Chapter 14 - Godly Window to Academics (1/2)

“Did you discover something?” Xia Lei’s actions made Jiang Ru-Yi look at him curiously.

Xia Lei smiled but said, “Nothing much. I’m sure it’s this key.”

“Do you still remember what that man and woman looked like?”

“Of course I do. I’ll describe them to you. Can you sketch them?”

“Of course I can! I learnt how to do it in the Police Academy and even got a prize.” Jiang Ru-Yi found some paper and pencil and seated herself in front of Xia Lei. “I’m ready. Let’s begin with the male.”

Xia Lei slowly described the suited man and Jiang Ru-Yi sketched stroke by stroke.

If there were a machine that could print the image directly from Xia Lei’s mind, they would have a photograph of the suited man and sexy lady in one second. Unfortunately, an invention like that had yet to exist.

While he described the people to Jiang Ru-Yi, Xia Lei was also mentally analysing his ‘eidetic memory’ ability. This ability had actually surpassed eidetic memory, since even those with eidetic memory could not remember everything they had seen and all the seen features and details of a person. His left eye could ‘save’ everything he had seen as photographs and he only had to recall them to see it all again.

“With an ability like this, memorising vocabulary would be no problem at all if I tried to learn English or other foreign languages. Why don’t I try?” Xia Lei’s greed for knowledge grew at the thought.

Jiang Ru-Yi finished two sketches - one of the man and one of the woman.

Xia Lei put the sketches next to each other for a look. The likeness was above 95%. A sketch was not a photograph but this degree of accuracy was impressive enough.

“Is it them? Can you confirm it?” Jiang Ru-Yi watched Xia Lei’s reaction.

Xia Lei nodded. “It’s them.”

“Have a seat and wait. I’ll get someone to enter these sketches into the database to look for matches.” Jiang Ru-Yi picked up the sketches and walked towards the door.

Xia Lei spoke, “Can I take a look at the information on the key?”

“Sure, look all you want.” Jiang Ru-Yi left the office.

Xia Lei held Professor Zhang’s research paper in his hand and read half the page before he had an idea. “Why don’t I try out my new ability?”

Based on what he had figured out so far, he could rule out the possibility that the ability stemmed from his own memory. It was all thanks to his left eye’s ‘image-saving’ ability.

Thinking about it that way, he no longer needed to read like normal people did - he could just flip through pages and pages of information. Things which ordinarily would have taken about ten minutes to read were done in under a minute. When he was done, he closed his eyes and started to recall the details.

Line after line of text and pictures suddenly appeared in his head and not one word was left out, not even punctuation such as commas and periods! The pictures, too, were clear and a 100% match!

The key in Professor Zhang’s research paper was an antique from the Ming Dynasty and it was over 600 years old. According to his research, it was most likely used to open the doors of an ancient library or warehouse. The patterns on the key were not only for opening the door but were also part of a map…

This was very mysterious.

Xia Lei could not contain his excitement at having recalled everything and laughed out loud. “Unbelievable… What am I waiting for? I should go to the bookshop to buy learning materials for English, German, French, Japanese, Russian… Any language I want! There would be no foreign language I can’t learn in this world!”

He had no idea what other hidden abilities his eye had but from those he’d already discovered, the ‘image-saving’ ability and X-ray vision were most practical.

A person would have to spend a long time, effort and energy to learn something proficiently but with this ability, all the difficulties of learning were drastically reduced. His left eye had opened a godly window into the field of academic greatness and he did not just get to peek at a ray of sunshine - he could see the entire sun!

“What are you laughing at? Are you falling ill?” Jiang Ru-Yi walked into the office and stared at Xia Lei weirdly.

Xia Lei stopped his train of thought and grinned. “Yep, I’m ill and it’s bad.”

Jiang Ru-Yi stepped in front of Xia Lei and reached out to touch his forehead. “It’s not hot. You don’t have a fever. Are you mentally ill?”

She was close and pleasant wafts of perfume came from her body. A pale, deep ravine could be seen inside her collar, white, soft… Xia Lei was that close to looking at her with his X-ray vision. He looked away and stood up. “Okay, I helped you get sketches of the two suspects. You don’t need me anymore, right? If there isn’t anything else, I’ll just be on my way. I need to go to the machine shop and sort out matters to open for business.”

“I’d love to take a look at your little shop.” Jiang Ru-Yi smiled and said, “This is good. Operating your own business is better than going to construction sites for manual labour work. Tell me, where did you get the money to open a shop?”

“It’s funds I’ve saved up for when I get a wife, okay? I’m not hanging around to chat anymore. I’m off. Good-bye.” Xia Lei walked off.

“Lei, if I crack the case I’ll treat you to a meal,” said Jiang Ru-Yi.