10 years later, Azure Mountain
1st April, Year 42014 of Elemental Era
There is a large number of crowd gathered surrounding a majestic pavilion from all over the Azure Mountain. Celestial Soul Pavilion, standing atop Azure Mountain between Mountainview Village and Tranquil Vale Village. Once every five years, its ancient door opens for one day, allowing the younger generations to awaken their hidden potential. As bell chimes, the air vibrates with ancestral energy, stirring the spirits of those surrounding it. Those between 10-15 years old are sent to the pavilion awaken their Soul Imprint, starting their journey to cultivation.
Li Minghui is standing with Wang Jinlong near the gate of the pavilion. Li Gang and Li Yuxuan are standing behind Li Minghui, while a 12 year old boy, a 10 year old and a 13 year old girl is standing behind Wang Jinlong. These were Wang Haoran, Wang Xiaoyan, Wang Xueyao.
At the door, a middle aged man is standing. With a sturdy frame and strong muscles honed through years of labor, he exuded an aura of strength and resilience. His weathered face has traces of countless battles, yet his eyes sparkled with wisdom and determination. His name is Zhang Fengwei, rank 6 Warrior, from "Heaven's Hand sect". Heaven's Hand Sect is a well known sect in Southern Continent. They claim that they are Messengers of God.
Zhang Fengwei looked at the countless youngsters who came here for awakening ceremony and nodded. Then his eyes fell on two youngsters: a boy and a girl, and his eyes narrowed. These were Li Minghui's son Li Yuxong and Wang Jinlong's eldest daughter Wang Xueyao.
Li Yuxong is 10 years old now, and his temperament shows his righteousness and valour. He possess unwavering resolve, with honor and integrity engraved in the depth of his heart. His face shows maturity beyond someone like 10 years old, and at the same time childishness is visible in his eyes as he looked at everything with curiosity.
Wang Xueyao looks ethereal at a first glance. Her black hair falls to the waist. Anyone looking at her introverted face have only one wish, to protect such innocent beauty. Beside her, a little cute girl is standing scanning the crowd with her curiosity filled eyes and querying her elder brother from time to time. Wang Haoran patiently answers to everything Wang Xiaoyan asks with a look, full of confidence and adoration to his little sister.
Li Gang has also grown up a lot, with long black hair flowing down to his shoulders, and better than average face, which can be ignored at the first look. He is looking everything happening, he could feel the extra-ordinary strength of Zhang Fengwei with just one look. He could see those scars represent his experience in battles, and the eyes which scans surrounding youngsters, filled with wisdom. He also noticed the slight change in his demeanour when he looked towards Li Xuyong.
In last 10 years, Li Gang remain isolated, only speaking to his mother once in a while, and training silently, sometimes playing game of go chess, sometimes learning different languages, sometimes watching people's expression when they talk something or do various activities, and judging their behaviours. Li Gang became aware of human emotions, more than anyone could imagine. He has never been idle, mainly because of how isolated he became. Initially, he wanted to gain attention of his father, but after trying hard, training more than anyone else for entire 2 years, he realised that it was useless. He gave up, he was exhausted. He also had no friends, since his mental age was over 30 and he couldn't get childish with those of his age. Other than his mother, and sometimes his brother, he was alone. His presence nearly faded from the Li Mansion.
Gradually, his personality changed. He used to be cheerful person in his previous life, but after being isolated for 12 years, he became indifferent to many things. In last 8 years, he lived a very disciplined life. Going for sleep few hours before midnight, and waking up at dawn. After cleaning himself, he would immediately go to woods to practice. Spiritual Imprint only helps in increasing cultivation speed, even without it, one can cultivate. Though it would be slower.
Li Gang had read somewhere in his previous life, a person's 99% of the life is filled with wasting time. Let's take an example of walking to the shop to buy a milk packet. While walking, your mind is idle! If you use this time to think something, or revise your plans or you can take a book to read while walking, you can utilize even more of your time as long as you are cautious enough. Li Gang had planned of applying this strategy soon after he was born, to completely utilize the terrifying potential of a human brain.
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But, he was also aware, he can't overdue. After all, a brain also needs rest to consolidate the things it learned. This is also something he learnt in his past life! He was a good chess player in his last life. He had seen, many people practicing day after day could only improve very slowly, but he would apply a unique strategy. He would continuously improve himself, and when he felt his improvement slowed down, he would discard the game for few months and restart again, only to face his decrease in skill momentarily and then exponential improvement for short amount of time, breaking through his earlier bottleneck! Thus, balance between hard work and rest is necessary. This is no fictional world, where hard work can let you achieve great things, in reality, many factors come into play.
Meanwhile, Zhang Fengwei opened the door, and asked 500 members at a time to enter the gate and go for the ceremony every half an hour. Everyone became excited and cheered. Azure mountain, which spans hundreds of miles has a population of over 10 millions. Around 15,000 youngsters came to participate in every ceremony. He reminded them, "As soon as you enter the pavilion, you will see countless doors. Choose one of them and enter. There, silently meditate and let go of yourself. Don't force anything. A ray of light will enter your soul, and awaken the hidden Spiritual Imprint within your soul."
Li Gang's face changed. His expression darkened. 'I need to prepare for the worst'.
Few hours later
In the crowd, noise of discussion was going on.
"As expected of Li Ming, son of great elder of Li family. He awakened Grade 5 Spiritual Imprint, wood type Teak Presence, which increases physical strength and resilience."
"Speaking of which, Li Ming also has C grade aptitude, similar to great elder, Li Hao. Li Hao is also a 6th rank warrior with C grade aptitude."
"There is also Wang Fang, who awakened Grade 4 Spiritual Imprint, water type Serene Serpent, which channels the fluid movements of water to enhance agility and grace in combat."
"Chen Tao, from Peaceful Hollow Village, also emerged as a dark horse, awakening Grade 4 Spiritual Imprint, fire type Blaze Ember, which can manipulate flames to scorch enemies from a distance."
At this moment, the 'gate' opened, and many people returned, some excited, some sad, some crying. Zhang Fengwei announced, "234 rank 1 awakening, 172 rank 2 awakening, 97 rank 3 awakening, 1 rank 4 awakening, 1 rank 6 awakening, 1 rank 7 awakening".
Immediately crowd went into commotion. They only had one question, who got grade 7 Spiritual Imprint? Soon they got their answer.
Wang Haoran:
Aptitude: grade C
Spiritual Imprint: rank 6 Liquid Shadow
Ability: Allows the user to blend with water, becoming virtual to a certain extent.
Wang Xiaoyan:
Aptitude: grade A
Spiritual Imprint: rank 7 Crystal Clear
Ability: Provides heightened clarity of mind, allowing for superior strategizing and decision-making.
"What? Wang Xiaoyan has grade A aptitude? Didn't the Wisdom Gauge Stone indicated it to be grade C?"
"Wang Jinlong hid too deeply, if not for this Awakening Ceremony, we wouldn't even know" Li Hao beside Li Minghui became gloomy.
At this time, another batch was entering the tower. This also includes Li Gang, Li Yuxong, and Wang Xueyao. Li Gang scanned the surrounding as soon as he entered the pavilion. It was very spacious, and there were many gates, which is impossible to count just by looking. But, he could guess, they must be more than 500, given so much could enter at once. He chose one of the gate at random, and entered. What comes into his vision is a very dark space, with countless stars visible as far as he could see.
As per the instructions, he started meditating. And unexpectedly, the ray of light kept surrounding his body as if near it's target, still far away.
Li Gang's face became gloomy. Even though he expected this outcome, it was still a great blow to him. After all, Spiritual Imprint makes up 60% of the potential of the person, remaining 40% being the aptitude. Li Gang not only has a low level D grade aptitude, now he doesn't even awaken Spiritual Imprint!
He remembered what Zhang Fengwei said.
'A ray of light will enter your soul and awaken the hidden Spiritual Imprint within your soul.'
Li Gang knew he was a transmigrator, and if ray of light only awakens hidden Spiritual Imprint, it might be possible that he doesn't even have Spiritual Imprint. And only those born in this world, and have soul created in this world will possess the Spiritual Imprint.
At that moment, a loud bell rang. Li Gang thought, 'it's time to leave!'. He came out, and many others alongside. Li Yuxong came to his side, hesitated a bit, and with a nervous voice asked, "how was it, big brother?"
Li Yuxong has always lived under the shadow of Li Gang. Even though outsiders always praised him, but under the unfathomable temperament and cold expression, Li Yuxong has always been afraid. Once Li Minghui let them fight each other, to dispel Li Yuxong's fear of his brother. He was confident of his training approach. But when they truly fought, from the beginning to the end, Li Yuxong was completely thrashed without any ability to fight. Li Yuxong was close to Li Gang in terms of physical abilities, and had even better battle experience. But Li Gang used Li Yuxong's fear as a weapon to completely cast his shadow in the soul of Li Yuxong.
Li Gang took a deep look at Li Yuxong, and then looked at a certain direction, in the direction of exit, with a meaningful smile and said "It's meaningless!".
Li Yuxong looked confused, but didn't say anything. He didn't have the courage to ask further. Li Gang didn't say anything further, and went ahead towards the gate.