Chapter 19, Extraordinary Perception

Translator: StarReader

 

Su Chen had just escaped from within the fish monster’s belly in the lake. Petrified, he barely realized his body felt odd.

 

Only after lying down did his restless heart gradually calm down, and he realized something was amiss.

 

The mountain was quiet at midnight. The night wind swept over, rustling the grass into a crisp whisper.

 

The sound of the wind was nothing unusual, but Su Chen noticed that beneath this gentle rustling, there seemed to be other sounds as well.

 

Thirty meters to the west, a small grasshopper leapt onto a blade of grass and flapped its wings, gliding several feet through the air.

 

Twenty meters to the east, two crickets were locked in combat near a rock. One was lunging forward, while the other turned to defend itself, their struggle fierce and intense.

 

Su Chen was deeply shaken. He had no words to describe how he felt.

 

He couldn’t believe he could hear such faint, delicate sounds from up to thirty meters away—sounds so tiny yet clear, including the precise movements of their fight. His hearing was at least ten times sharper than before.

 

Su Chen had no time to think further when he suddenly picked up a faint, unusual fragrance. He twitched his nose, trying to identify the source. It was carried by the wind from distant grasslands, mingling with an almost imperceptible dampness and the faint aroma of wildflowers.

 

He could even distinguish the specific scents within this complex fragrance—one was wild chrysanthemum, sharp and bitter, while another was ginseng flower, carrying a hint of sweet coldness. His ability to recognize these subtle floral notes with such clarity was truly astonishing.

 

“What is happening?”

 

As the roaring campfire gradually died down, darkness descended upon the mountain cave and its surroundings. Su Chen noticed with growing astonishment that his eyes became sharper than ever, capable of seeing in the pitch-black night. He could discern every detail within the cave: the various lowly herbs in his medicine basket, the faint strands of spider threads on the cave walls—all were visible to him.

 

This was no ordinary sight. In Gusu County City, the majority of common folk couldn’t see in the dark; without torches or lamps, they would be completely unable to see once darkness fell.

 

Su Chen had found it necessary to rely on faint starlight and lanterns to discern his surroundings during the dead of night. Now, however, he could see as clear as day without any artificial light, an experience so extraordinary that it defied belief.

 

He plucked a small piece of a low-grade herb’s root from the medicine basket, placed it in his mouth, and began chewing. The taste was faintly sweet yet subtle, and upon swallowing, he detected a mild sensation of invigoration and heat dissipation. This suggested that the herb was likely an alumroot that had been growing for roughly eight or nine months.

 

Su Chen was astonished to find that everything appeared more distinct, vivid, and vibrant than ever before. His five senses seemed to have awakened from a dormant state, amplifying his perception of the world by a factor of ten.

 

“Maybe,” he pondered aloud, “my Lower Dantian cultivation also improved?”

 

Su Chen was so excited that he quickly sat up and examined his body for any other signs of change. First, he performed a set of rudimentary martial arts movements to see if there were any noticeable transformations in his Lower Dantian.

 

But what disappointed him was that his arm strength remained at thirty kilograms of force, still in the lowest tier of practitioners. His Lower Dantian had hardly changed at all. The only area with significant improvement was his perception.

 

To test the limits of his perception, Su Chen covered his eyes with a cloth strip and blocked his ears. Then he strolled through the dense forest to see if he could still sense external sounds.

 

However, he discovered an even more astonishing phenomenon. Even with his eyes completely closed and ears plugged, relying solely on an inexplicable intuition, he could sense the objects around him. He didn’t even need to touch them—he could feel the branch in front of his body and the stone beneath his feet and avoid them.

 

It was as if he had opened sky’s eye, directly sensing the things around him. But Su Chen could only perceive objects within roughly three feet of his body; beyond that, it didn’t work. This intuition had a very limited range.

 

Su Chen wandered in the dark forest with his eyes covered. Every step he took, whether it was the grasses and trees hidden underground or the centipedes and insects that could be used for medicine lurking in the bushes, he could sense and discover them without fail. He could even do so without looking, sensing the roots of herbs buried one foot beneath the ground and determining their value and whether they were worth harvesting.

 

The snakes, ants, scorpions, and other venomous creatures hidden in the grass posed great dangers to those who gathered herbs in the mountains. A single bite could result in days of excruciating pain that made it impossible to collect more herbs—or worse, death. For a herbalist, being able to easily avoid these deadly creatures meant fewer troubles.

 

At his feet, tiny insects crawled over the blades of grass, and the scene unfolded before him with vivid clarity in his mind. It was an incredibly mystical sensation, as though he could see through the world itself.

 

Su Chen removed the cloth from his eyes and pulled out the cotton earplugs.

 

This incredible supernatural sensing ability left him deeply shaken. Su Chen couldn’t help but feel confused, wondering why he suddenly possessed it. No mortal had this kind of ability… not even first-rate experts could achieve it.

 

After all, Li Kui was both a seasoned herbalist and a first-rate expert. He often explained the strengths of people at different levels, but Su Chen had never heard him mention that one could gather herbs with their eyes closed, which alone proved that even first-rate experts couldn’t do it.

 

Since even first-rate experts couldn’t accomplish this, then logically, only those above, at the level of Grandmaster, could possibly possess such supernatural power. Su Chen recalled hearing his senior brothers discuss among themselves how  Grandmasters obtained a mysterious force after entering Upper Dantian, granting them abilities far beyond ordinary martial experts. Thinking it over carefully, that seemed very likely indeed.

 

Normally, Su Chen didn’t possess this kind of ability. But ever since he was poisoned by the golden-banded viper and fell unconscious in the lake, shedding blue tears before being swallowed by the giant fish monster, then experiencing that strange, bizarre dream about Upper Dantian…

 

In his dream, he transformed into a dim and feeble light ball within the Upper Dantian, continuously ingesting vast amounts of blue energy, growing exponentially stronger. Upon awakening, he discovered he had acquired this extraordinary ability. If there was any notable change within him, it was undeniably that it occurred during this brief period.

 

According to this line of thought, the dream he experienced was indeed real. That tiny blue light ball should be the spirit as described in Daoist texts.

 

“I genuinely entered my Upper Dantian and discovered my own spirit, consuming a tremendous amount of blue energy. I estimate its power increased by tenfold… Therefore, my perception of the outside world has also grown nearly ten times stronger.

 

“Did I attain the extraordinary perception only Grandmasters possess?”

 

Su Chen pondered, his mind agitated as he realized the likelihood of this being true. This mysterious and extraordinary sensing power should be a miraculous and formidable force granted to a martial artist upon their first entry into the Upper Dantian.

 

Reflecting on his current state, he was still cultivating towards Lower Dantian and Middle Dantian, merely a lowly outer disciple at the Medicine King Estate. Yet, he had stumbled into the mysterious Upper Dantian, gaining extraordinary perception that rivaled those of an expert.

 

Furthermore, the mountain he found in the Upper Dantian, Spirit Mountain, was undeniably real. He saw the cracks on the chaos shell and witnessed the blue energy leaking out. That explained why he was shedding bluestone tears. Repairing this crack remained a challenge, though not his immediate concern.

 

With half of a wild ginseng in his possession, he could replenish his spirit and stay safe for now. His pressing issue was returning to the Medicine King Estate by morning to face Li Kui’s evaluation of outer disciples, conducted every six months.