Chapter 104: The First Awakening

“Hey there!”

Just as Liu Tian stepped out the door, he was met head-on by a girl’s punch capable of shattering steel. Her slender arm held a power far beyond what met the eye; with some refined technique, that single blow could easily pierce through a meter-thick piece of steel.

Yet, even with such formidable strength, after breaking through the ever-present wind shield enveloping Liu Tian’s body, the punch lost momentum and landed lightly on his shoulder.

The ambush failed, leaving Xia Mi unsurprised. Over the past three years, although Liu Tian hadn’t specifically trained to increase his strength ceiling, instead allowing it to grow naturally with his body, his mastery of power application and his ability to sustain maximum output had soared.

Especially after mastering the “Serpent” technique—a martial art inspired by the Hell War God—his body continuously evolved toward the immortal, divine realm of the Heavenly Kingdom’s god clan, causing his already exaggerated power flow to expand wildly.

“Haven’t seen you for a while, Senior. Have you missed me?” Xia Mi squinted, lifted her head, and greeted him.

Three years had matured the girl considerably, but Liu Tian had grown even faster.

At 163 centimeters, Xia Mi now had to look up to Liu Tian, who had reached a height of 183 centimeters.

“Hey, hey, hey, you’re growing way too fast!” Before Liu Tian could speak, Xia Mi, as if discovering a new continent, folded her arms behind her back and circled around him. “You’re only sixteen and already 1.8 meters tall. I saw you the day before yesterday, and you were just 175 cm. How did you grow so fast? This can’t go on—Senior Zihang is only 170, and she might just burst if she grows any taller.”

“Cut the dirty jokes,” Liu Tian said, tapping Xia Mi’s head. “Grow to 185—that height suits me better.”

“Eh?” Without questioning Liu Tian’s prediction about his height—knowing he had control over it—Xia Mi asked, “What about that guy Lu Mingfei, who’s always playing the loser chasing the goddess? He looked strange. What secret words did you whisper to him? Can you tell me?”

“I just didn’t want him to watch some eight o’clock soap opera drama, so I told him the truth about the world and about himself,” Liu Tian replied. “But words alone aren’t enough. Light insults don’t pack the punch that reality does, so I split some of my qi and placed it on him, forcibly activating part of his latent power.”

“That’s an astonishing force. I wonder what choice he will make; it should be quite interesting. And don’t call him a loser—he’s just the one who labels and binds himself as such.”

“If we’re just talking about dragon bloodlines, Lu Mingfei’s is purer and of a higher rank than anyone else I’ve seen.”

“Even purer than mine? That’s seriously impressive,” Xia Mi said, taken aback.

Although she had observed Lu Mingfei—the one Liu Tian always regarded highly—no matter how she looked at him, he seemed like a pure loser. Perhaps he had some yet-to-be-awakened dragon blood, but it certainly didn’t match Liu Tian’s evaluation. For context, her own body was composed of fifty percent dragon blood—a level no normal hybrid could reach.

For an unawakened, unblood-raged Lu Mingfei to surpass her, he would have long since transformed into a deadpool-like being, not remained an ordinary person.

Yet Liu Tian’s words carried undeniable conviction—after all, he had never made a wrong judgment.

Could he be an unawakened Dragon King? But that didn’t feel quite right...

Xia Mi was curious but, having better options, she had no plans to intervene and simply ranked Lu Mingfei as her second-to-last choice.

“By the way, I’m about to graduate and might transfer schools. Have you thought about giving me a graduation gift before I leave?” Xia Mi suddenly shook her head. “After all, we’ve spent three years together, and I’ve given you so many top-secret pieces of information.”

“We’ll see...” Liu Tian didn’t close the door on the idea. After all, Xia Mi’s generous sharing of truly classified information, unearthed from ancient ruins, had provided him nearly two hundred source points—something that couldn’t be easily dismissed.

Still, Xia Mi had yet to say what she truly wanted in return, so Liu Tian feigned ignorance: “Speaking of which, you reminded me that Zihang is graduating too. There’s no need to bother with a regular university anymore. Might as well just self-study...”

“Hey, Senior Zihang is way more important than me...” Xia Mi protested.

“Of course...” Liu Tian responded.

...

That feeling...

Lu Mingfei lay face down on the hard wooden desk. After Liu Tian left, he felt as if he had broken through some barrier. He could distinctly hear his heartbeat growing stronger, blood flowing faster, and his previously cold body warming swiftly as fresh nutrients circulated through his veins.

Instinctively, Lu Mingfei closed his eyes, then opened them again. Everything before him blurred, then suddenly, like a burst of light in the darkness, a blazing sun rose, illuminating the entire world.

The world had never been so clear. The difference before and after was like a blind man who had never seen light suddenly witnessing the dawn. Lu Mingfei could clearly perceive the faint ripples in the air, scattered iridescence, light refracted by dust, various scents at his nostrils, and countless sound waves, all organized and delivered clearly to his ears.

“Look, Liu Tian and Xia Mi just left school.”

“I envy them; they come and go as they please.”

“Envy all you want. If you were the school’s top, the killer of competitions, you could too.”

“You forget you’d have to buy this school first...”

“What’s wrong with Lu Mingfei? He suddenly collapsed?”

“Who knows? That unlucky guy probably suffered another blow. I really don’t understand why Tian Da Ren favors him so much...”

With just his hearing, Lu Mingfei could now distinguish everything within a hundred meters: whispered conversations between classmates, ants laboriously crawling on the ground, the competition between predator and prey, tender grasses being bitten and broken at the roots.

All of it—everything—floated vividly in his mind. Adding his sense of smell, he could map everything within that radius without even looking, achieving an effect akin to the divine perception in cultivation tales.

This was highly abnormal—extremely so.

Every moment, every day, humans are bombarded with massive amounts of information, enough to overwhelm the brain and shatter one’s personality. To preserve mental stability, the brain erects barriers, creating subconscious filters that process information vaguely and selectively ignore most of it.

This is the correct approach. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of years of evolution have taught lifeforms: there’s no need to expend energy on things irrelevant to oneself; enough is enough, or one will not withstand the strain.

But Lu Mingfei had shattered that boundary. His abruptly evolved body collected information that was previously inaccessible, submitting countless pieces of data that should have been filtered by his subconscious directly to his conscious mind.

These vast amounts of data, which should have plunged a person into confusion, Lu Mingfei handled effortlessly, as if it were the natural state of things.

Everything—clear, vivid, and unmistakable—appeared in his mind.

Lu Mingfei understood: he was different now.

“Are you alright, Lu Mingfei?” a female voice came to his ear. But even before she spoke, Lu Mingfei recognized her identity through the sound of her footsteps and her scent—his literature club president, the object of his affection.

No—could something so widely known still be called a crush?

It should be called an open secret—the object of his obvious affection: Chen Wenwen...