The Portal of Wonderland

Shi Mu was so shocked that he could do nothing but sit on the branch for a while. When he finally shook himself out of the shock and looked down, the scene below him turned out to be almost as crazy as the dreamlike event he had just gone through.

The originally half-dead tree was now covered with verdant leaves, its branches stretching out vigorously as though it had been awakened from a long slumber.

Shi Mu stared at the sight, and then looked at the tree more closely. He jumped down only after he had managed to assure himself that there was nothing obviously strange going on with the tree. The only strange thing about it seemed to be that it was starting to revive itself.

Peng!

Shi Mu landed on the ground with a thud, stirring up a ring of dust.

After letting out a long sigh, he looked up at the sky again. He was still full of wonder at the crazy events of the night.

Finally, he accepted the fact that he had in actuality stayed on the branch for most of the night. He still remembered how it had felt being unable to control his body, and felt a chill as he thought about that frightening scene.

A daydream! This was the first time he had ever had a daydream.

Technically speaking, it hadn’t really been a ‘daydream.’ However, there was no other word to describe the strange event of his mind being absolutely sober while his body became paralyzed. When Shi Mu recalled the scene of the ape’s eyes absorbing the glittering lights in the sky, he touched his eyes involuntarily. He rubbed them, feeling a vague sense of uneasiness. However, it seemed that apart from some aches, there was nothing wrong with his body.

Shi Mu cast another glance around the yard as he pondered over the event.

“What… What’s this?” he said, dumbstruck with amazement yet again.

He didn’t understand what had happened to his eyes until that moment. He glanced briefly in the direction of an ant, which was about twenty meters away from him on the grass. As he shifted his eyes to a corner of the yard, he saw a spider as big as a bean weaving its cobweb in the silence of the morning.

Shi Mu took a cold breath, and then raised his head to look at a leaf on the big tree. What he saw greatly astonished him. The light-coloured veins of the leaf were as clearly visible as the veins on his hand.

Shi Mu was dumbstruck.

After a certain amount of time had passed, he suddenly burst into wild laughter. The entire manor, as well as the servants who were sleeping in it, shook because of his laughter. The servants were naturally very irritated when they were awakened from their dreams. However, they could do nothing but go back to sleep with muffled curses after they had identified the source of the laughter.

Shi Mu returned to his bedroom after laughing for a while. He closed the door and walked to his bed, and grabbed an iron knife from his bedside. After thinking for a short while, he directed his eyes to a flickering candle. He gazed at the candle whose body had almost been entirely burnt down.

He shook his wrist lightly, and a shadow of the knife rushed past the tip of the candle. The flame of the candle immediately went out.

Shi Mu gave the candle another backhanded cut.

Piercing sounds whizzed through the air, while cold light rolled over the desk like a tiny tornado. However, the candle remained in its original spot on the desk.

Shi Mu smiled and pressed the edge of his knife into the desk.

Peng! A loud sound was heard.

The candle trembled slightly, and then split into eight symmetrical pieces. Each piece looked as if it had been precisely cut with a ruler.

“Eight Cuts in One Breath! This is exactly what I had suspected. But, if I can cut more precisely, I could probably raise the speed as well. No worries, I’m still getting used to my newly acquired eyesight. Once I get accustomed to my enhanced eyesight, I might even be able to do Nine Cuts in One Breath,” Shi Mu murmured to himself as he looked at the pieces of the candle with an impassioned glow on his face.

Immediately after uttering the last word, he slashed his iron knife through the air again. Each slash produced seven or eight shadows of the knife, which could be faintly seen in the air. Shi Mu’s eyes grew increasingly brighter, and he took no breaks as he practiced his techniques ceaselessly.

*** ***

*Several days later, in the evening.*

The windows of Shi Mu’s bedroom were open, and a faint moonlight was falling in front of his bed. Shi Mu was tossing about in the bed, unable to fall asleep.

He let out a sigh and got up from his bed. He pushed open the door and walked out of the room to bathe himself in the moonlight, as if he was trying to sense something.

After a moment, he climbed the verdant tree in the yard. Finding the relevant posture, he squatted proficiently on the branch, and began looking up at the sky.

After a short span of time had passed, he began to tremble slightly. He found that his whole body had become glued to the tree, and he was unable to move yet again.

The next moment, he turned into the white ape of his dream once more. He was still squatting on the branch and absorbing the light that was falling from the sky. He was well aware that he had no control of his own body while he was the ape, but he couldn’t resist glancing around his surroundings through his periphery vision.

“There should have been a green worm three inches away, but it doesn’t seem to be there. One, two, three… seventeen. In yesterday’s dream, there were nineteen leaves on the branch near my left hand, and twenty the day before yesterday. So, it seems that I’m not repeating the same dream. The dream also seems to have its days and nights. So time definitely flows in the dream as well,” Shi Mu thought, becoming more and more confused.

He had acquired superhuman sight after seven successive dreams. Ever since then, he had not had the exact same weird dream again. However, if the latter half of the night had any moonlight, he was able to return to the dream as the ape. This only happened after he climbed the tree and squatted on the branch. It was as though he was dragged into the dream and forced to absorb the moonlight in the body of that white ape.

These days, his eyesight would grow better than before every time he awoke from the dream. However, the increase in the eyesight level was not as much as the first time. Even then, his current eyesight enabled him to clearly see the legs of a mosquito flying over thirty-three meters away. If he stood on a tree and looked into the distance, he could easily spot a worm’s hole in a big tree, and although that tree was over a hundred and seventy-five meters away, he could still see it with ease.

He was unable to get into the dream on the days when the moon did not show itself. He had a rough feeling that the white lights absorbed by the ape in the dream were some type of an essence of the moonlight. This essence was probably what had enhanced his eyesight. Moreover, he calculated that if he continued to dream this dream, it would be very beneficial to his eyes with every passing day since his eyesight would then enhance greatly.

Shi Mu thought of what would happen if everything went as smoothly as he thought. If his eyesight got even better, maybe he could try to learn more forms of martial arts.

*** ***

Two acquaintances visited Shi Mu three days later in the hall of his manor.

“Brother Shi, here is the thing you ordered from Master Ma. He’s finished it and we’ve brought it for you. We also brought something special for you,” the older one of the two youngsters said. He passed two heavy packs to Shi Mu, smiling.

This young man was Feng Li of the Black Fox Gang.