Douluo Continent, Star Luo Empire.
Yuming City's Spirit Master Cemetery is located on the highest ground in the west of the city. Rough black stone tablets stood like a silent forest, all pointing towards the lead-grey, low-hanging sky.
The wind blew from the direction of the Ming Dou Mountain Range, carrying the unique, dusty and metallic scent of the border region. It swept past rows of inscribed stones, making a wailing sound.
The two most recently erected tablets stood side by side, their stone still new, the stone dust in their carvings not yet completely washed away by wind and rain.
In front, a small figure stood motionless.
He was too short; those two gravestones were as tall as walls to him.
Black fabric wrapped around him, making him appear even more empty.
His white hair was not the withered white of old age, but like new snow, like the finest silver threads, softly clinging to his small head, strikingly conspicuous in the cemetery's dim light.
Not far away, several people wearing the uniform armor of the Star Luo Empire's Eighth Soul Master Legion stood. The mud on their armor had not yet dried, and the metal surface still bore several scratches and dents left from battle, their Su Sha aura undiminished.
They silently watched the white-haired child, their eyes complex, filled with pity, sadness, and a hint of imperceptible surprise.
One of them's lips moved, as if wanting to say something to an old man with white hair wearing an old grey robe next to him, but it ultimately turned into an almost inaudible sigh.
Grandpa Hui's back was hunched, the wrinkles on his face like they were carved with a knife and chiseled with an axe, deep and heavy, filled with sorrow.
Looking at the Young Master's striking white hair, his heart felt as if it was blocked by a huge stone.
A few days ago, this child was not like this.
When the people from the Eighth Soul Master Legion knocked on the door with the bad news, the child was in front of him. Amidst a golden light and violent tremor that no one could understand, his black hair instantly turned to snow, his pupils became shattered gold, and his figure and appearance quietly changed, becoming the exquisite look of a child not of this mortal World.
The officer of the Eighth Soul Master Legion said this was an anomaly caused by Innate Spirit Awakening, rare through the ages, a sign of a Genius.
But Grandpa Hui only felt heartbroken; the price was too great.
Caelus stood there, his small body perfectly straight.
The wind ruffled the silver hair on his forehead. In his shattered-gold eyes, there were no tears, nor the usual bewildered confusion a six-year-old child should have.
Inside was an emptiness, a bottomless dead silence.
Only he knew what earth-shattering secrets were buried beneath that dead silence.
A few days ago, when those two death notices, stamped with the legion's blood-red emblem, were handed to him, something that had always restrained him shattered with a crash.
It wasn't sadness; he couldn't feel profound sorrow for his parents, who had been stationed on the front lines for years, only returning home occasionally, their faces already blurred.
The impact came from elsewhere—the barrier of cognition was smashed through, and the memories and personality belonging to another World, which had been dormant for six full years, were forcibly activated and awakened by this sudden bad news in a brutal way.
The last memory of his previous life crashed into his mind.
The empty street after working overtime, the blindingly distorted high beams, the deafening horn and the screech of tires rubbing against the ground, and... that mountain-like, irresistible, crushing shadow—the hundred-ton king.
Heh, this was the so-called encounter with a hundred-ton king on the road, fighting with all your might, but unable to win.
Before the desperate suffocating sensation could completely engulf him, a cold, mechanical voice, devoid of any life fluctuations, abruptly sounded at the very end of his consciousness's complete submersion:
"Detected compatible Soul... Insufficient energy... Forced transmigration program initiated... Target World: Douluo Continent..."
"Soul core entering dormancy... Maintaining minimum energy consumption operation..."
These were the last fragments of memory he had before his muddled transmigration.
And a few days ago, the stimulus of that death notice not only awakened his past life's memories but also startled the System that was in slumber.
He heard that cold voice again:
"Detected strong emotional stimulus... Energy being absorbed... System restarting..."
"Newbie welfare issued: Ten consecutive draws."
Then, a dazzling, scorching golden light, enough to burn the Soul, exploded in the depths of his consciousness.
One, two, three... a full five.
The golden light was so intense, carrying a power that seemed to burn the rules themselves, illuminating his unstable consciousness space brightly.
Immediately after, the cold System prompt suddenly became rapid and sharp, like an overloaded machine:
"Error! Error! Energy overflow! Core protocol conflict!"
"...Crashing..."
"...Irreversible..."
"...Unbinding..."
Boom!!!
It was like the Big Bang at the Universe's beginning, directly detonating in the depths of his Soul.
He even heard the sound of his own Soul tearing, a grating, splitting sound.
Excruciating pain instantly drowned everything, a thousand times more terrifying than being crushed by a hundred-ton king.
He thought he was completely finished, Awakening meant the end, Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering, not even a speck of residue would remain.
But he miraculously did not die on the spot.
The destructive energy shockwave from the System's explosion primarily acted upon the connection point deep within his Soul, violently tearing his Soul space.
Three of the golden lights, carrying half of his torn Soul, were flung into the depths of the torn spatial rift, disappearing without a trace, their whereabouts unknown.
The other two golden lights, in their struggle against the aftershocks of the explosion, fused with his remaining half of his Soul, barely preserving his consciousness and this young body.
Outside, in the eyes of Grandpa Hui and those Legion Spirit Masters, it was Caelus who, without warning, burst out with an unwatchable golden aura. His white hair suddenly grew, golden pupils bloomed, and a spirit power fluctuation far exceeding the scope of ordinary Spirit Awakening spread like ripples, startling several battle-hardened Spirit Masters to instinctively retreat half a step, their faces filled with shock and disbelief.
They only saw the emergence of a peerless Genius.
Yet no one knew what an astonishing and World-shaking upheaval, enough to subvert cognition, had occurred within the child's fragile body in that flash of lightning.
To still stand unharmed after losing half of one's Soul was a miracle in itself.
And Caelus not fainting on the spot was also thanks to one of the golden lights.
At this moment, standing in front of the cold, hard gravestones, feeling the chill emanating from the gravestones permeating his body through the soles of his shoes, Caelus's mood was as tangled as a ball of yarn.
There was a faint sadness for his cheap parents who died in battle, but more than that, there was a silent complaint about that embarrassing System. Wasn't it just five golds in ten draws? Was it necessary to explode on the spot?
It was truly the weakest System he had ever seen, bar none.
He thought with a bitter smile.