"So that means I can talk to the dog now?"
Zhang Xiaoman said, glancing involuntarily toward the dog and cat in the living room.
"Since that’s the case, why don’t I give it a try?"
Saying this, he shouted at the two little ones: "Jin Bao! Xiao Hua! Come here!"
Following that, a yellow figure dashed into view; dog Jin Bao came running over, tongue lolling out, while cat Xiao Hua remained motionless.
("Let’s go out and play!")
Jin Bao barked with ears perked.
"No! You just went out!" Zhang Xiaoman firmly denied.
Upon hearing this, Jin Bao immediately let his ears droop.
Seeing this, Zhang Xiaoman’s brow lifted slightly, thinking, "Could it be he understands?"
However, he then reconsidered, feeling it wasn’t conclusive enough, as the two phrases he had just used were common and even without the Communication Skill, they could understand what they meant.
"No way, I need to try another approach."
He turned his head around, suddenly looked toward the nearby refrigerator, and then said, "Jin Bao, go to the fridge and get me a bottle of mineral water."
Afterwards, amid Zhang Xiaoman’s anticipation, Jin Bao turned in circles on the spot, seemingly confused, and looked at him with a puzzled expression.
Zhang Xiaoman, feeling exasperated, walked over to the fridge, pointed at the fridge door, and said, "This is the fridge, got it? This object is called a fridge!"
Jin Bao immediately responded.
Seeing this, Zhang Xiaoman felt a stir in his heart; he knew the dog must have understood, or rather, his Communication Skill had indeed taken effect. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have understood what a fridge was just after he mentioned it twice, earlier it wasn’t that Jin Bao couldn’t understand, but rather, he didn’t know what a fridge was.
"Come on, open the fridge door and help me get a bottle of mineral water out."
As his words fell, Jin Bao finally reacted correctly.
It nosed about, and then, using his dog face, pushed hard and managed to open the fridge door, then looked innocently at Zhang Xiaoman.
Zhang Xiaoman sighed helplessly, bent down, and took out a bottle of mineral water from under the fridge.
"This is mineral water, remember that."
Zhang Xiaoman twisted the cap and gulped down a big mouthful, thinking that the Communication Skill was indeed effective, but still, conversing with animals was going to be a bit challenging.
After all, compared to humans, their intelligence was too low, and they didn’t understand many nouns.
This feeling was like an adult teaching a toddler to speak, necessitating step-by-step guidance.
Having thought this, Zhang Xiaoman put down the water bottle, looked at Jin Bao the dog on the ground, and said, "Jin Bao, use the ’Following the Way of Heaven’ skill."
After waiting for a moment and seeing that nothing was happening to Jin Bao, he couldn’t help but shake his head again and said, "As expected, just saying it doesn’t work, I need to try a different approach."
Zhang Xiaoman stroked his chin and thought for a while, then suddenly his eyes widened. He put on a fierce expression and said two words to the dog.
Upon hearing this, Jin Bao shuddered, as if suddenly remembering something unpleasant. At that moment, a golden light rose from his entire body, and a vast aura spread around him.
The house was instantly filled with a bright golden light, and a shiny golden dog appeared!
Looking at Jin Bao on the ground, now even more golden than before, Zhang Xiaoman couldn’t help but shake his head helplessly.
"As I thought, the pee-holding training method really works."
At this point, Jin Bao was no longer afraid of the changes in his body and could calmly continue doing whatever he was doing. The command "Sofa" given by Zhang Xiaoman had already become a subconscious habit for him.
Seizing this status on the dog, Zhang Xiaoman immediately began to guide.
"Jin Bao, from now on, whenever I say the three words ’Following the Way of Heaven’, you immediately turn into what you are now."
To ensure the dog understood, he repeated it several times tirelessly, only stopping once the glow from Jin Bao had completely faded.
"Ah, I don’t know if this will work. This skill has a 24-hour cooling time, I’ll try it again tomorrow..."
He shook his head, choosing not to think about it for the time being.
As for why Zhang Xiaohua didn’t come earlier?
He glanced sideways at the fat blue cat sprawled on the sofa and had his answer.
"It looks like it’s not that my Communication Skill isn’t working, but that this guy just didn’t listen to me at all..."
He took out his phone and casually searched online for a couple of foreign movies, planning to imprint the language from the dialogue spoken.
He didn’t want to repeat his previous mistakes. Although he knew it would be better to save his imprinting opportunity, there were still many animals and insects in the city besides humans.
Zhang Xiaoman didn’t want to accidentally learn bird language or insect language, as that would be quite embarrassing.
After all, these creatures can’t truly "converse" with you; they only emit simple words, usually from their own perspectives. Having learned from his experience with the dog and the cat, he definitely didn’t want to waste this opportunity lightly.
Just thinking about imprinting the sound of insects, and then having his ears filled with the incessant courting "Wanna date? Wanna date?" of cicadas and crickets every summer or evening, made him shiver uncontrollably.
Rather than that, it’s better to master a couple of foreign languages!
Zhang Xiaoman opened a movie in his watch history, which was a series of sci-fi films he usually liked, and it was his third time rewatching it.
The movie started, opening with a classic scene, and a line played from his phone.
Zhang Xiaoman played the original movie audio, mostly unable to understand the content as everything he’d learned at school had pretty much been returned to the teachers.
However, after watching the movie for quite a while, he was surprised to find that he still couldn’t understand the dialogue, and that kind of mental connection didn’t occur.
"Could it be that the imprinting failed?"
He quickly checked his attribute panel, noting that the imprinting progress under Communication Skill was still at 2/4 and hadn’t increased.
"Why is this happening? I clearly don’t understand what they’re saying in the video... Could it be that videos don’t work, and it has to be a real person?"
Zhang Xiaoman speculated that the problem might lie there since the skill indicated imprinting was through mental connection, so just watching videos probably wasn’t sufficient.
Just then, his mom came out of the room, and he immediately approached her, saying, "Mom, quickly speak a foreign language to me; I need to learn a skill!"