Chapter 1: The Embarrassing System, Exploding on the Spot
Douluo Continent, Xingluo Empire.
The Soul Master Cemetery of Yuming City is situated on the highest point in the western part of the city. Rough black stone tombstones stand like a silent forest, all pointing toward the leaden, overcast sky.
The wind blows in from the direction of the Mingdou Mountains, carrying the distinctive, musty scent of dust and metal typical of the borderlands. As it sweeps past row after row of stones engraved with names, it emits a sound like a low moan.
The two newest tombstones stood side by side; the stone was still fresh, and the dust in the engravings had not yet been completely washed away by wind and rain.
In front of them, a small figure stood, motionless.
He was so short that the two tombstones loomed over him like two walls.
The black fabric wrapped around him only made him look even more forlorn.
His white hair wasn't the withered white of old age, but rather like fresh snow, like the finest silver threads, softly resting on his small head. In the dim light of the cemetery, it stood out strikingly.
Not far away stood several men clad in the standard armor of the Starro Empire's Eighth Soul Master Corps. Mud stains on their armor had not yet dried, and the metal surfaces still bore scratches and dents from battle; an air of grim determination lingered about them.
They watched the white-haired child in silence, their gazes complex—filled with pity, sorrow, and a hint of barely perceptible astonishment.
One of them moved his lips, as if about to speak to an elderly man beside him, dressed in a worn gray robe with snow-white hair, but in the end, it dissolved into a barely audible sigh.
Old Gray stood hunched over, his face etched with deep, heavy wrinkles that seemed carved by a knife, brimming with sorrow.
As he looked at the young master's startlingly white hair, his heart felt as if it were being crushed by a boulder.
Just a few days ago, the child had not been like this.
When the men of the Eighth Soul Master Corps knocked on the door bearing the grim news, the child had been right before his eyes. Amid a burst of golden light and violent tremors that no one could comprehend, the boy's black hair turned to snow in an instant, his pupils shattered into fragments of gold, and his form and features quietly transformed into the exquisite, otherworldly appearance he now possessed.
The commander of the Eighth Soul Master Corps said this was an anomaly caused by the innate awakening of a martial soul—a rare occurrence throughout history and a sign of genius.
But Uncle Gray could only feel a pang of sorrow; the price was simply too high.
Yinchen stood there, his tiny body held perfectly straight.
The wind ruffled the silver hair on his forehead. In his eyes, which shimmered like scattered gold, there were no tears, nor the bewilderment and helplessness one would expect from a six-year-old child.
Inside them lay only emptiness—a bottomless, deathly silence.
Only he knew what kind of turbulent secrets lay buried beneath that silence.
A few days ago, when the two death notices bearing the Legion's blood-red insignia were handed to him, something that had long held him captive shattered with a thunderous crash.
It wasn't grief. He simply couldn't muster deep sorrow for parents who had been stationed on the front lines for years, returning home only occasionally, their faces now blurred in his memory.
The shock came from elsewhere—it was the shattering of a cognitive barrier, the memories and persona of another world, dormant for six long years, being brutally activated and awakened by this sudden, devastating news.
The final image from his past life crashed into his mind.
The deserted street after overtime, the high beams so blinding they distorted reality, the deafening honks and the screech of tires against the pavement, and… that colossal, mountain-like, irresistible shadow that crushed everything in its path—the Hundred-Ton King.
Ha, so this is what they mean by encountering the Hundred-Ton King on the road: fighting with all your might, yet unable to prevail.
Before the suffocating despair could fully engulf him, a cold, mechanical voice—devoid of any life force—suddenly rang out at the very edge of his consciousness, just as it was about to sink into oblivion:
[Soul compatibility detected… Insufficient energy… Forced reincarnation protocol activated… Target world: Douluo Continent…]
[Soul core entering hibernation… Operating at minimum energy consumption…]
These were the last fragments of memory he retained before his bewildered reincarnation.
And just a few days ago, the shock of that death notice not only awakened his memories of his past life but also stirred the dormant system within him.
Once again, he heard that cold voice:
[Detecting intense emotional stimulation… Absorbing energy… System rebooting…]
[Newbie bonus distributed: Ten consecutive draws.]
Then, a blinding golden light—intense enough to scorch the soul—exploded deep within his consciousness.
One, two, three… five in total.
The golden light was so fierce, carrying a power that seemed capable of burning the very fabric of reality itself, illuminating his still-unstable mental space until it was completely bathed in light.
Immediately afterward, the cold system alert suddenly grew frantic and shrill, like an overloaded machine:
[Error! Error! Energy overflow! Core protocol conflict!]
[…Collapse… Irreversible…]
[…Unbind…]
BOOM!!!
It was as if the Big Bang of the universe's creation had detonated directly within the depths of his soul.
He could even hear the sound of his soul being torn apart—a bone-chilling, shattering crack.
Agonizing pain instantly engulfed everything, a terror a million times worse than being crushed by a hundred-ton behemoth.
He thought he was utterly finished—that awakening meant the end, that his soul would be obliterated, leaving not even a trace behind.
Yet, miraculously, he did not die on the spot.
The destructive energy shockwave unleashed by the system's explosion primarily struck the connection points deep within his soul, violently tearing apart his spiritual realm.
Three golden beams, carrying the torn-away half of his soul, were flung into the depths of the rift, vanishing without a trace.
The other two golden beams, however, fused with the remaining half of his soul as they struggled against the explosion's aftereffects, barely preserving his consciousness and this frail, childlike body.
To the outside world—in the eyes of Gray and the Legion Soul Masters—it appeared as though a blinding golden halo had erupted from Yin Chen without warning. His hair turned white in an instant, and his eyes burst into golden radiance. A surge of soul power far exceeding the scope of a typical martial soul awakening rippled out like waves, startling even several battle-hardened soul masters into instinctively taking a half-step back, their faces etched with horror and disbelief.
They witnessed nothing less than the emergence of a once-in-a-generation genius.
Yet no one knew that in that split second, within this child's fragile body, a cataclysmic transformation had taken place—one so earth-shattering and mind-bending that it defied all understanding.
To lose half his soul yet still stand unscathed was a miracle in itself.
And the fact that Yin Chen didn't faint on the spot was thanks to one of those golden beams.
Now, standing before the cold, hard tombstone, feeling the chill radiating from it seep through the soles of his shoes into his body, Yin Chen's emotions were as tangled as a ball of yarn.
There was a faint sadness over the deaths of his surrogate parents, but more than that, he was seething with resentment toward that pathetic system. Wasn't it just a 10-pull with five gold-tier items? Was it really necessary to explode on the spot?
It was truly the worst system he'd ever seen—no contest.
He thought to himself, finding a silver lining in his misery.
End of this chapter..