Awakening in a World of Suffering
The first sensation was cold. Then, pressure. And finally, a blinding, overwhelming light.
Consciousness coalesced not from memory, but from instinct. The being who had once been Ayush opened his eyes to a world of blurry shapes and muffled sounds. He did not remember a rooftop, a phone, or a story. The knowledge that he had once been someone else was locked away, buried deep beneath the imperative of a newborn's needs. A single word, imbued with divine purpose and whispered by the cosmos at his first breath, imprinted itself onto the core of his soul: Huo Yuhao.
His earliest years in the White Tiger Duke's Mansion were a tapestry woven with threads of gentle love and harsh neglect. The love came from his mother, Huo Yun'er—a woman whose beauty was faded by sorrow but whose eyes held a warmth that could melt the far north's ice. She was his entire world.
The neglect came from everything else. The sprawling, opulent mansion was a gilded cage. To its master, the mighty White Tiger Duke Dai Hao, Huo Yuhao was a stain on his honor, a living reminder of a passion he wished to forget. To the Duchess, he was a target for venomous spite. They lived in a sparse servant's quarter, and while the Duchess could not openly kill them for fear of the Duke's fleeting conscience, she made their existence a quiet hell.
Huo Yuhao grew up quiet, observant, and strangely resilient. The other servant children, influenced by the mansion's disdain, often threw stones or taunts. The blows would sting, the words would bite, but within him, a placid, unyielding depth would swallow the pain. It felt like an ocean inside his chest, vast and calm beneath stormy surfaces. He didn't know this was his Sea of Spirit, preternaturally vast and stabilized by the Black Book's presence.
The First Whisper of Gold
When Huo Yuhao was six, a fever gripped him. As his mother cried and pressed cool cloths to his brow, his consciousness retreated inward, away from the heat. In that inner darkness, he didn't see the Black Book. Instead, he heard a steady, rhythmic tick-tock.
Before his mind's eye, a magnificent Divine Golden Clock materialized. Its gears were made of solidified sunlight, its pendulum a sliver of captured time. It emitted no words, only a profound, calming frequency. As the clock's rhythm synchronized with his frantic heartbeat, the fever's grip broke. The healing was swift, leaving his mother bewildered and grateful to spirits she knew not.
This was his first, subconscious interaction with his inheritance. The Clock, one of the treasures gathered by the future God-King fragment, had acted to preserve its vessel. Huo Yuhao remembered only a strange, golden dream.
The Language of Wind and Water
Other anomalies marked him. He learned to read with preternatural speed, absorbing characters Huo Yun'er taught him as if remembering them. When he sat by the muddy stream behind the servants' quarters to fish—a skill that felt as natural as breathing—he could feel the water's flow. Not just see it, but sense its current, its temperature, the minute vibrations a fish made when it darted near.
One winter day, bullied by a older boy, he had been backed against a wall. Anger, hot and sharp, rose in his throat. Suddenly, the howling wind around them seemed to still for a fraction of a second, curling towards the bully in a gentle, inexplicable push that made him stumble. The boy, spooked, ran off. Huo Yuhao, trembling, looked at his hands. He hadn't touched him.
It was a faint, uncontrolled wisp of the Nine Elements Technique slumbering within the Black Book—an affinity for the elemental world, whispering at the edges of his soul.
The Catalyst of Loss
The fragile peace of their suffering shattered when Huo Yuhao was ten. A sustained campaign of psychological torment by the Duchess, compounded by deliberate deprivation of proper medicine, broke Huo Yun'er's already weakened spirit. She fell ill, a cold turning to pneumonia in their damp room.
Huo Yuhao watched, helpless, as the light in his world dimmed. On her deathbed, she pressed a cold, metallic object into his hand—the Carving Knife. "Your father... left this. It is special. Keep it hidden. Live... live well, my Yuhao."
Her passing was not a gentle sleep. It was a wrenching, violent theft that carved a canyon of grief through Huo Yuhao's soul. The night after her funeral, alone in the crushing silence, the dam holding back his oceanic Sea of Spirit cracked.
Grief, rage, and desolation erupted within him. A piercing headache, centered on his forehead, split his vision. In that moment of extreme emotional agony, a vertical, faintly golden eye etched itself onto his brow for a single second before fading. His own eyes flooded with spiritual light, his vision expanding terrifyingly. He could see the grain in the wooden wall across the room in perfect detail, hear the skittering of a mouse three rooms away. The Spirit Eyes, his destined Martial Soul, had awoken under the baptism of sorrow.
Simultaneously, deep within the locked library of his soul, the Black Book trembled. A single line of text, the title of a technique, glowed on a page: "Sun Moon Star 9 Element Technique - First Level: Foundation." It was an instinct, not a memory—a knowledge that to grow, he must first destroy the old foundations of his weakness.
Escape and the Road North
The mansion had nothing for him now but poison and chains. Using the heightened perception from his awakened Spirit Eyes, he avoided the guards. With the Carving Knife tucked securely in his belt and a small pack holding meager rations, he slipped past the gates on a moonless night. He did not look back.
His goal was singular: the Star Dou Great Forest. It was the nearest source of Spirit Beasts, and he needed a Spirit Ring to become a true Spirit Master, to grasp the first thread of power.
The journey was harsh. He lived off foraged berries and fish caught with an almost supernatural efficiency. The strange affinity for water and wind he'd displayed as a child now served him practically, guiding him to streams and warning him of shifting weather. At night, the rhythmic tick-tock of the Divine Golden Clock would echo in his dreams, steadying his resolve.
One evening, as he roasted a fish over a campfire, a strange group approached. A lively, beautiful girl with a bouncing ponytail and a handsome boy with dark blue hair. They introduced themselves as Tang Ya and Bei Bei. They were friendly, even offering him a place in something called the "Tang Sect."
The name "Tang" sparked something in Huo Yuhao—not a memory, but a deep, instinctual, and violent revulsion. It was a pure, unadulterated hatred that rose from the very core of his being, the indelible mark left by Ayush's fury. He politely, but coldly, refused. Their path was not his. Their association with that name made them part of a world he wanted no part in.
After they left, a new instinct surfaced. The "First Level" of the technique he sensed within him required a catalyst. He focused not on absorbing spirit energy, but on a more fundamental concept: dissolution. Holding a dry leaf, he willed its frail, brittle existence to return to dust. A wisp of spiritual power, tinged with a color he could not see, left his fingertips. The leaf didn't just crumble; it silently disintegrated into a fine, ashen powder.
The First Level of the Sun Moon Star Technique was not about creation, but about reduction—the power to reduce simple, non-living matter to its base essence. He had practiced it on pebbles and dead wood, never on anything of value. He understood this was just the beginning, a key to a door he couldn't yet open.
Weeks after leaving the mansion, a twelve-year-old Huo Yuhao stood at the edge of an immense, ancient forest. The air here thrummed with vital energy. Before him, a weathered wooden sign warned travelers of the dangers within.
This was the Star Dou Great Forest.
He took a deep breath, the gaze of his Spirit Eyes sharp and clear. Somewhere in those depths was his future, his first step on a path away from being a pawn. He adjusted the pack on his back, felt the cool weight of the Carving Knife against his hip, and stepped across the threshold, leaving the world of helpless childhood behind.
The forest shadows swallowed him whole. Somewhere in its luminous heart, a million-year-old consciousness, a colossal Heavenly Dream Iceworm, stirred from its slumber. It had been dreaming of escape, of a worthy partner. A unique, powerful spiritual ripple, carrying the scent of destiny and something wondrously alien—the trace of a Black Book from a higher dimension—had just touched the edges of its perception.
A sleepy, excited thought echoed in the Iceworm's immense mind. "A mental attribute... and such a strange, deep spirit... Perfect."
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