"Students, today is a special day!
"Today is your destined day to awaken your Contract Marks!"
"Starting today, you will join the ranks of beast tamers! You will become the foundation of the strength that keeps our human race safe and powerful!"
"For countless years, our forebears shed their blood to open the path of beast taming for our Human Race, helping us resist invasions by exotic beasts and other races, ensuring the survival of our entire Human Race!"
"In the future, you, too, will become part of the Great Wall that guards our Human Race!"
"No matter which path you take in the future, I hope you never forget that you are human!"
On the raised platform, a middle-aged man delivered an impassioned speech to the neatly arranged ranks of students below. His voice was not loud, but it was deeply stirring and rang throughout the grounds.
He was an educational instructor dispatched by the upper administration of No. 12 Level Four Base, an affiliate of Chang'an Base in Great Xia, to oversee this awakening of Contract Marks.
His speech was steeped in chicken soup for the soul.
The instant his words fell, most of the young people below were swept up in them, brimming with passion and hot-blooded determination to strive!
"Please relax your minds, enter the base's public energy chamber in an orderly fashion, and wait quietly for the moment your Contract Marks awaken."
"During this process, you are strictly forbidden from leaving your awakening compartments or interfering with others! Violators will be severely punished!"
Below the platform stood all the students in the western district of No. 12 Level Four Base who had reached sixteen years of age.
They would enter the dark energy chamber arranged for them by No. 12 Level Four Base together and undergo their first awakening of a Contract Mark.
Among the crowd, Jiang Ziliu stood in the sunlight, his eyes firm and filled with anticipation.
Jiang Ziliu was sixteen this year, and today was the Beginning of Summer on the lunar calendar.
The lunar calendar's Beginning of Summer was a very special day!
On this day every year, every human across Blue Water Star who had reached sixteen would spontaneously awaken a Contract Mark!
There was no possibility of failure, only differences in the quality and grade of the Contract Marks.
It was a power the universe itself bestowed upon all intelligent life!
Humans included!
Anyone who awakened a Contract Mark would gain a natural Beast-Taming Space bestowed by the world.
All those who possessed Contract Marks could form contracts with various strange life-forms known as exotic beasts, whether from the wilderness or dungeon spaces, and become true beast tamers!
This starry universe was a world of beast tamers!
And this planet, named Blue Water Star, was a parallel world similar to Earth!
The history of beast tamers in this world stretched back an exceedingly long time.
Jiang Ziliu, meanwhile, was a transmigrator. Shortly after birth, he had awakened the memories of his previous life and learned that this was a supernatural world.
From then on, Jiang Ziliu had been among the best in his class in academic knowledge.
Even so, he had still concealed his abilities.
He understood very well that the tree that rose above the forest would surely be battered by the wind.
There was nothing wrong with being one of the most knowledgeable, but he absolutely could not be number one. First place always attracted tremendous attention.
Especially in a supernatural world like this, danger always came from inexplicable places.
Jiang Ziliu had worked hard to learn everything related to beast taming, using every available avenue to uncover its secrets.
He had been making meticulous preparations to become a beast tamer all along.
All humans under sixteen received the full protection of the Human Alliance because they were ordinary people.
But on the Beginning of Summer when they were sixteen, they would awaken their Contract Marks, no matter where they were.
From then on, they would be beast tamers, leaving the Human Alliance's comprehensive protection to truly begin their own lives.
This was freedom! It was also the beginning of danger!
Jiang Ziliu's parents were beast tamers whose tamed beasts had suffered grievous injuries and fallen into a slumber from which they could not recover, leaving them no choice but to become ordinary civilians!
Only their tamed beasts had met with disaster; they themselves were still alive. Becoming civilians was a relatively good outcome.
Far more people perished along with their tamed beasts during the beasts' growth.
Although humans had no trouble awakening Contract Marks, the marks themselves differed in quality.
The earlier the awakening, the better the quality of the Contract Mark.
The higher the energy concentration in the awakening environment and the more advanced the resources used, the more the Contract Mark's quality could be enhanced.
Powerful beast-taming clans, for instance, would awaken their children just after birth.
Early awakening required soul crystals, an extremely advanced treasure!
Even the lowest-quality soul crystal cost over a hundred million yuan!
Even at that price, none were available!
Beyond that, early awakening required many other advanced resources as support. The more abundant the resources prepared for the awakening ritual, the greater the chance of a high-quality Contract Mark.
Of course, there were also cases where clan descendants awakened low-grade Contract Marks despite preparations using vast quantities of resources.
It was all a matter of increasing the odds!
Soul crystals were the prerequisite for awakening before sixteen!
The younger the age of early awakening, the more soul crystals were required, and their quality also had to meet strict requirements.
Awakening a child just after birth was impossible without spending at least a hundred billion yuan!
Even if these wealthy Lineages could not manage awakening immediately after birth, they could still arrange it before sixteen.
Young people like Jiang Ziliu and those around him had no such financial means. They could only wait until sixteen, when the universe's heavenly gift would awaken their Contract Marks of its own accord.
This public energy chamber counted as the most basic, lowest-tier benefit the Human Alliance provided to all humans.
The public energy chamber increased the energy concentration by only a little, raising the chances of high-quality Contract Marks appearing to a certain extent.
There were no descendants of powerful or influential clans here, only ordinary civilians!
Jiang Ziliu had been waiting for this day ever since he transmigrated.
After his parents' tamed beasts were injured and fell into slumber, they could only run ordinary businesses to support the family. There was no possibility of obtaining soul crystals for him to awaken early.
Jiang Ziliu understood this very well.
He had been waiting for this day all along.
The public dark energy chamber was divided into several levels, each containing many small metal-partitioned compartments with only enough room for one person to stand.
Judging by the rust on the partitions, this public energy chamber had been in use for at least twenty years.
Suddenly, the energy density throughout the level rapidly increased.
Jiang Ziliu sensed something unusual. Here, his soul seemed to strengthen a little, and his whole being grew clear.
The quality of a Contract Mark had a certain connection to soul strength, which was why soul crystals were required for early awakening.
That was because ordinary humans had very weak souls before sixteen.
The public dark energy chamber contained a special pattern array, one of the fruits of research into Contract Marks.
This pattern array could increase the concentration of dark energy in the surroundings.
Throughout the beast-taming era, dark energy was the foundation of everything, whether the growth of tamed beasts or the strength of beast tamers.
In places with high concentrations of dark energy, soul strength could be temporarily enhanced.
It also nourished the soul exceptionally well.
It was the foundation of everything supernatural in beast-taming civilization.
Dark energy existed throughout the universe, as vast and boundless as an ocean, so people also called it the dark energy sea.
At that moment, the increase in dark energy within the public energy chamber strengthened the souls of all the young people while nourishing them.
The awakening began. Jiang Ziliu felt as though his soul had taken flight and connected with the entire starry universe.
The sensation was hazy and soothing, difficult to put into words.
Then he seemed to receive something, only to sink into a muddled state.
By the time Jiang Ziliu came to his senses, that state had disappeared, and a small black dot had appeared between his eyebrows.
The black dot looked only as large as a mole, yet it contained countless minute patterns.
It was his Contract Mark.
Jiang Ziliu also sensed that this Contract Mark connected to a tiny space that only he could control.
Inside was his Beast-Taming Space, a full hundred cubic meters in size!
One measure of a Contract Mark's quality was the size of its Beast-Taming Space.
The larger the Beast-Taming Space, the larger the tamed beasts it could accommodate, or the higher the tier of small, high-quality tamed beasts it could hold.
If an exotic beast was too powerful, a small, fragile Beast-Taming Space could not contain it. A single forceful movement could shatter the space.
This was also one reason talent mattered.
The Human Alliance divided Contract Marks into seven grades, from lowest to highest: D, C, B, A, S, SS, and SSS.
A hundred-cubic-meter Beast-Taming Space should be B Grade!
More precisely, it was B-minus, slightly below standard B Grade. A standard B Grade Beast-Taming Space was around 180 cubic meters.
A B-plus Beast-Taming Space was around three hundred cubic meters.
The next grade up, A Grade Beast-Taming Space, ranged between 400 and 1,000 cubic meters.
For the still higher S Grade, a Beast-Taming Space had to be at least 1,000 cubic meters just to qualify.
For Jiang Ziliu to awaken a B-minus Beast-Taming Space already placed him in the upper-middle ranks among ordinary people.
This counted as a decent start.
Generally speaking, the size of a Beast-Taming Space corresponded to the quality of its Contract Mark.
Thus, Jiang Ziliu's Contract Mark should also have been B-minus.
Sure enough, after the awakening was complete, the base tested their results, and his Contract Mark was B-minus.
Contract Marks naturally possessed the power to attract exotic beasts, which was what made forming contracts with them possible.
After all, beast tamers deprived tamed beasts of their freedom. It would have been strange if they did not resist.
This special attraction was the key to weakening an exotic beast's will to resist.
The grade of a Contract Mark determined the bloodline and life tier of the tamed beasts it could contract.
For Jiang Ziliu, the upper limit was an exotic beast with B-minus bloodline quality.
The better the Contract Mark, the more capable it was of contracting exotic beasts with high-grade bloodlines or potential. After all, exotic beasts also sized people up before deciding how to treat them.
They, too, would resist and refuse during the contracting process.
If the match was unsuitable, a successful contract was impossible.
The level four base had a population of nearly five hundred thousand!
A total of 1,356 young civilians underwent awakening this time.
Similar awakenings were also taking place in a total of four public energy chambers in the other districts of No. 12 Level Four Base.
Among these 1,356 people, there were actually three SS Grade Contract Marks, twelve S Grade, fifty-eight A Grade, and 157 B Grade. Everyone else was below B Grade.
Jiang Ziliu was neither particularly high nor low, counting as upper-middle.
But at his school, No. 12 Base Ninth Middle School, this awakening result placed him among the top ranks.
He checked how his schoolmates around him had fared. Across all of No. 12 Base Ninth Middle School, only thirty-five students had awakened Contract Marks of B Grade or above.
After all, their middle school's students were all civilians' children and received relatively few resources.
Some of those with good awakening results had taken soul-strengthening spiritual medicines for years, which was how they had achieved such results.
After the awakening ended, the teachers of No. 9 Middle School took them back.
No. 9 Middle School would gather all those who had awakened B Grade or higher Contract Marks into one small class for focused training.
The others had little value for development. Whatever good fortune they might find in the future would depend entirely on their own circumstances, but their chances of reaching greater heights would be lower.
Middle schools also needed to compete and fight for resource allocations.
Society was just that cruel. Some people were already walking a path destined for mediocrity from the very beginning.
But Jiang Ziliu paid no attention to how the others reacted. As he sensed his Beast-Taming Space, his heart surged like a swelling tide.
He was about to become a beast tamer.
As for reaching greater heights, Jiang Ziliu was very confident. How could a transmigrator possibly lack a golden finger?
He, too, had his own special advantage!