After ten minutes of walking, Yuhao and Old Zhou reached the gate of the training ground.
Zhou Cheng explained the purpose of their visit to one of the guards stationed there. The guard motioned them to wait and gave a signal to another guard beside him, who went inside to get the instrument instructor responsible for awakening.
Yuhao also looked around curiously. It's his first time coming to this part of the mansion.
On regular days, only the soldiers or trainees can come near here, and servants are not allowed to come near. Looking around, He could see some soldiers training on one side, others handling some sort of weaponry on another side. One Sergeant explaining things to soldiers about training and practice.
It looked like a military camp, and in a sense it was. White Tiger Duke is the second most powerful person in the Star Luo Empire, second only to the emperor, and he is also the highest military general of the empire.
Due to this, he is allowed to have his own soldiers, and this facility here is one of the training camps for his personal army. Because of this, military discipline is followed, and all civilian facilities in the mansion are kept separate from this training facility.
They waited silently for five minutes before the instructor arrived. He didn't say much, just gave a signal to follow him, and Old Zhou and Yuhao followed suit without complaint. They made their way towards the edge of the training facility. The exit gates of the estate also stood not far away. To one side was the room where all the awakening instrument was stored.
It is essential to keep this kind of facility as it comes into hand during the recruitment phase for new soldiers. Higher-ups here also use it to keep accurate info about the level of all soldiers under them.
Even though a high-level soul master can also perform the awakening and can figure out the approximate soul power just by sensing, it is not sustainable to keep disturbing them for this reason. Using instruments is go to way for all organisations.
The Instructor led Old Zhou and Yuhao inside the room, where they saw a crystal placed on top of some kind of platform. The instructor explained the procedure in a monotonous tone and asked Yuhao to move toward the crystal and place his hand on its surface.
Zhou Cheng looked as Yuhao stepped forward, and suddenly his thoughts went into the past, reminiscing about how he had taken Yuhao's mother, Yun'er, to her martial soul awakening in a similar way. The only difference being it was Yun'er's father who asked him at that time.
Yun'er's father and Zhou Cheng grew up in the same village and were childhood friends. Although Yun'er's parents also had some soul power, it was not enough to reach level ten, and they had no soul rings.
Comparatively, Zhou Cheng was more talented and was able to become a soul master in his teenage years and a soul grandmaster with one white and one yellow soul ring in his middle age. After growing up, he did not remain in the village and moved to the city, where at some point, he started working at duke mansion as a housekeeper.
The white tiger duke household has always been a prosperous noble family, second only to the royal family. And within this family, even servants are required to be soul masters. He was just a soul master with a white ring and not good at fighting. Military life did not suit him, and the salary paid as a housekeeper was good enough for him, so he had no reason to go anywhere else. In this way, he spent his youth serving the duke's family.
Years passed peacefully. During this time, he did not forget his roots and got married to a girl in the village and started his own family. Everything was going great till one day he got the news about the destruction of his village. A calamity has stuck and the whole village was destroyed by an evil soul master. Most of the villagers died, and only a few lucky ones survived.
When he got the news, he rushed to the village, hoping to find some of his family members among the survivors, but he could find no one. All of them had perished in the disaster. Zhou Cheng was left grief-stricken, his heart drowning in sorrow over such a tremendous loss.
Clinging to some hope, he scanned the area once more, trying to find any familiar face and eventually noticed a young girl among the survivors. It was Yun'er, his best friend's daughter.
He asked about her situation, and got an equally ominous answer: she was the only survivor from her family. She escaped death only because she was not present during the attack. Anyone who was still in the village was slaughtered.
She had been playing in the fields far from the village at the time, so she avoided death, but when she returned, all her family was gone.
The remaining survivors have already buried all the bodies in a mass grave with the help of the people of the nearby village. Placing a single tombstone over it as a final memory of their relatives.
Zhou Cheng couldn't even see the faces of his family one last time. Everyone mourned the dead for a week, and then everyone dispersed. Life had to continue regardless of their sorrow.
Yun'er was still a child at the time, and she was his friend's daughter. The only one he could call family anymore, so he decided to take her with him to the duke's mansion instead of leaving her alone in the village.
She was eventually able to become a soul master, and with her connection to Zhou Cheng, she also got the job as a maid and started working at the mansion.
Years passed, and the young girl grew into a gentle, natural beauty.
At some point, the young lord took an interest in Yun'er, and she got pregnant with his child.
Shortly after that, the duke left the mansion, never to return, and Yun'er was left with nothing but hope for his return.
Yun'er truly believed that the young duke's feelings were sincere, but Old Zhou, who had seen much more of the world, understood all too well the usual ways of the nobility.
Even so, all he could do was console her, knowing full well that the young lord would probably never look back at Yun'er ever again. To the young duke, it was merely a passing affair.
Old Zhou was present when Yuhao was born, and he had long considered them as his only family. He even asked Yuhao to call him Grandpa Zhou.
Lost in memory, Old Zhou watched Yuhao moving toward the platform. He had seen the boy grow from an infant to the present day, when he was now taking him for soul awakening, similar to his mother.
He only had one wish, for Yuhao to awaken the Dai family's inherited white tiger martial soul, so that the treatment of mother and son could improve within the mansion.
In Dai family, illegitimate children have no rights. These children are not even granted a surname. They are only acknowledged as being part of the family if they awaken the White Tiger martial soul.
Only after that recognition would the family treat them better and provide resources for their future. Which is why Old Zhou also hopes that Yuhao would possess this martial soul and receive all those benefits.
With each passing year, Yuhao and Yun'er's situation is only getting worse. Zhou Cheng, having served here for decades, is also well aware of the source. But he is powerless to change any of it.
If Yuhao were just an ordinary servant's child, then he would have been treated with indifference, but being the bastard child of the duke, he and his mother have become targets of the official wife's harassment. This is the tragic fate children like Yuhao have.
They get bullied, and everyone just turns a blind eye to it so long as the duchess does not do something irreversible.
The awakening is one of the ways to change all of this.
A white tiger cannot be weak and must not shame its legacy, so anyone who awakens the white tiger martial soul will be given appropriate training so that they can draw out its maximum potential.
Later on, these people are expected to devote all their ability in serving the main family.
Something similar happened a few weeks ago, when another illegitimate child of the duke, Luoli, awakened his martial soul, a mutated white tiger. It caused quite a spectacle at the training ground.
After that, even though the duchess was not satisfied, the living conditions of the Luoli and his mother drastically improved. They were given a new place to live and even received funds for the future education and training of Luoli. Old Zhou also hoped for a similar thing to happen to Yuhao and Yun'er.
He was filled with concern for the future and a glimmer of hope, yet compared to the nervous old man, the child in question remained much more relaxed and carefree.
And the cause of this unusual composure, it was not something anyone could ever guess.
Why worry about it when you already knew what was going to happen next?
The thoughts occupying his mind right now are not awakening, but his actions after the ceremony, his plans, and his life moving ahead.
Yuhao put his hand on the crystal, and as his palm touched its surface, He felt some kind of energy moving through his body, starting from his hand, moving towards his heart, going to his dantian and from there filling his whole body.
Suddenly, his eyes started shining with bright light.
The instructor looked at Yuhao and said in a monotonous tone,
"The body kind of Martial soul, Eyes"
After this, they moved to the next instrument to measure out the soul power. Yuhao once again placed his hand on it, and after checking the machine, the instructor announced the result,
"Innate Soul Power: level five"
He continued, explaining the meaning, "Kid, you can become a soul master. You have quite a good innate soul power level. You will be able to become a Soul Ancestor, and if you work hard, you might even become a Soul King"
"You have a great future ahead of you", said the instructor sincerely.
After years of trial, Innate soul power has become a well-known indication in predicting the maximum cultivation realm a person should be able to reach.
The instructor was correct in congratulating, but Old Zhou thought differently, and he only became worried.
'Why can't it be a white tiger?' he lamented. 'What will happen to Yun'er and Yuhao now?'
'How will they get treated by the duchess without any protection?'
Although he was feeling depressed, he could not make the child worried as well. He still cheered Yuhao and said, "You have great potential, Yuhao; you must work hard to achieve it. Your mother and I believe in you"
Yuhao looked at Old Zhou with the same calm and composed face and nodded.
"Thank You Grandpa Zhou. I won't disappoint you or mom, I'll make you proud."
Old Zhou gently patted Yuhao's head affectionately. Soon after, they left the room and the training grounds. One sorrowful old man, along with a child who wore a calm expression and a light smile.
But the calmer he looked on the surface, the more restless he was within, not so different from the old man beside him. Only the nature of their concern was different.
Inside Yuhao's mind, only one thought was surging like waves in the ocean.
"How? Why did this happen?"
"This is not the future I foresaw."
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