Chapter 17：The Restoration of Auditory Sense

Chen Dao's excuse failed to convince Dimenia, so he had no choice but to use some glycerin and disinfectant in his ears that night.

All night, Chen Dao's ears were filled with a rumbling noise, causing him to have a restless sleep.

The next morning, as Chen Dao was preparing to go out and continue the unfinished work with Peyton, he was stopped by Dimenia, who insisted on checking his ears.

Chen Dao, who was just 1.82 meters tall, was still much taller than Dimenia and Peyton.

Moreover, his current weight fluctuated around 80kg. He ate healthily every day and engaged in a certain amount of physical labor. Slowly, Chen Dao began to build up a handsome muscular figure. It was estimated that after a period of regular exercise, his strength would increase from level 5 to level 6.

In the game, without the aid of various fitness mods, it is very difficult to improve physique and strength. Strength is okay because it can be gained in daily life through various activities such as swinging melee weapons to kill zombies, moving heavy objects, sprinting, etc.

The physique, although it also gains experience from physical labor and carrying heavy loads, gains much less experience than strength.

This leads to the physique skills falling behind the strength skills, and almost all players who do not deliberately practice end up with full strength skill experience, but incomplete physique skill experience.

The upgrade experience of physique mainly relies on fitness.

The problem is, Chen Dao has no chance to exercise at all.

This is a very important issue for the survivors of Kentucky, and it will seriously touch the nerves of OCD players - the levels of physique and strength are always uneven.

Chen Dao couldn't lie down on the sofa, so he had to go back to his living room, where he let Dimenia help clean his ears on his bed.

But before Dimenia started, Chen Dao still cautiously asked, "Have you done ear cleaning before?"

"Of course." Dimenia easily wrote on the note, soothing the somewhat flustered Chen Dao.

But what Chen Dao didn't know was that Dimenia had only cleaned the ears of Lawrence's poodle...

Dimenia sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over half of her body to look at Chen Dao, who was lying on his side on the bed. Chen Dao had already closed his eyes and was waiting.

She spread out the box of tools, put them on the bedside table, and various hooks, spoons, and shovels were placed together.

But Chen Dao was completely unaware, after using the medicine yesterday, he could always hear the intermittent, earthquake-like rumbling sound, and his ears were also very itchy, as if something was constructing in his ear canal, which was very annoying.

The human ear canal has glands that secrete lipid and cholesterol-like lotions. The earwax in the ears is actually the secretion of these glands. Don't underestimate these substances, they are poisonous.

Although the toxicity is negligible to humans, it is enough to poison small insects, and the substance itself is oily and sticky, which can suffocate insects that are not poisoned.

Moreover, if the ear is blocked by foreign objects, these glands will still work, and the oily lotion secreted can wrap the foreign objects in a film, eventually drying and collapsing, and decomposing into small granular "earwax".

This gland - cerumen - earwax process is the self-cleaning ability of the ear canal.

However, there are slight differences between people, some have oily ears, some have dry ears, and some have sweat glands in their ear canals.

But that's not to say that this is a defect, but simply that the adapted environment is different. For example, oily ears are more suitable for living in dry areas where sand and dust often blow up, which can keep the ears clean.

But modern people no longer need to face those harsh natural environments, which inevitably leads to the originally good adaptation to the environment and the evolutionary advantage point, becoming a disadvantage that drags people in modern life.

This also drives the development of the ear cleaning industry.

Chen Dao belongs to the type of ear canal that is neither dry nor wet, but this also leads to his very little earwax, so the self-cleaning ability of the ear canal is poor.

Dimenia grabbed Chen Dao's ear and looked inside. She lit a small flashlight with a button battery, which is also a kind of ear picking tool.

Dimenia only saw a large black area, and Chen Dao's ears were shiny because of the use of glycerin and hydrogen peroxide.

Dimenia tried to probe into Chen Dao's ear with a probe, but the inside of Chen Dao's ear was not black, but because there was an unusually large black crystal-like hard lump blocking Chen Dao's ear canal.

She poked that thing, no response, so she changed to a hook needle, hooked the corner of that hard thing, and pulled it out forcefully.

As a result, Chen Dao yelled out.

"┗|｀O′|┛ Ow~~"

"Oh! My God!", Dimenia was startled and screamed as well.

"Does it hurt a lot?"

Dimenia was about to ask something else but then realized she should write it down.

"Of course it hurts! It hurts a lot!" Chen Dao responded to Dimenia before she could write anything.

Both of them froze for a moment.

Chen Dao's left ear could hear sound again. It wasn't very clear, but he could hear Dimenia's voice clearly since she was close by.

"Haha! Hurry! Get that thing out of there!" Chen Dao excitedly pinched the area below his ear, which had just sent out a sharp pain signal due to Dimenia's previous pull. Now, it was a bit sore.

Dimenia pushed Chen Dao's head back down. She leaned over him, looking into his ear with wide eyes.

"Hey! What's going on?" Peyton, hearing the two of them shouting, quickly put down his work and rushed in to see what was happening.

As a result, Dimenia was startled and the thing in Chen Dao's ear fell back into its original position.

"…I think I can't hear again, and it hurts so much!" Chen Dao felt as if something had directly hit his eardrum, causing pain and a loud noise, so he lay there and let out a second scream.

"Shush! Shut up, Peyton!" Dimenia scolded Peyton irritably.

Peyton, scared and shaking, could only squat to the side and watch as Dimenia concentrated on cleaning Chen Dao's ears.

Dimenia tried again to hook the black thing in Chen Dao's ear with a hook needle. She pulled hard, but it only moved a little bit and then wouldn't budge.

"Dimenia, I feel you pulling it out. Use some more glycerin!" Chen Dao gave Dimenia some advice.

Dimenia dropped a small drop of urea peroxide in again. This oily oxidizing agent can dissolve cerumen and is one of the commonly used drugs for ear picking.

"Hisss…" As Dimenia pulled, Chen Dao couldn't help but hiss. The pain from the ear is directly connected to the brain. If you've ever had otitis media, you'll know that the swelling pain inside the middle ear is directly to the brain, causing great pain.

Paronychia, otitis media, pulp caries, these three conditions bring about the three most torturous pains, and it's not without reason.

Even for Chen Dao, who dared to stitch his own neck, he couldn't stand this kind of torture.

After nearly an hour of work, Dimenia had tried all methods, but the black chunk of cerumen remained stubbornly in place, always just showing a little bit.

Dimenia had no choice but to try to break this chunk of cerumen into smaller pieces and get it out.

Eventually, after two hours of hard work on Chen Dao's head, Dimenia managed to shave off a ring from the solid cerumen, finally pulling it out from Chen Dao's ear.

This huge piece of cerumen, not counting the part that Dimenia had shaved off, was as thick as a pen and as long as two joints of the little finger.

It was a monstrous thing.

And the reason it affected Chen Dao's hearing was that this thing was a clot of blood mixed with fabric fibers and other dirt, directly pressing on Chen Dao's eardrum, making him unable to hear any sound transmitted through the air.

At this moment, when it was pulled out, Chen Dao felt as if his whole body was relaxed, his ears were no longer itchy, and he didn't need to keep digging his ears.

Once the cerumen was out, the world became a better place.

Peyton, holding the stone-hard cerumen, compared it with his own ear, shuddered, and threw it back onto the ear-picking box, making a "clang" sound...

"Oh! It's so refreshing!" Chen Dao, happily wiping the glycerin from his ears with a wet wipe, did a little cleaning, and said to Dimenia and Peyton, "Finally, I can hear you guys talking!"

Dimenia smiled, cleaning the tools.

Peyton came over, holding the iron box of ear-picking tools for Chen Dao to see the super-large piece of cerumen on top: "Buddy, look, this is your little treasure."

London accent?

For the first time, Chen Dao heard Peyton's voice and found that this British youth was speaking with a very standard London accent. But whether it was a London accent or the dialect of a Kentucky country farmer, to Chen Dao, it was like Chinese, like his mother tongue, there would be no problem understanding.

"Haha! It's so big." Chen Dao also pinched that thing and laughed at Peyton.

"Thank you, Dimenia." Chen Dao thanked Dimenia.

"Don't thank me yet, there's another one." Dimenia, with her head down, was cleaning the tools that were full of oily substances.

"Oh, right, I still have to thank you..." Chen Dao lay down again, like a fish that needed to be flipped and fried, he turned over and exposed his other ear to Dimenia.

"We're a team, aren't we?" Peyton joked from the side.

"Yes, we're a team." Dimenia agreed.

Chen Dao also said, "We're a team,a team that will definitely survive..."

With the experience of removing the large chunk of cerumen from the first ear, Dimenia handled the second ear more quickly. Similarly, both of Chen Dao's ears were blocked by hard lumps of coagulated blood. Dimenia skillfully cut the cerumen into pieces and scooped it out.

The whole process took less than half an hour.

Dimenia's ability to learn and summarize experiences was excellent. How else could she have received a scholarship in her first year of college? How else could a professor be willing to recruit a young girl to participate in his project?

"Dimenia, you're amazing!" Chen Dao said, rubbing his ears. Only now did he realize how loud he had been speaking before. No wonder he sometimes startled Peyton.

"Of course! Dimenia got a scholarship as soon as she started college!" Peyton chimed in at the right moment.

"Just started college? A freshman?" Chen Dao asked, looking at Dimenia.

She was silently looking at Peyton, who had no idea what he had done wrong.

"Yes, a freshman."

"A 21-year-old freshman?"

"17..."

Well, Chen Dao thought, no wonder these two always seemed like children. They had lied about their ages.

Dimenia was 17. She hadn't attended elementary school and was educated at home by her mother. She skipped grades in middle school and didn't attend high school. She got her student status by taking the CAT test after registering in a high school.

She was a prodigy.

Peyton was 19. He hadn't gone to high school and started working directly. He worked in the car repair shop introduced by Uncle Lawrence. He loved cars.

For some reason, Dimenia didn't tell Chen Dao their real ages.

But now everything was out in the open, and the three of them understood each other better.

Even if they had lied about their ages, you couldn't expect a minor girl and a just-adult boy to have no guard against a 1.82-meter-tall, 80-90 kg strong man, could you?

"Speaking of which, Peyton, why are you less brave than your sister... uh, why are you less brave than a girl? Better let Dimenia be your older sister." Chen Dao accepted the alcohol wipe from Dimenia to clean his ears and joked with Peyton.

"What? I'm not scared... uh... I'm cautious! Do you understand cautious?"

Peyton's performance was like that of The Deep in 'The Boys'.

Suddenly, the farmhouse was filled with laughter and chatter.