"Ding! Task completed, the source of pollution has been thoroughly eliminated."
"Congratulations, host has received 5 talent points and one random talent treasure chest."
Hearing the system prompt in his mind, Yang Lin immediately let out a long sigh of relief.
With the system's deadline approaching, he had finally resolved the situation.
"A random talent treasure chest, wonder what it'll randomly generate. Hope it's a gold-tier talent."
"No, better yet, a legendary talent!"
Although Yang Lin knew it wasn't very realistic, he still held onto a glimmer of hope.
Taking a deep breath, he immediately opened the talent chest.
The next second, another system prompt sounded in his ear.
"Congratulations, host has obtained the legendary talent — Tool Manufacturing."
"This..." Hearing the system prompt in his mind, Yang Lin could hardly believe his ears.
He never expected to actually draw a legendary talent.
This was the highest tier of talent he had discovered so far, only previously found in the golden eagle and saltwater crocodile.
He hadn't expected to draw another one so soon.
But this name...
If he remembered correctly, the golden eagle's legendary talent was called Sky Sovereign, and the saltwater crocodile's was Prehistoric Sovereign. How come his talent name turned out so plain?
"Tool Manufacturing? This counts as a legendary talent? Isn't this something anyone with hands can do?"
As soon as he voiced his complaint, Yang Lin realized something was off.
"I almost forgot, this talent is relative to animals. If animals could master tool-making, wouldn't that make them close to humans?"
He suddenly recalled a saying that the biggest difference between humans and animals was that humans use tools.
And it was precisely because humans mastered the use of tools that they became the masters of this planet.
Thinking about this, Yang Lin immediately changed his view of this talent.
Without a doubt, this talent would be most suitable for primates, as they had dexterous forelimbs like humans.
Imagine if the chimpanzee Li Wei mastered this talent — next time, instead of throwing feces at visitors with his hands, he might use a catapult.
If Yang Lin provided enough resources, Li Wei might even be able to create weapons.
"So is his next development path going to be as a craftsman chimp, the animal kingdom's king of invention?"
"Hope it won't turn into Planet of the Apes."
Of course, Yang Lin knew the latter scenario was absolutely impossible.
Any animal whose talent he activated had absolute loyalty to him, and there was no possibility of rebellion.
Five minutes later, Yang Lin appeared at the entrance of the chimpanzee enclosure with a bunch of bananas.
Unlike when the zoo first became popular, while there were still many visitors at the chimpanzee enclosure, the numbers had decreased significantly compared to before.
There were two main reasons for this: one was the recent rise in popularity of other animals in the park.
The other reason was that people's curiosity had waned, and simply throwing feces no longer satisfied visitors' viewing expectations.
After all, there were only so many visitors who enjoyed being tormented.
As netizens would say, he was past his prime, the first-generation internet celebrity of West Rainbow Zoo.
Of course, Li Wei himself didn't care about this; he'd prefer even fewer visitors.
The only thing he cared about was that fewer people were offering him cigarettes. Previously, every visitor who saw him would give him cigarettes.
Seeing Li Wei picking up cigarette butts to smoke in the enclosure, Yang Lin walked into the cage with the bunch of bananas.
"Old Wei, smoke less, it's bad for your health. Eat more fruit."
Hearing these words, Li Wei, who was contentedly smoking, immediately gave him a side-eye.
"Do you know how long wild chimpanzees who eat fruit live? Forty years tops."
"Do you know how old I am? I'm 52, which in human years would be over 90."
"Next time don't bring me bananas. Yesterday a young man gave me a cigarette, he said it was called Huazi. Just bring me Huazi from now on, other cigarettes hurt my throat."
After speaking, Li Wei took several deep drags, until the filter was half burned, then threw the butt on the ground and stomped on it several times.
Only then did he realize he wasn't wearing shoes, causing him to grimace in pain.
Seeing this, Yang Lin was speechless.
With other animals, he needed to clean their droppings daily, but here he was just sweeping up cigarette butts and ashes.
Of course, he still had to clean up droppings, just outside the cage.
"Looks like I really need to find something for you to do."
With this thought, Yang Lin bestowed the newly acquired legendary talent of Tool Manufacturing onto Li Wei.
As a flash of light invisible to visitors flickered, Li Wei's previously listless eyes suddenly sparked with intelligence.
His brain, already close to human intelligence, underwent a subtle yet remarkable change.
Whether it was an illusion or not, Yang Lin felt that Li Wei looked bigger and his posture seemed more upright.
Seeing these changes in Li Wei, Yang Lin quickly asked about his experience.
"How is it? Do you feel any different from before?"
Hearing Yang Lin's question, Li Wei first showed an extremely human-like expression of contemplation before responding:
"My head feels a bit itchy inside."
"Itchy inside your head?"
Ignoring Yang Lin's puzzled expression, Li Wei abandoned his usual laziness and began pacing back and forth in the cage, clearly deep in thought.
Seeing his strange behavior, Yang Lin was confused but didn't disturb him, quietly leaving the cage instead.
However, shortly after returning to the administrator's office, he heard a series of exclamations from visitors outside.
When he first heard these exclamations, Yang Lin thought something had gone wrong, but when he ran out of the office, he discovered the sounds were coming from the chimpanzee enclosure.
With curiosity, Yang Lin quickly arrived at the enclosure's perimeter.
Following his gaze, he saw Li Wei grinding a stone he had found somewhere.
In just a moment, the stone had taken the shape of an axe head.
But that wasn't the most impressive part — what was most amazing was that he combined the stone with a long wooden handle.
Instantly, a Stone Age axe was born in his hands.
This scene left not only the visitors but even Yang Lin stunned.
With such proficiency in tool-making, he had no doubt that given a few days, Li Wei could probably figure out how to make iron in his cage.
At this moment, he finally realized the true power of a legendary talent.
The visitors, of course, didn't know all this; they only knew that the chimpanzee in the cage seemed to be acting unusual again.