The flight was quite dull. Although his generous mentor was covering the expenses, he didn't hesitate to sit in first class. However, given his personality, he wouldn't strike up conversations with those around him, and naturally, there were no romantic encounters.
Moreover, being on a plane, cultivation was clearly not very feasible. So, he uncharacteristically cleared his mind, spending ten leisurely hours.
After getting off the plane, he strolled around the airport bank, withdrew a sum of money from his card for daily expenses, and then hired a car to a local five-star hotel, where he booked a sea-view suite for a month.
Anyway, it wasn't his own money he was spending – that's how Bai Mo convinced himself.
After settling his luggage and the experimental equipment he brought, he left the hotel and basked in the sun on the exclusive beach, while also testing the energy absorption effect of his skin.
It was already mid-November, and in Hawaii, located in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun in the sky no longer held the scorching intensity of summer. The temperature on the beach was only twenty-five or twenty-six degrees Celsius, which was precisely the most comfortable temperature for the human body. Basking in the warm sunlight, he felt his entire being grow languid.
At this moment, he could cease all thought. The secret of the Spirit Stones, usually hidden in his heart, was temporarily set aside. He simply watched the ebb and flow of the tide on the beach.
Time spent in idleness always seemed to pass exceptionally quickly. In the blink of an eye, two hours had flown by.
After two hours of sunbathing, he felt incredibly replenished from inside out. Every cell sent out signals of repletion, and the hunger he had been tormented by daily for a while now had vanished, never to return.
The incessant hunger he had endured for a week also made him cherish the present moment even more.
"I've also turned into a wild plant-person. Thankfully, I don't have chlorophyll all over me," Bai Mo lay sprawled out on the beach like a starfish, thinking idly about this.
Feeling utterly satisfied from his sunbathing, in his extreme boredom, he activated his X-ray vision.
Ever since he discovered that his X-ray vision was different from those in novels, having no blind spots whatsoever, and even allowing him to see his own eyeballs, he would ponder in his free time what sort of grand name he should give his ability.
Previously, he had always referred to it as "White Eyes", because both involved various forms of X-ray vision and could perceive energy flow.
But he still felt that "White Eyes" sounded a bit low-grade, and "White Eyes" also had blind spots, unlike his own X-ray vision which could even see his own eyeballs. Thus, he was still searching for a name that sounded more majestic and impressive.
During this period of sunbathing, a sudden flash of inspiration struck him, and he thought of the name "All-Seeing Eye". Suffering from late-stage chuunibyou, he accepted the name without the slightest hesitation.
With his ability activated, he began to casually glance around. Undoubtedly, the most common sight on the beach was bikini-clad women.
Especially since the beach where Bai Mo was staying was exclusive to the five-star hotel, it was primarily frequented by various wealthy individuals. As someone who considered himself to have integrity and a sense of boundaries, even though he had awakened an ability like X-ray vision, he had never once engaged in peeping.
However, today, he decided to embrace a scientific spirit, with a purely research-oriented gaze, to test the effects of his X-ray vision on other people.
He casually picked a beautiful blonde woman in a bikini within his sight. She was sunbathing ten meters away. Her golden wavy hair was spread over her healthy, tanned skin, appearing particularly alluring.
Bai Mo began to imagine the spatial position of the person he wanted to see in his mind. And then... he was filled with deep regret. Another one of his fantasies had been shattered.
For the first time, he began to resent his ability for being too powerful—after activating his X-ray vision, his cell-level perception clearly saw every single pore on the other person's body... Then, he, who suffered from mild trypophobia, shuddered.
The nude body was indeed seen, but every single pore was presented before him with meticulous clarity. Skin covered in dense, needle-like pores would not evoke any pleasant fantasies in anyone who saw it.
He had originally felt quite smug and refreshed, fully charged from his sunbath. But after taking that one look, he immediately calmed down, entering "sage mode", with an expression of utter resignation.
Noticing something amiss with the person next to her, the sunbathing girl glanced over at Bai Mo and saw an emotionless face.
"If one day my perception becomes strong enough, will things on a screen probably turn into individual pixels? At that point, being alienated from all electronic devices with screens, I would truly have no desire to live. I still need to properly train my ability control, to perfectly master the precision of my X-ray vision."
Of course, at this moment, he didn't know that by the time he could train his ability to be used with perfect ease, how much interest he would still have left in ordinary humans.
Although the unpleasant experience he just had while X-raying the girl made him feel as if he had been knocked from the clouds to the ground, he only needed two minutes to adjust. He then resumed exploring his ability—which essentially involved casually looking around with his "All-Seeing Eye" to test how far and how clearly he could see.
"Without anything explored by predecessors, finding a direction to move forward is truly too difficult. It's like conducting an experiment, all sorts of trial and error relying on sheer luck, and ability development entirely dependent on wild ideas." Feeling his patience slowly being worn away, Bai Mo began to grumble in his mind once more.
However, he didn't possess much of a fragile artistic sensibility to indulge in, and soon recovered from his state of full negative energy, resuming his analysis of his ability's current state.
After the appearance of his energy-absorbing skin, the endurance of his ability had significantly improved. Previously, limited by his stamina, the activation time he could sustain even with full stamina never exceeded a hundred seconds.
But with the new energy source, the duration of his ability's use had increased to about five minutes. And this was still Bai Mo's result from not daring to exhaust his stamina in a public place. If he went all out, the limit would probably be around seven minutes, but then he would likely suffer from extreme exhaustion and be unable to move.
After routinely testing his ability, Bai Mo stopped using it. Instead, he simply used his powerful natural eyesight to perceive the entire beach environment. There were quite a few people on the beach, with beautiful bikini-clad women walking all around. Of course, it was hard to say how many were purely there to sunbathe.
After being caught off guard just now, he wasn't particularly interested in intensely staring at the people coming and going anymore, even if they all appeared to be posing provocatively. Trypophobia was no laughing matter.
All beauty, ultimately, is but a rosy-cheeked skeleton; nothing more.
After he stopped looking at people, it was the scenery where the sea met the sky that gradually captivated him instead.
Relying on his powerful eyesight, he intently watched the waves slowly rolling towards the beach from the horizon, where the sea and sky met. His gaze followed the waves as they slowly surged towards the shore, then receded. Back and forth, back and forth...