Chapter 653 Nice to Meet You, Excavator (2/2)

Shao Xuan looked at what Wa Ji brought out. It was dried food made from a segmented insect. “No thanks, you can eat it yourself.”

Wa Ji asked Shao Xuan more questions about the Flaming River Trading Point. He walked over and looked at the giant beast. He had extreme nearsightedness, so when he looked at the beast, his nose was almost touching it.

After he finished chatting and observing, Wa Ji finally left. Spending a long time under the sun made him uncomfortable. Not only did the sun not make him feel safe, it made him feel worse if he was exposed to it for too long. The people of the Ya tribe preferred dark places underground. They felt safest like that.

“I’ll head back underground and bring your people back.” Wa Ji said to Bo Gu and drilled once again into the ground. The soil splashed upwards under his rapid digging. Very soon Wa Ji was nowhere to be seen.

“There must be other tunnels nearby. If it was under our feet, the tunnels would have collapsed.” Bo Gu told Shao Xuan after Wa Ji left, “The people of the Ya tribe are just more curious than others. They don’t have much courage but they’re not bad people.”

Simply put, the people of the Ya tribe were just timid creatures who like to gossip. They didn’t have high ambitions or the ability to plot any conspiracies.

After making arrangements for those who were injured, the Gu shaman came over to look for Shao Xuan.

“You suffered huge casualties this time. Not even a house remains,” Shao Xuan said.

“It doesn’t matter, we’ll just rebuild later.” This was already a satisfactory result for their current stage. At least many of their people were still alive.

The Gu shaman held up a wooden case and handed it over to Shao Xuan. “This time, I really want to thank all of you from the Flaming Horn tribe!”

Opening the wooden case, they saw many round gemstones of all shapes and sizes. These stones were the same ones the Gu shaman showed them from before, the ones that looked like the cat eye stone, but compared to the one he showed them before, these ones in the wooden case were even brighter and had narrower and clearer “eye lines”. When they spinned, they looked like a few eyes opening and closing.

But the gemstones on top are not the ones the Gu shaman treasured the most.

The Gu shaman lifted the top section off the wooden case and uncovered what was underneath.

The lower layer of the wooden case was encased with a layer of soft wool, and there were even special wooden squares made to fit small pearls the size of quail eggs. There were a total of nine squares with a pearl in each one.

At a glance, these nine pearls looked similar to the ones on the upper layer except they were brighter, but upon closer inspection, it was not actually the case.

“Look again,” the Gu shaman said.

Shao Xuan stared at the pearls, and then his eyes widened in shock, “This is...!”

Each of the nine pearls had a clear “eye line”, but different from the bright lines on the pearls on the upper layer, the ones on the lower layer had a thinner and darker line, and at the ends of these thin lines, thinner and subtler threads extended from the single line, causing the single dark line in the centre of the pearl to look like the widened pupil of a beast, slowly widening.

It wasn’t a usual effect that stones had under exposure to light. It looked exactly like a fierce beast’s widened pupil!

When the “eye line” opened like a beast’s pupil, Shao Xuan even sensed the same horrified cold feeling he felt whenever he looked at a beast’s eye. It was too similar! People who didn’t know would’ve mistaken it for a wild beast’s eye!

Not just Shao Xuan, when Wei and others saw this, they all scratched their arms. The goosebumps formed on their arms and made them feel tingly all over.

The good thing was many of them had even eaten a beast’s eye, so they recovered immediately from the sudden shock.

However, their calm emotions were suddenly replaced with surprise when the Gu shaman spoke again.

“This is actually called a “ground eye”. All of these stones on the upper and lower layer can all be referred to as “ground eye stones”, but the nine stones on the bottom are not normal “ground eye stones”. They’re “Universal Pupils”!”

“Universal Pupils?” Shao Xuan did not understand the meaning behind this name.

The Gu shaman did not explain right away. Instead, he moved the wooden case back and forth from left to right, and then covered them with his hand from above.

“Can you tell yet?” the Gu shaman asked.

“They’re…. Facing the sun!” Shao Xuan was shocked. It wasn’t obvious when the Gu shaman was moving the case, but when he covered them with his hands, the “eye lines” in the pearls in the upper layer was not obvious due to the lack of light, but the nine pearls on the lower layer were still facing the sun’s direction and opening their “eyes”!

“That’s right! Universal pupils will always open their eyes in the sun’s direction no matter where you are, where you’re facing, how you turn it. Even if it’s covered, as long as it is not under complete darkness, it will continue to open its “eyes”. Not just in the daytime, but at night they also open their eyes, except during that time, they won’t be facing the sun, but the moon. Legend has it that there is only one universal pupil in ten thousand ground eye stones.”

If it were just some beautiful gemstones, Shao Xuan wouldn’t be shocked, but these gemstones that were accurate in telling the directions were very useful.

Tribal people all had their ways of telling the direction. Some relied on gemstones on a cloudy day to locate the sun, or fortune telling, while others relied on their natural beast-like instincts. Some people could even tell the direction by relying on their tamed beasts, such as birds or other insects.

However, these “Universal Pupils” that the Gu shaman brought out were the most accurate and convenient gemstones. They were less restricted and were even better than compasses!