Knowing full well that today’s outcome was inevitable, he still tried desperately to train over these past few years, hoping to salvage everything, numbing himself with fantasies.

William Harris tilted his head back, gazing out the window, his eyes gradually becoming hollow and cold.

But this was reality.

He was just a talentless young martial artist.

His bloodline talent was meager.

He possessed none of the nine major talents—martial arts, rune, beast-taming, adventuring, alchemy, commerce, forging, city lord, or priesthood… he had no talent at all.

Boys his age had already easily mastered the basic martial techniques and begun training in elementary and intermediate-to-advanced martial arts runes.

Yet he still couldn’t grasp even a few of the basic martial techniques.

For three years, he had tried every one of the nine professions, but the cruel truth proved that he had no talent in any of them.

He was deeply unwilling!

He wanted to change this mocking fate through hard work, but it all came to nothing.

Even though he barely squeezed into the South Chen Martial Academy, one of the top ten in Luyang Prefecture, he was falling further and further behind the other students.

Sandra Cooper’s cruel yet honest words had torn all his desperate struggles to shreds.

It was all finally over!

The dream and future he had once fought so hard for—rising early, returning late, training day and night—came to an end the day before the Luyang Prefecture Academy assessment.

In the end, he would still be eliminated in the academy assessment, falling back into the mundane world, becoming just another ordinary person among countless others.

William Harris gave a bitter smile.

For the rest of his life, he would find a job in Luyang City, marry a wife or two, have a few children, grow old slowly, and live out this mediocre life—that was his fate.

He was unwilling, but what could he do!

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep up with Sandra Cooper’s pace of growth; he only held her back, and was ultimately resented and betrayed.

William Harris closed his eyes in pain, shutting out all external awareness.

The thunder outside the classroom, the noisy buzzing of the students inside—he could no longer hear any of it.

His consciousness drifted aimlessly in the boundless darkness of his mind. He floated in this sea of darkness, not wanting to wake up.

“Crack—!”

Suddenly, a violent distortion appeared in the chaotic space of William Harris’s mind.

A terrifying force tore open a narrow rift in his sea of consciousness, and from that center, ripples spread outward.

William Harris’s expression was one of shock and terror, feeling as if his mind and soul were about to be ripped apart by this dreadful power.

He stared wide-eyed at the rift that had opened before him.

A colossal book, a thousand feet tall, forcibly wedged itself through the narrow crack in his consciousness.

It all happened in an instant; the rift behind the book quickly closed up again.

“What is this?”

William Harris’s pupils contracted sharply in surprise.

He gazed up at the towering, majestic ancient book that had suddenly forced its way into his sea of consciousness.

The cover of the ancient book was made of a very special material, pale gray in color, like a rock mural, like tortoise shell or beast bone—mysterious, ancient, and full of historical beauty.

The cover was adorned with blazing divine flames and thick frost, mottled with a riot of colors.

Its appearance was abrupt, standing tall and steady as a mountain in William Harris’s boundless sea of consciousness, as if nothing in the world could steal its radiance!

With just one glance, William Harris was deeply captivated by this ancient book.

Even with his untrained eyes, it was obvious that this was a divine book beyond imagination.

But that wasn’t what shocked William Harris the most.

What truly horrified William Harris was that it had clearly suffered extremely violent attacks.

On the dust-mottled cover of the ancient book, a mass of raging divine flames was trying to devour the countless pages—numbering in the billions. But the material of the divine book was extraordinary, so it burned very slowly.

In one corner of the book, a huge block of ice, radiating endless cold, tried to freeze the divine book forever.

A streak of ghostly blue poison, glowing with a strange and sinister light, had carved a deep ravine across the pages.

There were also great swathes of formless underworld water, trying to dissolve the divine book within its ghostly currents.

And the blade of time itself, invisible and unstoppable, ceaselessly tormented the divine book, causing it to decay and rot with each passing day.

All kinds of terrifying divine powers—no less than dozens—were desperately attacking this mysterious ancient book, trying to destroy it.

This ancient book, covered in scars, seemed to have survived the desolation of primordial wilderness, traversed endless time and space, crossed the river of fate, witnessed countless cycles of prosperity and decline, endured countless tribulations, and, having exhausted its last ounce of strength, finally… escaped to this place.

The cover of the book was extremely old and worn, with four massive oracle bone script characters as its title.

Three of the oracle bone characters had become unrecognizable under the burning flames and encroaching ice, leaving only the last character, “殇,” still clearly visible.