His head no longer ached. The excruciating pain had vanished.
He instinctively touched his ear; it felt exactly the same as before. It was as if the ear-cutting incident from the previous night had never happened at all.
He climbed out of bed and first looked for a mirror to examine himself.
The mirror reflected the face of a youth. He wasn't particularly handsome, but his pitch-black, profound eyes set him apart from the mundane, revealing a hint of extraordinary, cold charm.
The youth’s ears were the same size, identical.
Last night, when he had just planted the Land-Listening Flesh-Ear Grass, his right ear was fat and huge, its lobe practically touching his jaw. But now it had become completely ordinary; from the outside, no anomaly could be detected.
This was because the body of the Serrated Golden Centipede [Section 129] and the Land-Listening Flesh-Ear Grass had already adapted to each other.
Fang Yuan had a thought and drew a trace of Red Steel True Essence from his aperture. The true essence traveled up his body, eventually flowing into his right ear.
Instantly, his hearing multiplied several times over, and the footsteps of countless people poured into his ears.
Although he was on the second floor, he had the illusion of standing on solid ground.
Fang Yuan listened intently, continuing to circulate his true essence, which further enhanced his hearing. In the mirror, his right ear slowly began to grow rootlets.
These rootlets were like the tendrils of a thousand-year-old ginseng, extending outward from the helix, sparse and long, dangling toward the ground.
At the same time, his right ear showed signs of swelling and fattening.
Fang Yuan tried to stop activating the Land-Listening Flesh-Ear Grass. A second later, all the rootlets extending from his ear retracted, and his right ear returned to its normal shape.
Naturally, his hearing also reverted to its original state.
"With this, I have a scouting Gu." Fang Yuan put on his clothes and took a water basin from under the bed.
Because of the coal stone thrown into it, the bright red bloody water from the previous night had turned into a dark, murky liquid. The blood-soaked cloth in it was the same. The original red and white base colors were all masked by the dark gray. Section 129: Serrated Golden Centipede easily reminded one of an oil-stained rag in the kitchen.
This basin of water could be taken out. Even if emptied in front of others, it wouldn't arouse suspicion.
Summer was coming, and many clan members would be scrubbing the stoves they had used all winter. This kind of dirty water was a common sight from such cleaning.
Striking while the iron was hot, Fang Yuan once again entered the hidden cave in the stone crevice.
This time, he did not come empty-handed. He had caught a young fawn in the wilderness, tied its four hooves with hemp rope, muzzled it with an iron muzzle, concealed it with the Hidden Scale Gu, and brought it to the stone door.
He did not rush to push the door open but first activated the Land-Listening Flesh-Ear Grass.
The rootlets extended from his ear, and his hearing underwent a manifold increase.
*Thump... thump... thump...*
First, he heard light, slow heartbeats.
As the rootlets grew longer, the heartbeats became louder, and the number of sound sources increased.
Fang Yuan knew without even thinking that these heartbeats came from the Jade-Eyed Stone Monkeys in the stone forest behind him.
Closing his eyes, he could picture it in his mind: the strange sounds of these creatures coiled in their stone caves, curled up, sleeping.
But this was not what he wanted to perceive.
He continued listening. His right ear had grown somewhat large and fat, with rootlets on its helix reaching half a meter in length. The roots, seeming to possess a will of their own, spread all the way to the stone door, embedding themselves into it at a very shallow depth.
In that instant, Fang Yuan felt his hearing undergo a tremendous boost.
With him as the epicenter, he could perceive countless sounds within a radius of three hundred paces!
This was the true use of the Land-Listening Flesh-Ear Grass. His earlier experimentation in the stockade was merely a dabbling.
If the rootlets of the Land-Listening Flesh-Ear Grass did not touch the ground, its detection range was only average for a Rank 2 Gu worm. But once the roots took hold in the earth, its reconnaissance range experienced a qualitative improvement.
This was easy to understand.
Using theories from Earth, the speed of sound is related to the medium. The speed of sound in the earth and water is far greater than in air.
In ancient China, soldiers at war would sleep with wooden quivers under their heads. When cavalry charged, the soldiers would be awakened instantly by the sound transmitted through the ground. If they relied solely on sound traveling through the air, they would never react in time.
With the rootlets rooted in the stone door, Fang Yuan immediately sensed the activity behind it.
It was a series of rustling sounds, very subtle, complex, and dense. Compared to this sound, the heartbeat of the stone monkeys was like the beating of a loud drum.
A newcomer using the Land-Listening Flesh-Ear Grass for the first time would probably have to rack their brains trying to figure out what it was. But this sound was within Fang Yuan's expectations. However, after listening for a while, he gradually frowned.
He decisively pushed open the stone door.
The door was heavy, but now he had the strength of two pigs, so it was effortless for him.