The awakening ceremony in Holy Soul Village was as oppressive as ever this year.
Su Yuntao looked at the children lined up before him and routinely set up the awakening ceremony.
One by one, the children's names were called, and they went through the same awakening process.
Without a doubt, whether their Martial Souls were sickles or Blue Silver Grass, not one of them possessed Soul Power.
"Next, Lin Ming."
A boy in clothes washed so pale they had faded stepped forward. His expression was perfectly calm, but Su Yuntao still noticed the worry he couldn't hide in his eyes.
Su Yuntao had seen that look far too many times.
As a commoner, the chance of awakening Soul Power was incredibly low.
"Hold out your hand." Su Yuntao sighed.
Lin Ming reached out.
As Su Yuntao guided his Soul Power, a blinding golden lightning bolt burst forth, lighting the entire room as bright as day.
Everyone instinctively shut their eyes and raised their hands to shield them.
"What!" Su Yuntao staggered backward, and the aura of a Soul Grandmaster abruptly unfurled.
But it was no use.
At the same time, outside, the clear sky darkened at a visible pace.
Dark clouds appeared out of nowhere from every direction, gradually gathering into thunderclouds streaked with golden lightning.
Golden bolts danced wildly within the clouds, yet no thunder sounded.
An utterly terrifying pressure swept across the entire continent.
Inside the room, a crack split open in the space behind Lin Qiu.
A figure spanning heaven and earth emerged from it at an unhurried pace.
A lightning-shaped, cross-star crown adorned its head, and golden cross-stars were embedded in its chest and knees.
Golden pauldrons rested on its shoulders, while silver-white patterns marked the armor on its arms and legs.
Golden holy light radiated from its entire body. The destructive lightning coursing through it was now astonishingly docile.
The lightning wings on its back slowly unfurled, while golden swords wreathed in lightning arcs circled it.
Sacred Thunder Lei Yi.
"A... a god-level Martial Soul?" Su Yuntao's voice turned hoarse, and his legs went weak.
The terrifying Martial Soul before him reminded him of the oldest being in Spirit Hall, buried deep in his memories.
The phantom existed for only half a breath.
It lowered its eyes toward Lin Ming, then began to break apart.
The disintegrating Sacred Thunder phantom did not simply vanish. Instead, it contracted inward and reformed.
Its height shrank from towering over heaven and earth to about three meters, and its body changed slightly as well.
King Lei Yi.
Yet everyone present suddenly felt a crushing pressure.
They could barely breathe, and could only stare at Lin Ming and his Martial Soul.
The instant King Lei Yi appeared, the electric arcs in the air made every metal object in the room tremble faintly.
Like soldiers awaiting orders at any moment.
The divine Sacred Thunder Lei Yi had regressed into King Lei Yi, who bore the authority of a king.
As a result, every person's Martial Soul in the room returned to their body in that instant, even Su Yuntao's.
King Lei Yi's phantom swept its gaze over each child. When it passed over Tang San, his left hand, hidden in his sleeve, jerked violently.
It wasn't fear. Some hidden power within him had been forcibly stirred into resonance.
King Lei Yi's phantom existed for only one breath.
Then its body collapsed inward again.
This time, its height dropped to two meters, and the six floating lightning swords dissolved into specks of light.
Thunder God Lei Yi.
His aura regressed from royal authority to guardianship. His hands hung naturally at his sides, yet the lightning coiling around his fingertips could still tear steel apart with ease.
He turned and met Lin Ming's gaze.
Lin Ming clearly felt a stream of consciousness enter his mind.
It wasn't language, but a pure imprint of inheritance.
It contained the essence of lightning, the path of evolution...
Thunder God Lei Yi's phantom reached out, as though it wanted to touch Lin Ming's shoulder. But before it could, it dissolved into countless golden motes of light.
All the motes converged inward, gathering in the center of the room into a golden ball of lightning that pulsed violently.
The ball was one meter in diameter, and fine arcs of electricity kept bursting across its surface.
Three seconds later, the ball stretched and took shape.
A humanoid outline about thirty centimeters tall, made entirely of pure golden lightning, hovered beside Lin Ming.
It had no features, no clothes, not even clearly defined limbs.
It was like a human-shaped water stain sketched in the air, except the water was liquid lightning.
But where its eyes should have been, two clusters of platinum-white lightning burned quietly as they watched the world.
The entire awakening process, from Sacred Thunder's arrival to its gradual regression into its current form, had taken no more than ten breaths.
Yet everyone in the room felt as though they had endured a full hour.
The celestial phenomenon began to fade, and sunlight shone down once more.
However, in a cave near Holy Soul Village, an unusual Blue Silver Grass leaned toward the village, where the Martial Soul Awakening ceremony had taken place.
The room was silent as death. Outside, the adults would have rushed in long ago if Old Jack hadn't held them back.
Su Yuntao came back to his senses and drew a deep breath, forcing down the storm raging in his heart.
He took the crystal ball and held it out in front of Lin Ming.
"Te... test your Soul Power..." His voice still trembled.
Lin Qiu placed his hand on the crystal ball. A tiny crack appeared in its surface, and then the ball erupted in a brilliant light.
But the light lasted only an instant before it dimmed again.
Su Yuntao thought he must have seen it wrong and hurriedly rubbed his eyes.
A faint, pale-white glow appeared in the crystal ball, barely bright enough to illuminate the area around his palm.
"Innate Soul Power... Rank One..."
Su Yuntao read the result in disbelief, overwhelmed by an absurd sense of unreality.
After that world-destroying phenomenon, after those three phantoms, each more terrifying than the last, the Martial Soul had awakened with only Rank One Innate Soul Power?
It made no sense!
But he tested it three times, and the result was the same.
Rank One.
"So that's how it is."
Only Lin Ming knew the truth.
When his hand touched the crystal ball, the surging Soul Power within him had indeed been stirred. It was Innate Super Soul Power, enough to shatter the crystal ball.
But just as that Soul Power was about to flow into the ball, all of it was absorbed by Lei Yi, who hovered beside him.
It wasn't devouring.
Lin Ming could feel that the vast Innate Soul Power within him was now flowing quietly through Lei Yi's body of lightning, completely merged with him.
Only enough Soul Power to make Rank One remained within Lin Ming.
Besides...
He glanced at the figure made of lightning.
He could clearly sense that its body seemed more solid than before.
"Martial Soul registration: Lin Ming. Martial Soul: Disembodied Lightning Humanoid Creature..."
"Does it have a name?"
Su Yuntao's hand paused as he wrote. He raised his head and looked at Lin Qiu, unable to hide his regret.
How could his Innate Soul Power be only Rank One?
How could it possibly be only Rank One?
It was utterly absurd.
Sure enough.
No matter how extraordinary the phenomenon during a Martial Soul awakening, in the end it was still like that Grandmaster's: a Trash Martial Soul.
It didn't even have a physical form.
"Lei Yi."
Lin Ming raised his head and softly spoke the name.
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