"Now, students, please come up one by one, starting from the front."
Amidst the gaze of the crowd, the first student stepped onto the stage. He stared at this gigantic comet, and then... Wait, what was he supposed to do next?
Elder Gu caught the host's eye, and the host, understanding immediately, handed the microphone over to him.
"Students, reach your hand into the fissures of this comet. If you can awaken your power, it will resonate with you."
The first student extended his hand deep into the unfathomable comet. In full view of everyone... and then nothing happened at all.
Elder Gu hurriedly tried to smooth things over: "After all, awakening this kind of power is extremely difficult. Don't be discouraged, young man. You're simply unsuited for this, which doesn't mean you won't excel at other things."
The first student nodded dejectedly, bowed to Elder Gu, and left the scene.
"Now... second contestant, step up!"
……
"Next."
……
"Next."
……
More and more students stepped onto the stage full of confidence to try their hand, only to leave the scene crestfallen after their attempts bore no fruit.
At first, Elder Gu offered words of encouragement to the disappointed students, but as it went on, he simply stopped talking altogether and handed the microphone back to the host.
The crowd off-stage began to whisper among themselves, their initial reverence for the comet gradually turning into suspicion.
"Do you guys think this comet can really awaken people's powers?"
"Maybe it was possible before, but right now it looks hopeless."
"Is it possible this comet is fake? Just some random rock they picked up?"
"You know, now that you mention it, it does look more and more like an ordinary rock."
Not only did the students off-stage start to harbor doubts, but even the elders on the stage began whispering amongst themselves.
Elder Gu sat down on a stool beside the stage, closing his eyes as if waiting for something.
He knew that someone was needed now to break this deadlock.
As long as one person succeeded, all doubts would shatter on their own.
Right at that moment, a young man stepped onto the stage. Without waiting for the host to speak, he snatched the microphone away:
"Everyone, stop arguing. I am Moran from the first year."
A sudden new voice interrupted the murmuring crowd.
"Today, I'm here to tell you all that this stone is real, and the power it grants is real, too."
"As for why? Next, I will use my own strength to prove it!"
Elder Gu opened his eyes, a trace of nostalgia flashing through them.
The crowd stopped guessing. There were no skeptical jeers as one might have imagined; the people off-stage were genuinely filled with anticipation, hoping he would succeed.
Moran seemed quite satisfied with the audience's reaction. He walked over to the comet and, just like those who had failed before him, thrust his hand into it.
Everyone held their breath, waiting for the comet's response.
One second, two seconds...
Moran awkwardly turned his head and asked the host:
"Is this thing broken?"
The moment the words left his mouth, a dazzling red light burst forth across the surface of the comet, so bright that the crowd had to close their eyes.
Moran closed his eyes as well. Suddenly, he felt as if a pair of hands were forcing his eyelids open, and two rays of red light slipped through the gaps into his eyes.
The red light faded, and the crowd looked toward the stage: the comet had returned to its original pitch-black color, while the man from a moment ago was clutching both of his eyes with his hands, rolling back and forth across the stage.
"Ah—my eyes, my eyes—!"
His pig-slaughtering screams echoed throughout the entire venue, chilling everyone to the bone and drowning out the sound of the microphone's speakers by a wide margin.
For a moment, only Moran's cries remained on the stage. The people watched quietly as he rolled around up there, unsure of what they ought to do.
It was the host who reacted first. He ran up to Elder Gu and whispered anxiously:
"Elder? What should we do?"
Elder Gu acted as though he hadn't heard a single groan coming from the stage at all. He slowly opened his eyes, stood up, and walked over to the collapsed Moran. With a snap of his fingers, Moran's screams instantly stopped.
The host looked at him with admiration: "Elder Gu truly possesses boundless divine powers, stopping him with just a snap of your fingers."
"Not really. I just found him a bit noisy."
The host: "……"
The audience and elders who overheard the conversation through the microphone: "……"
Elder Gu seemed to realize how that sounded. He coughed: "There is bound to be pain during the process of awakening abilities. He simply had to endure it himself."
A sudden realization dawned on the crowd, and their gazes toward the rolling Moran shifted from admiration to sympathy.
Even without hearing the sound, people could tell from his continuous thrashing on stage that he was undergoing inhuman agony.
After who knows how long, Moran finally stopped rolling over. The burly man who had moved the comet earlier helped him up, only to find him foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolling back in circles, completely unconscious.
People noticed that his rolling eyeballs had long since lost any trace of human color, turning a blood-red hue.
Amidst the astonished gazes of the crowd, Elder Gu slapped Moran across the face.
Moran snapped out of his faint and looked dazedly at the person before him, though his vision was still somewhat blurry, making it hard to make out who it was.
The man in front of him opened his arms wide, the sunlight casting a dazzling halo above his head.
"Child, you've come home."
"Holy shit!" Moran instinctively shook off the burly man's grip, fell backward onto the stage, and pointed in terror at the person before him:
"You, you... you're Elder Gu?!"
Moran looked around, only to realize he was still on stage, while the audience was staring at him with the expressions one might reserve for an idiot.
Fortunately, Moran recovered his wits immediately. He sprang to his feet, glaring with a pair of bloodshot eyes:
"Hahaha, I've made it, folks."
The crowd felt a mixture of envy and speechlessness, especially those who had failed earlier. *Could it be,* they wondered, *that I just wasn't foolish enough? Or perhaps not stupid enough?*
With that, Elder Gu returned to the stool he had been sitting on earlier and waved a hand: "Continue."
……
"Look over there, Yuanchu, the first Awakened has appeared." Han Xinnian pointed a finger at Moran, who was strutting down to show off to the crowd, while using her other hand to shove the sleeping Yuanchu.
That's right, Yuanchu had fallen asleep. He had been watching the people go up to touch the comet just fine, but their successive failures had set him off on a chain of yawns, and before long, his head had dropped against the stool of the person in front of him, snoring softly.
"Huh? Is it my turn?" Yuanchu raised his head groggily, looking blankly at the excited girl.
"No, silly. Someone has awakened."
"Oh, then I'll sleep a bit longer." Yuanchu lowered his head again and rebooted his sleep mode.
Someone else awakening was of no consequence to Yuanchu, after all—it wasn't like *he* was the one awakening.
"Hmph, I should've never covered your ears earlier; I should've let you listen to those ghost-like screams properly," Han Xinnian said with a dissatisfied pout, though there was nothing she could do about it.
……
"That's right, those eyes of mine... At the time, the red light rushed right at my face and *swoosh*, it went right in!" Behind the stage, Moran was recounting the tale enthusiastically to those around him.
"Why do you say it rushed at your face? Can light actually rush at someone?" One person nearby cautiously interjected.
"Aiyo, that's not important, not important at all. What matters is that these eyes of mine..." Moran rambled on, completely oblivious to the fact that his spittle was flying onto other people's faces.
"Didn't you roll around on the stage and howl like a pig, though?" One of the boys wearing glasses timidly raised his hand.
Moran almost lost his composure: "What do you know? How do you expect to awaken your power without experiencing pain? My experience was one of a kind—"
"Hey look, the comet is glowing green," one of the people in front pointed at the comet.
Moran followed the direction of the finger and saw, sure enough, another person had awakened.
Moran felt his face burning with a stinging heat.