Chapter 17: Holy Crap! Gold-Grade Body Martial Soul Secondary Awakening? Go Find the Sect Master, Quickly!
Inside the cavernous expanse of the Elder Hall, the residual waves of soul power still hummed through the air, leaving a heavy, crackling atmosphere in their wake.
Elder Chen stood before the testing stone, his chest heaving as he drew in several deep, ragged breaths. He pressed a hand to his sternum, forcing his racing heart to settle. When he finally turned his gaze back to Liu Yuan, the scrutinizing glare of an examiner had vanished. In its place was a look of absolute reverence, the kind a master artisan reserved for a flawless, unpolished diamond.
"Good! Good! Good!"
Elder Chen's voice echoed through the hall. He closed the distance between them in two wide strides and brought a heavy, calloused hand down on Liu Yuan's shoulder. The impact rang out with a solid thud.
"A twelve-year-old Rank 23 Soul Grandmaster," the elder breathed, his eyes tracing the steady flow of energy still lingering around the boy. "Your foundation is immovable. Your soul power is dense enough to rival those years your senior. Liu Yuan, you are a terrifyingly rare talent!"
Liu Yuan offered a slight, measured bow. "The Elder overpraises me. This junior simply stumbled into a bit of good fortune."
His voice was smooth, completely devoid of the arrogance that usually accompanied such monstrous talent. He stood perfectly straight, his expression calm, completely unbothered by the awe radiating from the surrounding disciples.
This pragmatic, grounded nature made Elder Chen nod, his appreciation deepening.
"However..." Elder Chen let his hand drop. The warmth in his voice cooled into a solemn, authoritative timbre. He straightened his posture, the mantle of a Body Sect Elder falling heavily over his shoulders.
"While your soul power rank is undeniably monstrous, for the disciples of our Body Sect, there is an even more critical metric. A threshold that determines true worth."
He paused, letting the silence stretch. "And that is the potential for a Secondary Awakening."
Liu Yuan blinked, his expression shifting into a mask of polite curiosity. He already knew the lore inside and out, but playing the ignorant newcomer served his purposes perfectly.
Seeing the boy's subtle confusion, Elder Chen took on the tone of a patient instructor. "As you surely know, the reason our Body Sect stands at the absolute apex, looking down upon the ordinary Soul Masters of the outside world, is our mastery over a unique secret method. The Body Martial Soul Secondary Awakening."
The elder raised a hand, his fingers curling slightly as if grasping invisible power. "This process does not merely refine the quality of our martial souls. It shatters human limits, granting us a combat strength that defies the natural laws of this world."
A fierce, unmistakable pride flared in the old man's eyes.
"Yet, not everyone possesses the constitution to reach the summit. The Secondary Awakening is bound by a strict, merciless hierarchy. From the lowest tier to the highest, they are classified as Iron, Bronze, Silver, and the legendary Gold grade."
Elder Chen began pacing slowly around Liu Yuan, his gaze analytical. "When a disciple first enters our gates, their physical vessel is rarely prepared to undergo the awakening directly. Thus, we employ specialized arrays to measure your latent potential. By combining your monstrous soul power talent with this potential metric, the upper echelons will determine your exact cultivation regimen. It dictates precisely how much of the sect's foundational resources will be poured into your veins."
He stopped right in front of Liu Yuan, his eyes burning with an intense, expectant heat. "Since your soul power has already shattered our expectations, only this final trial remains."
"I see," Liu Yuan murmured, nodding slowly as if absorbing a deep revelation. He brought his hands together in a respectful salute. "Since those are the rules of the sect, this junior is ready. Please, Elder, begin the test."
"Excellent. Stand by."
Elder Chen wasted no time. He pivoted on his heel and marched toward the far end of the hall. With a flick of his wrist, a spatial ripple emanated from his storage soul tool. Heavy, metallic clanks echoed across the stone floor as he began extracting bizarrely shaped crystalline apparatuses, his hands moving in a blur as he assembled the testing array.
...
Near the heavy oak doors at the back of the hall, the younger generation of disciples huddled together, their hushed whispers cutting through the quiet tension.
"Hey, what tier do you guys think Liu Yuan will hit?" Chen Lu leaned sideways, driving a sharp elbow into Wang Yanfeng's ribs. His eyes were wide, practically vibrating with anticipation.
Wang Yanfeng rubbed his chin, his brow furrowing as he analyzed the situation. "It is difficult to predict. Soul power rank and awakening potential do not share an absolute, unbreakable link. But practically speaking, a monster with that much raw soul power rarely possesses a weak physical vessel or a low-quality martial soul., his martial soul is an Eye. That is an upper-tier cranial organ..."
He lowered his voice, his tone serious. "I am betting on Silver."
Gu Tong crossed his arms, his gaze fixed on Liu Yuan's relaxed back. "Eye martial souls are incredibly rare. Factor in that suffocating soul power we just witnessed, and Silver is practically guaranteed. If he only pulls a Bronze grade, I will eat my own boots."
"Silver?"
A deep, resonant voice cut through their chatter. Long Aotian, who had been leaning silently against a pillar with his arms folded, finally spoke. A feral, predatory light danced in his untamed eyes. The corners of his mouth twitched upward into a sharp smirk.
"You lot are entirely too conservative."
"Aotian, you mean..." Chen Lu swallowed hard, turning toward the undisputed king of their generation.
Long Aotian pushed himself off the pillar. His gaze locked onto Liu Yuan like a beast sizing up a rival apex predator. "His aura is utterly stagnant. Not a single ripple of wasted energy. That suffocating purity we felt during the soul power test... that is no ordinary genius."
Long Aotian's voice dropped to a low, gravelly register. "Silver is merely his floor."
He paused, his fists clenching slightly at his sides. An unfamiliar, burning anticipation bled into his words. "He might very well be like me. He possesses the qualifications to strike at the domain of Gold."
"Gold?!"
The word hit the group like a physical blow. Chen Lu, Wang Yanfeng, and Gu Tong all sucked in sharp breaths, their eyes bulging.
A Gold-grade Secondary Awakening. The concept alone was staggering.
It was the absolute zenith of a Body Martial Soul. A divine mandate that placed a cultivator at the very peak of the continental pyramid. Throughout the long, blood-soaked history of the Body Sect, the disciples who possessed Gold-grade potential could be counted on a single hand.
The implications were even heavier. The moment a disciple successfully completed a Gold-grade awakening, they were immediately elevated to the status of Sect Master candidate. If multiple monsters achieved it in the same era, they would fight for the throne. If only one achieved it, the seat of the Sect Master belonged to them by divine right. That was the absolute, unbreakable law of the Body Sect.
In their current generation, only Long Aotian had proven to possess such heaven-defying potential. It was the sole reason the current Sect Master treated him as a priceless treasure, elevating his status above all others.
And now, the proud, undefeated Long Aotian was openly admitting that this newcomer might stand on his level?
"If it truly is Gold..." Chen Lu gulped, his throat dry. He turned his head slowly to look at Vina, who stood beside them with perfect, regal posture. He weakly raised a thumb in her direction.
"Vina, you have dragged a literal monster back to our gates. If the Sect Master realizes you secured a genius of this caliber, he might just empty the treasury for you!"
Vina merely offered a faint, elegant smile. She tilted her chin up, her eyes gleaming with absolute vindication. "Naturally. When has my judgment ever failed?"
...
While the disciples bickered in the shadows, Elder Chen completed his preparations.
A massive hexagonal array now dominated the front of the hall. Six jagged black crystals anchored the corners, their surfaces carved with dense, complex runic patterns that pulsed with a ghostly, suffocating light. At the absolute center of the formation lay a circular jade disc, its surface polished to a mirror-like finish.
"Liu Yuan, step into the center."
Elder Chen pointed a weathered finger at the jade disc. "Close your eyes. Empty your mind of all distractions. Release your martial soul and let your consciousness sink into the jade. It will draw out the origin energy hidden deep within your marrow and manifest your true potential."
"Understood."
Liu Yuan moved with fluid precision. He stepped over the glowing runic lines and planted his feet firmly on the smooth surface of the jade disc.
The moment his boots made contact, a strange, scalding energy surged up through his soles. It rushed through his meridians like a tidal wave, flooding his limbs and core. Heat pooled rapidly behind his eyelids. It felt as though a dormant beast within his skull was violently thrashing, desperate to tear through its cocoon.
"Open!"
A low, commanding shout tore from Liu Yuan's throat. His eyelids snapped open.
His normally pristine black-and-white eyes underwent a terrifying transformation. The space within his irises deepened into an endless, abyssal void. Two distinct pupils materialized within each eye, slowly rotating and overlapping like grinding gears. A soul-crushing, eerie fluctuation exploded outward, warping the very air around his face.
Buzz—!!!
The instant the Double Pupils manifested, the hexagonal array violently activated.
The six black crystals erupted with blinding intensity. Thick tendrils of light shot out from the stones, converging on the central jade disc before violently refracting upward, swallowing Liu Yuan in a pillar of energy.
At first, the pillar manifested as a dull, grayish-black hue. Iron-grade.
But the color held for less than a fraction of a second. It shattered like fragile glass, instantly replaced by a hazy, swirling blue luminescence. Bronze-grade.
The blue light barely had time to register before the energy within the array began to literally boil. The runic lines hissed as the blue violently bleached into a blinding, razor-sharp silver-white!
"It is Silver!" Chen Lu screamed from the back of the hall, his voice cracking.
But... was that the limit?
No.
The silver-white pillar did not stabilize. Instead, it grew increasingly violent, the light condensing and purifying until the sheer brightness forced the onlookers to shield their eyes.
Boom!
A deafening sonic boom rocked the Elder Hall. It was as if a miniature sun had detonated inside the stone chamber.
From the very core of that blinding silver, a single, razor-thin thread of pure gold ignited.
The moment that golden spark appeared, it spread with the ferocity of a wildfire. It devoured the silver-white energy in a heartbeat, surging outward to dye the entire runic array, the stone pillars, and the vaulted ceiling in a brilliant, suffocating golden-yellow radiance!
The light was absolute. It was holy, majestic, and dripping with an overbearing, tyrannical arrogance. A supreme aura of world-dominating power crushed down on the room, forcing every single person present to shudder as a primal terror gripped their very souls.
"Gold... Golden..."
Elder Chen stumbled backward, his hands trembling violently. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and filled with a terrifying, religious fanaticism.
He lost all sense of decorum. His voice tore through his throat in a raw, desperate roar.
"It really is... Gold-grade!"
"Quick! Someone go find the Sect Master! Move! We have found another disciple with Gold-grade potential!"
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