Sacred Awakening: Child of Light (II)

"Hold on—for our faith, for everything we hold dear in our hearts." Long Xingyu's voice rang clearly in Long Haochen's mind, jolting his spirit awake just as the pain had begun to numb him.

The Awakening Stone in Long Xingyu's hand quietly melted away, continuously refined in his palm until it finally became a single drop of pure golden liquid. It drifted to the center of Long Haochen's chest. Compared to an ordinary knight's awakening, with Long Xingyu's purification, this drop of sacred liquid contained not the slightest impurity. With a flash of golden light, it entered Long Haochen's body.

Puff—at the very instant the sacred liquid entered Long Haochen's body, a dense golden radiance burst forth from the top of his head.

The golden light struck Light's Protection and slowly fell back onto Long Haochen's head before climbing upward again, inch by inch, surging higher.

Long Xingyu stared tensely at the golden pillar of light. This pillar would determine the heights Long Haochen could reach in the sacred light domain in the future.

During Sacred Awakening, knights gained their own internal spiritual power imbued with the sacred light attribute. The amount of innate internal spiritual power that emerged during the awakening process was an important measure of a knight's potential. Generally speaking, if one's Innate Internal Spiritual Power could not exceed ten, that knight would likely never be able to break through the third rank.

The instant the golden light above Long Haochen's head rose again after falling, it had already surpassed the height representing ten spiritual power. Although his body was still trembling violently in agony, the golden light was rising at an astonishing speed.

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty...

When it surged past forty, even Long Xingyu could not help clenching his fists. Innate Internal Spiritual Power exceeding forty already marked one as a rare genius within the Knight Temple. Yet the golden pillar showed no sign of stopping.

What powerful innate spiritual power. Long Xingyu could not help sighing inwardly. Although he had long sensed that Long Haochen's innate spiritual power was extraordinary, he could not have made a true judgment before this Sacred Awakening. Only now could he truly see just how powerful Long Haochen's innate spiritual power was.

Fifty—it had surpassed fifty.

Fifty-five, fifty-eight, sixty. It had actually exceeded sixty.

Long Xingyu clearly remembered that when he, hailed as the Knight Temple's greatest genius in a century, underwent Sacred Awakening, his Innate Internal Spiritual Power had been seventy-seven. Although Long Haochen had the foundation of a year of seated meditation under his guidance, Innate Internal Spiritual Power exceeding sixty already meant far too much. And that golden pillar was still climbing.

Sixty-five, sixty-seven—it was already sixty-seven.

Long Xingyu's pupils contracted sharply. Innate Internal Spiritual Power rose in steps of ten. If Long Haochen's Innate Internal Spiritual Power could exceed seventy, then in the future, his ability to wield sacred light magic would not be inferior to that of any pure Light Magic mage.

Seventy. It really was seventy.

At that moment, Long Xingyu could not help holding his breath. And at the exact instant Long Haochen's Innate Internal Spiritual Power broke through seventy, his trembling stopped as well.

Another puff sounded, and hundreds upon thousands of golden rays burst from Long Haochen's body. All pain vanished without a trace in that instant. Long Haochen's clothes, too, disappeared amid the eruption of golden light.

His fair skin became translucent like crystal, faint golden light flowing over it and dyeing his entire body gold. The round golden halo at the center of Long Haochen's chest gradually drew inward, eventually becoming a golden orb the size of a soybean.

Long Haochen's own sensations were even stranger. The instant his Innate Internal Spiritual Power surpassed seventy, he felt every bit of pain throughout his body vanish at once, replaced by a clear, all-encompassing sensation that seemed to connect heaven and earth.

Everything became crystalline and transparent, including his heart and his soul. Dense Holy Aura subtly transformed his original body. His Innate Internal Spiritual Power continued to rise, while Long Haochen himself seemed to have grasped something—a law belonging solely to light.

Heavens! Eighty! His Innate Internal Spiritual Power had actually surpassed eighty.

This time, it was Long Xingyu's body that began to tremble. Although Innate Internal Spiritual Power did not represent strength, it represented absolute potential!

Eighty-one, eighty-three, eighty-five...

The golden light continued to climb. Throughout the Knight Temple's history, Innate Internal Spiritual Power exceeding seventy had been recorded seventeen times. Of those seventeen, aside from the six who fell midway, every remaining one had become an immensely powerful Divine Seal Knight.

As for Innate Internal Spiritual Power exceeding eighty, there had been only three recorded cases. Of those three knights, two had fallen, and only one had grown smoothly to maturity. At the age of thirty-six, he successfully broke through the threshold of the ninth-rank profession—one hundred thousand spiritual power—and achieved a Divine Seal.

Heavens! Ninety. Was that truly ninety? Innate Internal Spiritual Power of ninety—something absolutely unprecedented in the Knight Temple's history.

Long Xingyu's gaze had become utterly stunned. Purity of heart, spiritual power beyond ordinary people, coupled with his understanding of the Ten Great Precepts of Knights—these had actually brought his Innate Internal Spiritual Power to such a terrifying level.

The golden pillar seemed to have reached a bottleneck, and its upward ascent visibly slowed. It moved only thread by thread.

Innate Internal Spiritual Power of seventy was called the Angel of Light Physique; Innate Internal Spiritual Power of eighty was called the Divine Protection Physique. Although Innate Internal Spiritual Power above ninety had never appeared in the Knight Temple, the ancestor who founded the Knight Temple had left behind records. Such a physique was called the Child of Light. Its possessor had the purest light constitution, could innately wield any light-attribute weapon, and was beloved by all light-attribute Magic Beasts.

At last, the golden pillar could rise no further and stopped at ninety-seven.

Innate Internal Spiritual Power: ninety-seven.

All the golden light gradually faded, revealing the father and son.

"So comfortable!" The realization in his heart brought Long Haochen out of that extraordinary aura of light.

Opening his eyes, Long Haochen was surprised to find his father staring at him from across the way, frozen with an expression of shock.

"Dad, what's wrong?" Long Haochen hurriedly asked.

Long Xingyu's body shuddered, and he came back to himself. At a glance, he saw Long Haochen's eyes.

Long Haochen's originally azure-blue eyes had now turned an unusual pale gold. Pale golden eyes were not unheard of, but such clear, translucent pale golden eyes as Long Haochen's were something Long Xingyu had never seen before.

"Child of Light—it is truly the Child of Light! Heaven bless humanity, heaven bless the Knight Temple." Long Xingyu could not stop his voice from trembling slightly. As he spoke, he finally withdrew Light's Protection.

"Dad, what is the Child of Light? Ah, where are my clothes?" A gust of mountain wind swept past, and Long Haochen felt a chill between his legs. Only then did he realize that he was completely naked, and he cried out in alarm.

Only then did Long Xingyu react. With a flick of his right hand, one of his own long robes appeared and draped itself over Long Haochen.

Looking more closely at his son, Long Xingyu discovered that compared to before, Long Haochen's skin seemed to possess an additional faint golden sheen, visible only under the sunlight. Yet strangely, he did not have the lingering aura of light that other knights retained for a long time after Sacred Awakening. Instead, all of that aura was completely drawn inward, without the slightest leakage. Only those eyes revealed anything extraordinary.