He was a Spirit Master!!!
At the thought, towering waves kept surging through Jiang Fan's heart, refusing to settle for a long time.
Martial warriors were hard to come by. A school that produced a dozen or so was already doing very well.
But even dozens of cities might not produce a single Spirit Master. The odds were that absurdly low!
Put it this way: once news broke of a Spirit Master emerging, the elite martial schools and Great Xia's most powerful families would fight like mad to snatch them up!
The more Jiang Fan thought about it, the more his heart surged.
Only-
He looked at the system panel.
What did "locked" mean?
After thinking for a moment, Jiang Fan tried asking, "System, can't I forcibly unlock this?"
He had barely finished asking when the mechanical female voice sounded again.
[Yes, Master, but you'll have to pay a painful price.]
"What price?"
As long as he wasn't left crippled, blind, or missing any body parts, Jiang Fan felt he could accept it.
Of course, he wouldn't mind losing a strand of hair.
[Master already possesses 1000P of psychic power, but your vitality is too low, preventing it from being unlocked. If Master wishes to forcibly unlock it, you must endure pain beyond your body's ability to withstand. A friendly reminder: it will feel like being crushed beneath wheels and torn apart by five horses-pain that makes death preferable to life.]
Hearing this, Jiang Fan's lips curved upward, coldness showing in his eyes.
"Death preferable to life?"
He remembered the scene of his gruesome death in his previous life: the suffocating sensation of being bitten to death by demonic beasts, mouthful by mouthful, the torment and collapse as his blood and marrow were sucked dry. He felt there might be no pain in this world that made death more preferable to life than that.
"Do it," Jiang Fan said calmly.
[All right, psychic power unlock loading. The process will take a little while. After all, Master, your body is in such poor shape, and your vitality is far, far, far too low.]
"Enough with the chatter! Now."
Jiang Fan's impatient words had barely fallen when the system, as though retaliating, began instantly without so much as a warning.
In just one second, pain made the veins bulge on Jiang Fan's forehead. His face turned purple, and sweat poured down like rain.
He could even hear his bones creaking, as though they might crumble to dust at any moment.
Not only that, but his brain felt like a balloon being inflated to bursting, poised to explode at any instant.
"Aah-!"
Jiang Fan rolled across the ground in agony. He clenched his teeth so hard that his gums bled heavily, blood spilling from the corners of his mouth.
He couldn't be blamed for rolling on the ground without any regard for appearances. Just as the system had said, this pain made death preferable to life.
It was only because he had experienced inhuman torture before dying horribly in his previous life that he had such experience to draw on. Anyone else might long since have been tortured by this pain into finding a pillar to smash their head against and end it all.
The stray dog whined anxiously, circling Jiang Fan over and over. Yet however anxious it was, it couldn't help him in the slightest.
Just then, a middle-aged man riding an electric tricycle passed along the roadside. Upon seeing Jiang Fan writhing in agony, he immediately stopped and came running over with a limp.
"Xiao Fan! Xiao Fan! What's wrong?"
Hearing the urgent voice, Jiang Fan struggled to open his eyes. Through his blurred vision, he saw an incredibly familiar face.
He opened his mouth, wanting to call out, but his vision went black, and he passed out from the pain.
His consciousness sank into a murky haze for an unknown length of time before finally breaking free of the muddy swamp.
"Phew-"
Jiang Fan abruptly let out a long breath of stale air and sprang upright with a kip-up.
"Hah! Hah-" He gasped for breath in great gulps.
Only after quite a while did he calm down.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and swept his gaze around.
The familiar mud walls carried the scent of straw. With so much time having passed, many places had become badly weathered, even cracked. Through the gaps in those cracks, he could see outside.
The room's furnishings were extremely simple. Apart from a bed on the verge of falling apart, bound countless times with hemp rope, there was only one pitiful old table.
This was his room from long ago.
Thinking of the person who had appeared before he lost consciousness, his adoptive father must have brought him back.
Right!
Suddenly remembering something, Jiang Fan hurriedly opened the system.
Points: 0 Vitality: 20N Psychic power: 1000P
"(Locked)" had disappeared!
Then he should now be a junior psychic.
As far as Jiang Fan knew, Spirit Master ranks were divided into junior Spirit Master, intermediate Spirit Master, advanced Spirit Master, and great Spirit Master.
Above those, in ascending order, were saint-level psychic, god-level psychic, and the very pinnacle, legendary-level psychic.
Rumor had it that since the world entered the era of spiritual energy revival, only one legendary-level psychic had ever appeared. Of course, that person had come from their Great Xia.
In the era when that person appeared, Great Xia could be called the strongest nation in the world. All four corners of the earth paid homage, and no one dared encroach upon even an inch of its territory.
Unfortunately, that person later vanished without a trace and never appeared again.
Some said he had died, while others said he had merely retired from the world and moved behind the scenes. There was no definitive answer.
Back to the matter at hand, a junior psychic required at least 1000P, an intermediate psychic needed to reach 10000P, and an advanced psychic needed to reach 100000P.
He currently had exactly 1000P, so without a doubt, he truly was a junior psychic who had only just reached the threshold.
Jiang Fan drew his thoughts back and looked around, his gaze finally settling on the "Three-Good Student" certificate pasted to the mud wall.
With a slight stir of thought, he fixed his eyes on the certificate on the wall.
Soon, the certificate peeled away from the wall bit by bit. Following Jiang Fan's will, it floated toward him and landed in his outstretched hand.
At the sight, Jiang Fan was delighted!
He continued controlling the certificate in his hand with psychic power. With a slight movement of his fingertips, the certificate folded itself into the shape of a plane.
"Go!"
At his command, the paper plane shot through the air like an arrow loosed from a bow with a "whoosh," instantly flying through a crack in the mud wall and weaving freely through the air outside.
Jiang Fan discovered that his current ability only allowed him to control things within a spatial range of about a hundred meters. Beyond that range, his psychic power was like a whip too short to reach, unable to control them.
He curled a finger, and the paper plane flew in through the window.
Jiang Fan continued controlling the paper plane to become more proficient at using his psychic power.
Just then, footsteps sounded outside, and someone pushed the door open.
Not good!
Jiang Fan cried inwardly and hurriedly withdrew the psychic power attached to the paper plane.
The middle-aged man who opened the door stared at the paper plane suspended in front of him and froze on the spot. The next second, the paper plane abruptly wilted as though it had just finished doing the deed, drooping straight down and flopping limply onto the floor.