With the glasses’ adjustment, new information appeared above the two wolf cubs.
[Name: Jungle Wolf (Little Grey)]
[Level: First Tier (Basic)]
[Skills: Bite, Bleed]
[Name: Jungle Hell Wolf (Little White)]
[Level: First Tier (Intermediate)]
[Skills: Bite, Claw, Howl (Mental Attack)]
“These two cubs are actually different breeds?”
Ye Da was surprised at the information—one was a Jungle Wolf, the other a Jungle Hell Wolf. But weren’t they from the same mother? How could they be of different breeds? Or perhaps… one was a mixed breed and the other wasn’t?
Wait!
As Ye Da studied the cubs, he realized something was off. Had they grown bigger?
He quickly picked up the white wolf cub and found Little White had indeed grown significantly, much heavier than before. And where he lifted the cub, a tuft of white fur was left behind.
[Fur: Can be used to make pillows, quilts, and other warm bedding. It is a rare, all-natural insulating material.]
Picked up.
[Fur +1]
Having gained a taste of this benefit, Ye Da quickly picked up Little Grey, who was still gnawing on the snake eggshell. Sure enough, a unit of fur appeared beneath it as well.
Heavier, and shedding.
Could it be that these wolf cubs grew just by eating?
Ye Da marveled at the creatures of this world—so miraculous, growing rapidly just by eating. Then again, in such a dangerous world, if they didn’t grow quickly, they probably wouldn’t survive long.
Once he put down the cubs and confirmed that his eyesight was perfect with or without glasses, Ye Da finally understood: the analyzer glasses could self-adjust. Previously, they’d functioned as prescription lenses; now that his vision was normal, they returned to being pure analyzer glasses.
[Snake Meat +20]
Ye Da moved on to collect the other two rewards. The snake meat, encased in a thin snakeskin, felt like a piece of cloth embroidered with sequins. The last orb of light—deliberately saved for last—contained the beast core.
He’d absorbed two beast cores before, without knowing their use, so he hadn’t observed any changes. Now, finally, he had the chance.
“Crack!”
Ye Da grasped the beast core. The moment it touched his hand, a surge of heat spread through his fingers and into every vein. As the heat dispersed, the stone skin on the back of his hand rapidly extended, crawling all the way to his knuckles, stopping just shy of his fingertips.
“Crack!”
“Crack! Crack!”
Ye Da flexed his fingers, expecting stiffness after the transformation. But now, with his right hand encased in stone skin except for the fingertips, he performed a series of hand movements as fluid as ever—no hindrance at all.
He tapped his stone-covered hand—hard and solid, just like true stone.
But… was there a limit to this stone skin?
“Bang!”
Ye Da punched a sapling as thick as a basketball. The tree snapped clean in half beneath his blow! Yet his stone skin was utterly unscathed, as if he’d merely struck a foam board—there was sound and impact, but no pain at all.
[Inferior Wood +2]
[Inferior Wood +3]
The tree yielded two pieces of inferior wood, which Ye Da picked up casually. Even after this experiment, he wasn’t satisfied—he still hadn’t found the limits of his stone skin.