Chương 2: The end of all things
Sun Moon Federation
Silverlight Town
Four days have passed since the robbery incident of Aunt Zhang's store.
During these four days, the security department of the Silverlight Town was able to pinpoint the perpetrators of the incident and had reported it to the other towns while issuing a wanted order on them.
That's the most they can do as the criminals had obviously left the town a long time ago and the security department of the Silverlight Town were incapable of going after them.
But the situation wasn't as hopeless as it seemed. Now that the other towns and cities have the wanted order, the criminals will be caught one day.
More so when the wanted orders were also taken by the Spirit Pagoda and Tang Sect. So one day they might get caught.
But all of that didn't mean anything to our protagonist Fan.
He was silently sitting beside the empty bed where Aunty Zhang was sleeping yesterday.
Now it was empty.
Aunty Zhang has died.
Lin clearly remembered how she was smiling the day before. She looked fine and healthy when he left in the evening.
A night has passed and he had gone to attend his schooling on her repeated urging.
On his return, he met with the investigation officers who told him about the perpetrators and assured that they will be caught soon.
Although he knew that it was just an empty guarantee, he still smiled and greeted the officer properly. You have to talk nicely when you are poor.
When he came to the hospital to tell Aunty Zhang about the news, she was gone... gone from the world of the living.
Only he was left, alone and empty.
A few hours later, the nurse came and asked him to leave the room as another patient was coming there. Such was life.
He slowly nodded his head to her and left the hospital after looking at the empty bed for one last time.
On his way to his sleeping place, he couldn't properly understand what he was feeling. He was sad that he would not be able to meet her again and that was it but it wasn't it at the same time. His small experience pool couldn't differentiate the anguish and heartache of his from sadness. It felt the same and yet it wasn't. It clearly wasn't.
And even if he knew, he had no way to deal with it.
So he just sat there. Myriads of emotions yet not one that he could verbalise. He looked at the calm night, a gentle breeze was blowing but he didn't enjoy it, and he couldn't understand why.
He was just a child who hadn't properly seen the world or had felt the extent of his emotions or the desolation and despair of losing someone.
And neither would he understand these emotions in a day. It will take time, as time will pass, he will begin to understand the value of his time spent with Aunt Zhang which in turn will slowly increase the sadness and despair that was caused due to her death and not being able to see her again.
Sooner or later, he will be drowned in his despair and die...
Or he may turn his grief into anger and vengeance and went on a hunt to find the criminals behind her death...
Or he may do nothing at all and will just be fine in a few weeks. Aunty Zhang did say he was a strong and mature boy.
Or I may turn like her, a fool who was so struck in his emotions that he loses the few chances to happiness that he was given and dies a regretful death like aunty Zhang.
What will I be?
I... don't know... don't understand all this... and I feel like drowning in cold water.
Exactly what did she see in me that she was so confident that I would not be a loser like her husband or son?
Can I even call them loser?
What if I fail? Will I become like them?
So many questions.
Yet not a single answer.
Why do humans have so many complex emotions? Is it only limited to humans? What about other beings?
I don't know.
After a few hours of self-questioning and self-demotivation, Lin finally succumbed to sleep at 6am in the morning.
When he woke up, he felt a bit better. He recalled the various things that Aunty Zhang had taught him and smiled.
"As I grow old, my desires will change huh?"
"I hate adults."
He shook his head and began his day.
[End of volume 1- Fan Lin's choice]
.....
Sun Moon Federation
Silverlight Town
A year later
Fan Lin was on his way to the Spirit Pagoda to get his first spirit soul.
He had reached Rank 10 in 15 months since the start of his Soul Master's academy and thus becoming the hope of his principal and teacher, and now he needed a spirit soul to break through the first cultivation bottleneck of his, aka rank 10 to continue his cultivation.
Things have changed in the past year. Now Lin was seven and in the second year of his soul master class. Obviously.
He now lived at the store of Aunty Zhang. He was still quite poor and was still selling vegetables to get by and save money for his first spirit soul.
Although he was quite unsuccessful in all that and had to take a laon from the Principal to buy a random draw spirit soul at 30k Federal credits.
Now he was poor, in debt and questioning his life choices.
All in all, Fan Lin was on the path to Spirit Pagoda like he had thought.
"Hello kid, you finally here for you spirit soul?"
The Spirit Master who had awakened Fan Lin's martial soul asked him from the reception.
Lin looked at his name tag and realised that the Spirit Master either doubled as the receptionist or he had his martial soul awakening done by a receptionist.
"Yeah, did the school inform you about it?"
Lin asked, his voice gruff and moody.
"Yeah. Got the money ready?"
The receptionist awakener said with a smile.
"I have." [Lin]
"Good. Follow me."
The receptionist said and began walking, leaving the reception empty.
Lin followed the receptionist quietly and they both reached a room with a single futuristic torture chair in it. Another employee came near the chair when he saw them entering the room.
"Now let's get you strapped and check your spiritual power, then we can do the lucky draw."
The receptionist excitedly said to Lin and signalled his colleague to start the machine after properly strapping him.
(An electric shock later)
99
"Hmm, It's 99. What was my previous results? 46, ah okay."
The receptionist looked at the results with disbelief for a few moments before the shock of the results hit him and he exclaimed,
"99! Ninety-Nine! NINETY-NINE!!!"
"Did we make a mistake?"
"Probably?"
"Do it again. Do it again!"
"I am, I am, don't yell or I will punch you."
(Another electric shock later)
A new result came - 49.
"Hmm 49 haa, is this machine faulty?"
"Let's do it again."
(Another shock later)
44!
"..."
"I think_ "
"I will stab your eyes if you do it again." [Lin]
Lin, who had been watching the foolery while bearing the constant headaches of the spiritual power test looked dead at the receptionist while uttering each word. A year of self discipline had allowed him to control his anger to great extents.
And if not for the ensuing migraines from the first test, he would have said this sooner.
"I understand your concern child, but we have to submit the accurate score to the Spirit Pagoda or we might lose our jobs. We can't lose that. It's necessary."
The receptionist tried to explain the situation to him. Yeah, he tried to because Lin wasn't in the mood to listen to him.
"Why not 99? What's the problem with that? [Lin]
"It's 44 now, that's the problem."
"So you know spiritual power is required to fuse with Spirit Rings or Spirit Souls. The higher the Spiritual power, the higher the chances of fusing with higher age soul beasts."
"From low to high, spiritual power is divided into: Spirit Origin, Spirit Connection, Spirit Sea, Spirit Abyss, Spirit Domain, and the fabled Divine Origin. These six realms are quite simple. Everyone is in the Spirit Origin realm when they are born. As for the meaning behind Spirit Origin, it means that it's the single origin everyone starts from."
"To fuse with an hundred year old beast Spirit Soul, a person need an advanced stage Spirit Origin realm."
"Spirit Origin realm can be ranged between level 1 to 50 spiritual power. Levels 15 and below are elementary ranked. Levels 15 to 30 are intermediate ranked. Levels 30 to 45 are advanced rank. Levels 45 to 50 is the peak of Spirit Origin realm."
"Now, your spiritual power showed a magnificent 99 in the first test and 49 in the second one, that's not common and the fact that the fluctuations are so high, maybe this machine is broken. We will go to another one."
"Now as to why? Well we, the spirit Pagoda staff, have to submit the spiritual power data of each Spirit Master that gets a spirit soul from us. That's one of our job. Failing to do so will result in unemployment or even worse."
"Like suppose we recorded 99 spiritual power and the students brought a hundred years old spirit soul but his actual spiritual power was just 19, what do you think would happen? He will either die or become an idiot while we will be executed for attempted murder."
"So, sorry for all this since the broken machine can be regarded as our fault and we will compensate you for it later."
The receptionist patiently said while taking Fan Lin to the next room with an identical machine.
Another strapping and shock session later, a new score was given to both of them.
36.
"Hmmm, it's quite high but accurate, right?"
The receptionist looked at the colleague who operated the spiritual power measurement chair, his eyes asking the authenticity of the test.
The colleague blankly looked at the receptionist and then forwarded the full report to him.
"Hmm, it's accurate."
Then he turned to Lin who had taken the straps by himself and was looking at the receptionist calmly.
"You... Are you fine?"
"My face is like that. Let's go and get the spirit soul." [Lin]
"O-okay."
The receptionist silently took Lin to the spirit soul acquisition draw chamber and began to fill out his form. Our Lin's eyes were making him uncomfortable.
[Name - Fan Lin.
Status - Rank 10 Soul Scholar
Martial soul - Bluesilver Grass
Spiritual power - 36
Age - 7 year old (7 years and 3 months)]
As the receptionist was filling his form, Yinchen Lin was observing the room he was in. Inside of this obviously much larger room, there was a three meter tall, six meter wide gigantic machine. Numerous glowing spheres with a diameter of about one third of a meter could be seen within it. Each and every one of these balls of light were exactly the same.
After filling the rest of the forms, the Spirit Master at the much larger room(lucky draw room) pointed at two buttons on the machine and said, "The green button is to start, the red button is to stop. After stopping, the spirit soul at that location will roll out. You may begin whenever you're ready."
"I want a brief introduction on the spirit souls inside it." [Fan Lin]
Fan Lin said to the Spirit Master, who in turn looked at the receptionist. After the receptionist nodded, the Spirit Master gave a 'brief' introduction that he wanted.
"Our Spirit Pagoda is situated at a small town and hence we have a smaller range of spirit souls that could be offered in the random draw."
"Currently we have 67 spirit souls and only 2 of them are of hundred year old mark, the rest of them are obviously ten year old spirit souls. Also we don't have any defective spirit soul so you can be worry free of that."
"Lastly, don't think that you will get anything worthwhile or good in here as all we have are ordinary artificial spirit souls. That's it."
The Spirit Master deftly explained while glancing at the receptionist who gave a nice thumbs up to him.
"Hm, the green one then." [Fan Lin]
Fan Lin listened to the explanation and quietly pressed the green button without any emotions (ー_ー゛) .
A succession of lights within the machine immediately began to shine, until every single ball was illuminated under the blank gaze of Fan Lin.
The 60 or so spirit souls within the machine slowly began to circulate. Not too long after, it reached a shockingly fast speed, giving off the feeling of being too much for one's eyes to take in.
The spirit souls were all concealed from the outside world by the spirit soul ball. Nothing of the inner contents could be discerned by the eye. The result could only be left up to the will of the Heavens.
[That is not trustworthy either]
"Bang!" The machine stopped circulating and a pure white spirit soul ball fell out of the machine, tumbling into the metal case beside Fan Lin. He hadn't pressed the stop button.
Fan Lin looked at the receptionist as if asking what's the next procedure and he got the answer as well, from the Spirit Master beside him.
"When you press this button and shine the device's light upon the spirit soul ball, your spirit soul will break out of its shell. After releasing the spirit soul, its power will belong to you."
Fan Lin silently pressed the button and engulfed the ball in the light before the Spirit Master could even finish his complete explanation. He was getting impatient of all this slow workings and one-action-situation-completion-continuation-sequence.
At the push of the button, a gentle yellow light was released from the device and fell upon the spirit soul ball. The spirit soul ball reacted by emitting a faint radiance, then slowly turned transparent. The contents within could already be vaguely seen.
The radiance emitted by the spirit soul ball turned white at that moment, and in its center, the brilliance of a shining ring was seen. The spirit soul ball slowly unfurled from the center outwards.
When he saw the white light, the Spirit Master explained from the side. "It's a ten year spirit soul."
"I can see that." [Fan Lin]
He irritating said while looking at the spirit soul.
The quality of a spirit soul played a significant role in a Spirit Master's strength. Fusing with a strong spirit soul would help a Spirit Master upgrade their own power. On the other hand, if they fused with a weak spirit soul, the spirit skill bestowed upon them would be equally weak. A Spirit Master could have a maximum of nine spirit skills. Although it was exceedingly rare for someone to reach nine spirit rings, this just made the lower level spirit skills that much more important. Moreso when the person had a weak martial soul like Bluesilver Grass.
"You have the best spiritual power out of all the Soul Scholars I've had these past few years. Your spiritual power is 36. Remember this number. I'm going to have the machine make a record for you, so you can hand it over once you attend an intermediate Soul Master academy, you will definitely get selected for better academies(despite your martial soul)."
The receptionist also 'consoled' Fan Lin thinking that another bright youth had fallen to the depths of despair.
"Cease that pity in your eyes. What's the next step in this?" [Fan Lin]
Fan Lin asked in a calm voice. He was indeed disappointed, and why wouldn't he be, he had some hope and wishes that have been crushed now but to Fan Lin, this isn't the first time that what he wanted didn't happen and he knew that it definitely wasn't the last as well.
Although he hasn't become accustomed to all this, he still had a higher mentality on accepting what has been done.
As if I have a choice.
As for why he was irritated, it was due to the receptionist and the Spirit Master and their antics.
When he asks the question to the Spirit Master, he looked at the receptionist, when he asked the receptionist, the Spirit Master answers. If he doesn't ask, they would not tell him what to do next.
And it was normal. Quite normal. It's just the three inducing spiritual power tests had made him irritated and impatient at anything, everything that was making a sound.
Now why are we suddenly talking about this🤔 instead of revealing his next spirit soul?
Sooner or later it will be revealed but not now.
Moving on (Forcefully).
"You just need to fuse with it. By the way, what's the spirit soul, I couldn't see since your figure was blocking my angle of view."
The receptionist said to Fan Lin, who in turn showed the spirit soul to him.
It was a lump of Dirt.
(Yeah, it's an actual spirit soul from the actual Legend of the Dragon King book from the actual author.)
"... It's atleast better than the grass snake, green bug and moist mouse. Wanna try again?"
(٥↼_↼)
The receptionist's voice rang as he desperately avoided the eyesight of Fan Lin.
"No money. Pack it and pass me the charges." [Fan Lin]
Fan Lin said while passing the spirit soul.
The receptionist thanked the Spirit Master and followed Fan Lin to the reception.
A lady was at the reception at that moment with a file on her hand. When she saw the receptionist returning with Fan Lin, she passed the bill to him and went away.
The receptionist took the file and gave it to him along with a receipt slip.
"Please pay 28000k Federal credits. We have given you a slight discount due to the spiritual power test problems."
"Inside that file is your updated Spirit Master's ID card and some Spirit Pagoda affiliated Intermediate Spirit Master academies."
"Although the admission time has ended a month ago, you can still get admitted with your conditions. Just choose any one and talk with your Principal or teacher and they will take care of the rest of the procedures."
"Or you can wait your time here and continue your current studies. Your choice."
"You will get a commission or something?" [Fan Lin]
"Yeah."
The receptionist said and Fan Lin paid the amount without any problem(without causing any problems).
He was a nice kid sometimes.
He left the Spirit Pagoda in peace.
...
"Now what?"
He asked himself while strolling through the streets of the town. It was near evening and the night stalls were slowly settling up.
The fragrant smell of roadside stalls were steadily increasing the flow of passersby as the streets started to become busy, and by the time he reached Aunty Zhang's house, the streets were packed with humans; chattering, annoying, fighting, happy and smiling humans.
And yet Fan Lin seemed to fill a certain kind of hate when he saw them like this: enjoying their daily lives with friends.
It was like they were mocking him for being alone.
He couldn't be smiling and happy and full of laughter like others. He needed someone to be with like that. He can't be eating a share sized fries alone which acting like he had friends.
"I can though."
He thought as he stood in front of Aunty Zhang's house/shop. This was his now, as per the will of the Aunty Zhang and his Spirit Master status.
That's the only thing he inherited from her.
'There was nothing else except this as well, she had spent her entire fortune to buy the panacea to prolong her life.'
This was the only fortune that he possessed as the rest of his money was spent on buying his spirit soul. Now once again, he was dirt poor and in debt.
Now is not the time to think about the past though. I have to deal with the important matters first. Let's eat. Something fried and heavy will be good.
Feel free to point out the mistakes or anything you don't understand or any other questions.
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