Chapter 17: Does Panel Enhancement Require Reasonability?

The next day, Baichuan, who had slept the whole night, had just woken up when he impatiently opened the panel.

This day, he had waited far, far too long for it.

As the familiar panel opened, Baichuan looked straight at the newly added model — the eagle.

【Race: Kite.】

【Ability Structure: Feixiang LV2, Lizhua LV2, Clairvoyance LV2, Xiaohua Xishou LV1, Qiangzhuang LV1 (Xiongqiang Yihua), Niaogu LV1 (Flight Yihua), Qiliu Ganzi LV1……】

"Hm? So the eagle he'd always called in his past life is actually called a 'Kite'?"

Baichuan murmured as he looked at the eagle model with some surprise.

He didn't dwell on this little aside, but instead continued looking at the eagle… oh, the Kite's ability structure, as it should now be called.

Obviously, the Kite's abilities were almost identical to those of the Cang Ying he had hunted last time.

That made sense — both were eagle species, and their sizes weren't much different; at most the Cang Ying might be a bit larger, so it was normal for their abilities to be similar.

Just like the snakes he had eaten before — many snake species shared the same few abilities.

If these abilities were described in the terms of cultivation or mythological worlds, Baichuan thought: perhaps these were their bloodline abilities or bloodline talents.

Baichuan looked at the abilities listed above. What he had always wanted before was the eagle's vision — after all, in his knowledge, the eagle's eyesight was the sharpest, and at the same time it could see a world as rich in color as humans could.

But now, looking at the Flight ability listed above, he suddenly had an impulse — could he, a snake, also evolve the ability to fly?

Having been human in his past life, he knew well the importance of air superiority. Once he also possessed the ability to fly, wouldn't he be able to both fight and run in the future?

When that day came, it would truly be "the sky is high, let the snake fly" — his safety would greatly increase, and he'd never have to worry about being outnumbered by other fellows bullying him for being one snake against many.

The more he thought about it, the more impulsive he became. The next moment, with trembling hands, he tapped the Kite's model, extracted the Flight ability, and placed it into his own snake-body model, watching the changes in the snake body with nervous anticipation.

【Please select the placement location.】

A panel prompt popped up.

Baichuan was already long past being surprised by such things. He examined his thick, long snake body, thought for a moment, and decided to place it just below the neck.

The moment he placed it, he immediately saw on the model a pair of feather-covered wings growing from the back of his snake body.

For a moment, a pair of extremely out-of-place feathered wings growing on a massive snake body — no matter how you looked at it, it looked bizarre, giving off an incongruous, half-and-half feeling.

It was as if wings had been forcibly jammed onto a snake's body.

Anyone who saw it would know without trying that these wings couldn't flap — there was no room to move, the wings were already scraping the ground.

Baichuan saw the compatibility was 20%……

Without a doubt, this compatibility was basically hopeless.

Although if he forced the evolution, it might succeed, but what would happen afterward, he wasn't sure.

A vague, instinct-like premonition told him — absolutely not!

So the question came: could this situation be improved to raise the compatibility?

Baichuan had been thinking about this before. Since the panel required a high compatibility of at least 50 for him to evolve abilities, could this compatibility be raised?

If it couldn't, then having the compatibility or not would be no different, would it?

It would be better to just plainly show that certain abilities couldn't be extracted or strengthened.

Rather than letting him extract abilities and place them on his own model to see what they'd look like after evolution.

Existence is reasonable — so was there a way behind this that could let him raise the compatibility?

Baichuan carefully examined the various abilities of that Kite. He believed that birds being able to fly didn't rely solely on the wings themselves.

Combined with his earlier guess that these abilities might belong to their racial abilities, these abilities should form a complementary set making up their bloodline.

Thinking of this, he finally fixed his gaze on Qiangzhuang LV1 (Xiongqiang Yihua).

He vaguely remembered someone in his past life saying that the reason birds could fly was, besides having a pair of wings, also related to their incomparably strong chest muscles.

If one viewed the Kite as a whole — a flying machine as a whole — then the Flight ability should be the wings, and Qiangzhuang LV1 (Xiongqiang Yihua) should be the machine's engine.

He thought for a moment, took out the Flight ability again, and placed Qiangzhuang LV1 (Xiongqiang Yihua) on instead. In an instant, he saw a large bulge rise up on his snake body where the wings had been before.

It was as if a tumor had grown on what was originally a smooth snake body. At the same time, he also noticed that his own Minjie LV2 had become LV1.

"Hiss~ — abilities can actually be lowered?" Frowning, Baichuan carefully examined the snake body, thought for a moment, and felt it was quite reasonable.

A large bulging muscle mass growing out of a streamlined snake body would inevitably affect his crawling speed.

He seemed to have discovered another rule of the panel — if an ability's evolution was unreasonable, it would inevitably affect other existing abilities, just as now it reduced his agility.

He suddenly thought of another point — what would happen if he added a pair of claws at this point?

On the basis of the muscle mass already grown on the snake body?

Or what if he jammed another pair of wings on?

For a moment, all sorts of ideas popped up in his mind.

He was eager to try combining two or more to see what changes would occur, but unfortunately he didn't have enough points, so he could only give up helplessly.

He stared at the Kite's model for a while, and found that this panel's ability evolution was pretty much like the character-creation system from his past life — except it required reasonability.

If, he said if.

If such a day really came, and he gathered all the excellent abilities of various animals, could he truly evolve into the legendary dragon?

This point, no one knew.

But this thought, like a seed, took root in the depths of Baichuan's heart.

Just waiting for the day it would take root, sprout, and grow into a towering tree.

He temporarily gave up considering these questions and looked toward Clairvoyance LV2.

It's decided — you're the one!

Along with the extraction of the Clairvoyance ability, he confirmed the evolution.

The lifelike eagle model in front of Baichuan transformed into Light Points and disappeared.

What a pity — next time he wanted eagle abilities, he could only catch another one.

This was the last lingering thought Baichuan had before falling into slumber.

……

The familiar secretion appeared once again, slowly covering Baichuan over.

Time passed slowly onward.

"What… what a beautiful world!"

The next day, he woke up.

Slowly crawling out of the cave, Baichuan discovered that the world in his eyes had changed — no longer the lifeless, colorless, monotonous world it used to be.

It was as if the whole world had come alive, everything brimming with vibrant colors,

If his previous vision was like one of those early-eighties black-and-white TVs with extremely low resolution, then his current vision was a 4K, high-color-gamut computer display.

And no matter how far the distance, everything was as crisp and clear as if it were right before his eyes.

He could even make out every scale and plate on the tiny insects hopping on the distant ground, the wings of mosquitoes fluttering in the air, and every deformation of those wings with each beat.

At this moment, anything he wished to see, he could see.

No wonder the Banzhu of the skies could spot a tiny rabbit hopping on the ground from several thousand meters up.

"This… this is an eagle's vision? It's, it's too beautiful!"

At this moment, Baichuan could only offer praise — without having experienced nearsighted-level vision, one could never appreciate just how astonishing this incomparably powerful sight truly was.

What he saw now was even more than what he had seen during his human days.

Beyond the colors and images humans could perceive, he could now even see special rays like ultraviolet light drifting through the air.

It was truly incomparably mysterious.

That day, Baichuan immersed himself in the wonderful world of images and colors; in his cheerful mood, he slowly crawled along, looking about as he revisited his territory.

No wonder there is a saying: the world has never lacked beauty — it only lacks eyes that can discover it.

He thought he roughly understood the meaning of that saying.

(End of this chapter)