"As you wish!"
Zhenwo Changjing was not at all surprised by Yu Xian's choice.
She lightly tapped the space between his brows with her finger, and an eye symbol instantly surfaced in Yu Xian's mind.
The moment the symbol appeared, Yu Xian's two eyes began spinning wildly. The nerves within were severed in a flash, and two streaks of bloody tears trickled down from his eyes.
Under normal circumstances, an injury of this degree would have mended in an instant with his self-healing ability.
Yet this time, his self-healing power seemed to take it for granted that he possessed no eyes, and the severed neural pathways sealed over on their own.
He opened his eyes wide, and both eyeballs instantly dropped out from their sockets, landing neatly in his waiting hands.
The very first step of Mister Eye's legacy was... having eyes without eyeballs.
Under the influence of the eye symbol, the interiors of Yu Xian's sockets gradually turned into pitch-black voids. Even when light shone directly into them, only utter darkness remained, like bottomless chasms.
At this moment, Yu Xian felt an endless craving for eyeballs surge within him, as though his empty sockets could swallow an infinite number of them.
Suppressing the desire stirring in his heart, he focused his attention on the eye symbol in his mind, striving to comprehend the core essence of Mister Eye's legacy.
In truth, the others had also noticed the changes occurring in Yu Xian by now.
Just as Gong Qian moved to step forward, Zhang Shou pressed down on her shoulder, signaling for her to stay back and watch rather than disturb Yu Xian.
Zhang Shou knew full well that Yu Xian was not someone obsessed with saving face. If he genuinely needed help, Yu Xian would have shouted for him immediately. Since he had not called out, it meant he did not need any assistance.
He guessed that Yu Xian was probably about to awaken some bizarre new ability again; he had long grown accustomed to Yu Xian's powers constantly shifting.
"For the eye is the casement of heaven and earth, the pivot of divine mechanism; above, it answers to the three luminaries, and below, it connects to the nine underworlds."
With his sockets wide open, Yu Xian stared with his black, hollow pits straight toward the sun above. Then he took his right eyeball and shoved it into his left socket. His right eyeball immediately began trembling frantically. He hurriedly lowered his head and crammed his left eyeball into his right socket, sending both eyeballs into violent spasms.
It was as though they were desperate to return to their original sockets, but because those places were already occupied, they gradually relented after a spell of stubborn struggling.
Yu Xian blinked repeatedly. Only after both eyeballs had fully stabilized did he raise his head and look around.
His vision at this moment was thoroughly bizarre: the sights beheld by his left and right eyes were inverted, yet within his brain, they seamlessly pieced together into a coherent, perfect picture.
"Salty Fish, are you alright?" Zhang Shou called out, seeing that Yu Xian seemed to have finished his awakening.
Yu Xian turned to Zhang Shou, nodding with a smile. "Don't worry, I'm fine. I just need a little time to adapt to this new ability."
"Then remember to call me if you need anything." Zhang Shou nodded, then ushered everyone to disperse, giving Yu Xian time and space to adjust.
"Alright!" Yu Xian replied with a nod.
Once everyone had departed, the socket of his right eye suddenly turned pitch-black once more.
He conjured an eyeball bubble and stuffed it into the socket, but the eyeball bubble was promptly expelled. Clearly, an eyeball bubble was not a genuine eye and failed to meet the requirement.
His left eyeball reappeared in his right socket, and he couldn't help but frown as he looked at Zhenwo Changjing. "Auntie, Mister Eye's legacy seems to inspire an intensely powerful craving for eyeballs. Is there any way to eliminate it?"
"That is your thirst for knowledge. The stronger your curiosity, the more intense your hunger for eyeballs will become," Zhenwo Changjing explained.
Yu Xian frowned. "Then why can't I see the impurities in my own body?"
"Because you are still missing an eye," Zhenwo Changjing replied with a smile.
With that, she reached up, plucked out her own right eye, and held the eyeball out to Yu Xian. At the same time, she blinked, and a new right eye instantly grew back in its place as she smiled at him.
"..."
Yu Xian had assumed that mastering Mister Eye's legacy would be enough to see impurities, only to find that he still needed Zhenwo Changjing's eyeball.
Wasn't this... an eye practically walking right up to his front door?
At that moment, Yu Xian felt as though a flag he had raised was fluttering boldly in the wind above his head.
"Don't you want it?" Zhenwo Changjing asked.
Gritting his teeth, Yu Xian said, "I do!"
It was already too late to back out now. He reached out, took Zhenwo Changjing's right eye, and shoved it into his empty socket the next instant. His pupil quivered violently, and his right eye turned a vivid green.
At the same time, an immense sense of fulfillment washed over his heart, as if every desire he possessed had been thoroughly satisfied.
Closing his eyes, he wore an expression of pure bliss. Only after a good while did he open them again, whereupon he discovered that the entire world had undergone an earth-shaking transformation.
In the world seen through his right eye, colors were boundless and inexhaustible, draping reality in a kaleidoscopic spectacle. Countless shades were entirely beyond the descriptive power of his current vocabulary, for no words had ever been invented to name such hues.
As for Zhenwo Changjing standing before him, she was simply so pure and clean. Her body bore not a single speck of dust, impurity, or grime; she was thoroughly translucent from top to bottom, unquestionably the cleanest living entity he had ever laid eyes upon.
He turned his gaze toward Zhang Shou, Gong Qian, Qingniao, and the others, instantly noticing that all three of them harbored impurities, dust, bacteria, and mites.
Among them, while Zhang Shou possessed the greatest share of impurities, he had relatively few bacteria and mites. Gong Qian's condition was the exact opposite of Zhang Shou's, and as for Qingniao... she had an abundance of both.
What surprised him most was actually Xiong Da, because Xiong Da carried very few impurities or other filthy matter on his body.
Peering closely at Xiong Da with his right eye, Yu Xian observed a raging flame burning within the bear's body. Evidently, this internal fire was the reason so little grime clung to him.
In fact, beyond revealing impurities and filth on others, Zhenwo Changjing's eye could perceive many other strange and wondrous phenomena.
For example, when he stared at the crowns of their heads, he could see faint radiance glowing from their skulls. Looking at a person as a whole, he could perceive the qi enveloping the surface of their body.
Furthermore, there was an esoteric sense of good and evil.
When he looked at Zhang Shou, he could sense that Zhang Shou had killed many animals and two human beings. Qingniao had killed thirty people, while Gong Qian had killed twenty-six. Xiong Da, on the other hand, had never killed a single person, though he had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of animals.
Yet none of them bore an aura of evil, which meant the people they had killed were surely criminals or those who deserved to die. Consequently, their hearts harbored no guilt, malice, wicked intent, or bloodlust.
Just as Yu Xian wished to further explore what other capabilities Zhenwo Changjing's eye possessed, a tiny eyeball bubble floating in outer space observing the Moon suddenly caught movement.
Once Yu Xian had learned that Edward was hiding on the Moon, he had redeployed the bubbles he left behind during his voyage to Mars specifically to keep watch on it.
At this moment, a crucifix-shaped flash of scarlet light erupted on the far side of the Moon. The red beam then shot toward Earth at extreme speed, while under Yu Xian's control, countless spatial bubbles swiftly morphed into eyeball bubbles, zeroing in on the red glow one after another.
The red light moved with terrifying swiftness, maintaining roughly 300 times the speed of sound, and was projected to reach Earth in about an hour.
Through eyeball bubbles of various sizes, Yu Xian continuously analyzed the interior of the crimson glare, but the red light was extraordinarily thick, completely obscuring whatever lay within.
Yet he didn't need to see through it to know: the figure inside that red radiance was unquestionably Edward.
Having thoroughly mastered his Star Rank power, he had returned!
Chapter 175