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--- Chapter 475 ---
"Awakening your spirit, huh..." Guo Zhengfeng murmured slowly, his eyes lingering on the small, silver-haired boy sitting across from him.
He leaned back slightly, rubbing the edge of his watch. "Honestly, it isn't a hard request to fulfill, boy."
"But logically speaking, it would be much better for you to wait for your family to arrive and allow their high-ranking Spirit Master to conduct the ceremony for you."
"If you let a rough military man like me handle it... you might get unlucky and awaken bad spirits." He made a random excuse.
"I trust you," Han Yuan stated immediately, cutting off the man's rational deflection and excuse.
His striking silver gaze pierced straight into Guo Zhengfeng's eyes, devoid of any hesitation. It was a gaze utterly brimming with raw, unshakeable expectation.
Yes, a child's hopeful, almost teary request.
"..."
Guo Zhengfeng fell into silence. It would be a lie to say he wasn't feeling overwhelmed right now. It wasn't the difficulty of the request that made his chest tighten, but rather the heavy, deep-seated emotion behind the child's stubbornness to awaken his spirit.
As a Regimental Commander of the Northern Army Corps, Guo Zhengfeng had climbed through the ranks by wading through blood, sweat, and tears.
He had witnessed the cruelty of this world firsthand, and even though the northern garrison faced fewer direct skirmishes than the other central army corps, he was no stranger to tragedy.
Yet, looking at this silver-haired boy's stubborn, unyielding request, a long-buried realization snapped within the Title Douluo's heart.
He couldn't help but recall his own youth, the exact, burning ambition that had driven him to enlist in the military in the first place.
Wasn't it precisely to protect innocent children just like this one?
The world was a dark, unforgiving place. The very least he could do as a powerhouse of the Federation was to stand as a shield, protecting the innocent from the dark, grim reality pressing down upon them.
Taking a deep breath, Guo Zhenfeng's expression softened, replaced by a rare, small smile.
"Alright, kid," He said, standing up from his chair as a heavy, reassuring aura settled around him. "Since you've put your trust in me... let's see what kind of spirits you're going to awaken."
"I might get chewed out or even punished by my superiors for skipping protocol... But fuck them. I will help you today on my whims!" He gazed deeply at Han Yuan, pausing for a brief second. "However, just to be sure, do you really want me to do it for you?"
"Yes!" Han Yuan replied bluntly.
"Even if you're going to awaken a bad, trash spirit? Are you going to regret it?" The man pressed, his voice taking on a fierce, commanding military quality.
"No! I won't regret it! Even if I awaken Blue Silver Grass, I will make it the greatest Blue Silver Grass in the entire world!" Han Yuan declared, leaving Guo Zhenfeng thoroughly impressed. Well, Alpha already did.
"Very well..." Guo Zhenfeng chuckled to himself.
Even with his sudden burst of righteousness, the commander still made a silent mental note to cover his bases. He absolutely did not want to get beaten into a pulp by the Illusory Brain Douluo and his superiors later.
He would document the entire Spirit Awakening process via his automated logs, also explicitly capturing Han Yuan's verbal consent.
Yes, to make sure everything was legally sound, of course, and definitely not because he was afraid of a disciplinary hearing.
After paying for the massive mountain of meat the silver-haired boy had casually devoured, Guo Zhenfeng left the restaurant with a twitching mouth.
He could only sigh, guiding the boy away from the civilian sectors and toward somewhere far more secluded.
Eventually, they arrived at a flat, desolate mountain cliff overlooking the distant, vast blue ocean and even framed by the orange horizon of the morning sky.
Watching the tiny, silver-haired boy stand against the rising morning sun, Guo Zhenfeng briefly hallucinated and somehow saw the silhouette of a towering mountain looming over. He shook his head sharply, dismissing it as an imagination.
Helpless, he reached into his storage tool, grabbed a compact Mobile Spirit Awakening Device, and tossed it onto the ground. The capsule seamlessly unfolded into a sleek, small metallic platform.
"I would have never thought I would use this here, but whatever."
"Let's start. Get on the awakening array, kid."
"Mhm." Han Yuan nodded, hopping onto the cold metal surface while subtly activating his Eyes of Truth to check its interior.
The device was actually a very mature piece of modern Spirit Guidance Tool. It was designed to draw ambient soul power from the surrounding nature to jumpstart a child's dormant meridians. However, it still required an external catalyst's spiritual power to guide the initial flow safely.
"Close your eyes, kid," Guo Zhenfeng instructed, his posture shifting into a solemn form. "Sense the spirit energy that begins to flow through your veins the moment I activate the array."
"Are you ready?"
"I am ready! I was born ready!" Han Yuan responded excitedly, closing his eyes on cue, though it was entirely redundant. Even with his eyelids shut, his spiritual energy allowed him to see the outside world with flawless, high-definition precision.
With a sharp intake of breath, Guo Zhenfeng unleashed his power, a sliver of it. In a flash of blinding light, a massive, terrifying Blight Mountain Axe appeared in his grip, followed immediately by nine brilliant spirit rings rising from the ground.
Three purple, three black, and three dark-red!
Han Yuan observed the shocking sight of spirit ring configuration, silently commenting. 'As expected of the Legend of Dragon King era.'
'Having a spirit ring configuration reach this degree, while very difficult, is no longer impossible.'
'There is no need for God's Trials, God-Bestowed Spirit Rings, and nearly everyone has an equal chance to rise to prominence.'
'What a magnificent era this truly is. It's a shame a few wannabe gods had to ruin the script.'
Guo Zhenfeng stared intently at the boy, taking a deep, steadying breath while thinking. 'Don't let him down, Zhenfeng. Don't let this kid down.'
With that final thought, the Title Douluo infused his immense, raw spiritual power directly into the mobile device, forcefully drawing the surrounding atmospheric spirit energy into a concentrated vortex to pierce through Han Yuan's body.
At the same moment, Han Yuan quietly started the Universal Spirit Awakening Method.
Instead of relying on the world's standard energy alone, his soul violently drew power directly from the void, forcefully rewriting and improving the physical aptitude of his newly inherited vessel to unparalleled heights.
He knew the World-Devouring Kunpeng's bloodline would guarantee a god-level martial soul, but he didn't just want something powerful. He wanted a spirit that could defy the rules of this era.
The World-Devouring Kunpeng could easily rival or completely suppress both the Golden and Silver Dragon Kings. In fact, its true form would even make the Dragon God look entirely insignificant by comparison.
But in this modern, nearly star-reaching era of Douluo, Tool-Type Martial Souls were structurally the most broken spirit someone could cultivate.
Tool spirits like the Atlas Spear, the Amorous Sword, the Heartless Sword, Star God Sword, Star Staff, and the Coiling Dragon Rod let their wielders reach the absolute apex of cultivation because they were unique, conceptual, and fundamentally rule-breaking. Of course, one's own talents still matter a lot.
If Han Yuan didn't take this precise, chaotic window to forge unique tool-type spirits, he would miss his golden opportunity. After all, both Alpha and Beta leaned more heavily toward elemental-based combat styles.
What Han Yuan needed was pure, unadulterated conceptual destruction and domination.
Thump! Thump!
Suddenly, the synchronized howl of two distinct heartbeats reverberated across the isolated cliffside, sending fierce, electrifying jolts ripping through the solid rock and up into the atmosphere.
Crack! Shatter!
Physical fractures began manifesting directly in the empty air, the sheer atmospheric pressure causing Guo Zhenfeng's recording equipment to glitch, distort, and blur into static.
Guo Zhenfeng's eyes widened as he felt the spirit awakening ceremony spiral completely out of control. A terrifying pressure locked his limbs in place, and he couldn't pull back or abort the sequence, or else the sheer volume of chaotic spirit energy would trigger a fatal backlash, liquefying Han Yuan's internal organs.
The atmospheric cracks continued to violently split across the sky as countless pitch-black and blood-red chains erupted directly from the void, anchoring themselves into the cliffside to bind the local space together against an exploding, inner storm.
Then, the fierce storm was torn wide open.
With a deafening roar, a colossal, world-ending Warship Anchor crashed down from the dimensional rift, burying its massive barbs into the solid granite a few meters away from them.
The giant 'object' emitted a pure, suffocating aura of final destruction, the mere passive existence of its energy causing the surrounding air to boil and warp.
Yet, the anchor's shape is extremely odd. It was a terrifying, hybrid fusion of a colossal scythe, an oversized greatsword, a brutal executioner's axe, and a piercing halberd, all forged into a single instrument of destruction.
Ultimately, the same dark-red chains attached and holding the anchor together.
Yet, the awakening still wasn't finished.
As the giant anchor claimed dominion over the earth and the underworld beneath, another heavenly phenomenon shattered the atmosphere.
A deafening, rolling thunder echoed across the sky. A massive, celestial 'Headcrown' forged from compressed starlight and ancient gems manifested in the sky.
Its presence forcefully erased the daylight, turning the sky into a deep, pitch-black area as an entire starry river of galaxies manifested over the cliffside.
The crown wasn't merely an object. It was a literal, shifting rift leading to a distant, infinite starry sky.
"W-What the fuck is this?!" Guo Zhenfeng roared, his military composure shattering as his eyes nearly bulged out of his skull. He screamed at the top of his lungs against the howling current because a Spirit Awakening should not be this cataclysmic.
He was bearing witness to two twin, heaven-shattering phenomena born from a single child's awakening. However, still confused and shocked, the Title Douluo totally missed the third, more terrifying mutation occurring right in front of his face.
Han Yuan stood motionless atop the cracking, melting metallic platform of the Mobile Spirit Awakening Device. For a second, jet-black, swirling holes materialized directly across his fair skin, rapidly consuming the ambient light.
His jaw subtly curved upward, revealing rows of razor-sharp, silver runic teeth beneath his lips, and his pupils transformed into piercing, silver-gold irises reminiscent of a primordial deep-sea whale.
Three pairs of illusory, pitch-black butterfly wings flared from his spine, crowned by a sharp, twisted, world-piercing horn extending from his brow.
The monstrous, eldritch image of the World-Devouring Kunpeng flashed for a single, brief microsecond before immediately receding into the void, leaving his youthful, innocent child appearance unscathed.
Swoosh!
As abruptly as the storm had begun, the roaring rifts snapped shut and vanished. The vast starry sky dissolved, the dark-red chains vanished, and the environment returned to a calm, quiet sunrise.
If it weren't for the fact that the very Mobile Spirit Awakening Device was currently a smoking, shattered pile of melted slag, Guo Zhenfeng would have firmly believed he had just suffered a severe mental breakdown.
But Han Yuan was still standing there. Alive, breathing, and entirely real to the touch.