Although the values remained unchanged, he could clearly feel that the originally dormant "Faith Pool" had produced an extremely faint yet truly real ripple due to the initial recognition and "choice of intervention" by that "person of great destiny" in the far-off distance.
It was like a small pebble tossed into an ancient well; though it failed to stir up waves, it broke the absolute dead silence.
He stuck out his tongue and licked his lips, which were somewhat cracked from dehydration, the corners of his mouth curving into an extremely subtle yet boundlessly chilling arc.
In that arc, there was calculation, there was anticipation, and even more, there was a cold sense of control, as if holding the threads of fate in his palm.
"The perception has been established... The first step, a piece has been played."
He whispered soundlessly, his voice hoarse but carrying a trace of suppressed excitement.
"Come on, Child of Destiny... Tang San! Let me see what kind of... reality your 'trust' can bring me when you witness your 'destined' tragedy and 'possible' glory with your 'own eyes.'"
The young man in the dilapidated shack was named Fu Shiyan. He had changed the name himself; as for his original name, he had long since forgotten it.
He was not a person of this world; his soul came from another universe.
When he first crossed over, he had also harbored expectations and ambitions just like any other transmigrator, believing himself to be the chosen one.
However, reality dealt him the most ruthless blow--Martial Soul awakening: Blue Silver Grass; Innate Soul Power: Level 0.5.
In the Douluo Continent, this practically pronounced a death sentence on his path as a Soul Master.
To make matters worse, the small village he was born in had enjoyed a brief period of prosperity because a Soul Ancestor had once emerged from it. As direct relatives of that Soul Ancestor, his family had also spent a few peaceful years.
But fortune and misfortune are two sides of the same coin. That Soul Ancestor was killed while attempting to murder someone for treasures abroad. His enemy happened to be a ruthless and cruel Fallen Soul Master who actually took his anger out on the village, washing it in blood overnight.
That night, flames soared into the sky, and miserable shrieks echoed everywhere. Fu Shiyan, who was only eight years old at the time, crawled out from the mountain of corpses and sea of blood under his mother's desperate protection, narrowly escaping with his life covered in blood and bone-deep terror.
Since then, fearing pursuit by the enemy, he concealed his identity and lived like a rat in the gutter, struggling to survive at the lowest depths of various major cities.
He had been a beggar, a pickpocket, and had scavenged garbage in the aftermath of fights between Soul Masters, witnessing too much of the ugliness of human nature and the cruelty of the world.
Twenty years of wandering and displacement had ground that once-fanciful transmigrator into a cold-hearted piece of dregs from the bottom of society who would stop at nothing just to survive.
He was twenty-six years old this year. By relying on the crudest meditation and the meager resources he occasionally picked up, his Soul Power had barely reached Level 8.
The Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul was virtually useless, except for allowing him to identify some non-toxic wild vegetables in the wilderness.
He thought his life would rot away just like that.
Until three days ago, when the [Turn Fiction into Reality System] awakened in his mind.
The core of the system was very simple: consume "Faith Points" to transform fabricated "fiction" into "reality."
Faith Points came from other people's "trust" in the fabricated content. The deeper the trust, the more Faith Points provided by those with greater strength or stronger destiny.
And those with great destiny were the most efficient "sources of faith."
The 100 Faith Points from the novice gift pack were pitifully few.
Fabricating a small secret realm to fool ordinary mortals might be enough, but the input-output ratio was too low, and it was extremely easy for Soul Masters to see through.
He needed a gamble with small stakes but a chance for a huge return.
Therefore, he turned his gaze toward the convergence point of this world's destiny--Tang San.
Using the 100 Faith Points, he wove an elaborate lie, a virtual system named the [Life Simulator], and successfully "implanted" it into the mind of Tang San, who was far away in Holy Spirit Village.
And he would become the sole scriptwriter and director of this simulator.
Tang San's "trust" would become his only bargaining chip to reverse his fate.
"Tang San... experience the 'future' I prepared for you well."
Fu Shiyan licked his dry lips, a desperate madness and coldness flickering in his eyes. "Your trust will become the ladder for my ascent!"
On the mountaintop of Holy Spirit Village, Tang San's consciousness was abruptly dragged into a bizarre, kaleidoscopic vortex.
He felt as if he had become a ghost attached to another "self," able to clearly feel all the perceptions and emotions of that "self," yet unable to make any sound or any intervention, only able to passively experience everything happening before his eyes.
(Simulation Begins: Holy Spirit Village, Martial Soul Awakening Ceremony)
He found himself standing in an unfamiliar wooden house, surrounded by a few nervous and excited children from the same village.
A man wearing specific attire, referred to as "Deacon Su Yuntao," was guiding a strange wave of energy.
Next, he felt a wave of heat in the right palm of his "self," and a small, pale-blue blade of grass materialized out of thin air.
'What is this?' The possessing Tang San was filled with wonder. 'A... plant summoned from the body? Is this the special power of this world?'
"Blue Silver Grass, a trash Martial Soul." The deacon's voice carried a customary cold indifference.
Right at that moment, he suddenly felt a completely different throb coming from his "self's" left hand!
A heavy power carrying a certain cold, hard texture condensed in his left palm.
His "gaze" (actually his perception) involuntarily followed his "self's" body downward and "looked" toward his back--through the obstruction of the young body, he vaguely "saw" an extremely blurry, entirely pitch-black hammer-shaped phantom flash and vanish in his left palm, which was then subconsciously clenched tightly by his "self," completely hidden behind his back and under his sleeve. Except for himself (both as an onlooker and his simulated self), no one noticed.
'The left hand! There's another one in the left hand!' The possessing Tang San was severely shaken.
'A person can actually possess two of these... "things" at the same time?' He was completely unable to understand this phenomenon.
Even more confusing things followed one after another.
The deacon took out a crystal ball for his "self" to test. The moment his "self's" hand was placed on it, the crystal ball burst into an extremely dazzling light!
"In... Innate Full Soul Power?!" The deacon's exclamation was filled with disbelief.
'Soul Power? Full Soul Power?' Tang San (the onlooker) became even more bewildered.
'Does it refer to the internal strength of the Mysterious Heaven Skill I practice? The intensity of this light seems to correspond to the level of my internal strength, which just broke through the first tier. It seems that this world, just as that system said, measures the strength of internal power in this manner? It's even divided into levels?'
With a mind full of doubts, his "self" returned to the blacksmith shop. That father of his, who was drunk all day long, merely cast an indifferent glance when he saw the Blue Silver Grass appearing in the right hand, and was about to lie back down. However, the "self" in the simulation said, "I seem to have another Martial Soul!"--
A sudden and drastic change occurred!
Father Tang Hao's originally hunched, decadent body suddenly froze, as if struck by lightning!