“Sorry, boy, I need to get in!” The oversized teen said with a grin after the judge commanded them to begin, but what he saw was a blur of Alex’s face.

Before he realized what transpired, the giant instinctively grabbed his chest with both hands and fell on his knees.

“No shit?” Reverberated in his ears and only then he realized he could not breathe.

‘No matter how big one is, the solar plexus is still in the middle of their torso.’ Alex said to himself, ‘But what the hell is with that size? He barely moved from the hit!’

Pondering about the physics and the potential of the power of Qi, he walked over to the remaining two lines. In fact, those were not really lines – each only had a couple of boys standing in.

From the very beginning Alex was not worried for this test one bit. It was unlikely anyone below the level of a Qi warrior could match his attack speed, especially considering he kept practicing the Bond’s style from the moment he could walk in additional to the experience from his previous lives. Thus all he had to do was to land a quick and hard enough punch on his opponent once and then repeat the procedure three more times in the following arenas.

Alex only had the last fight left and his next opponent already curiously measured him, but Alex’s concentration was disturbed once more. The fragrance of lilies together with a sound of a panting girl attacked his senses from behind. Obviously the last fight was not as easy for her and she was out of breath, but it only made Alex’s situation worse.

‘A child! No bad thoughts allowed!’ Alex kept repeating to himself while trying to focus on positioning the soul particles in different figures.

It didn’t work very well and the whole situation became incredibly annoying, but when he finally stepped in the last arena, Alex decided that the first thing for him to research in the academy will be how to overcome the side effects of the cultivation that made everyone grow and mature faster than they normally would. If he would’ve had the hormonal setting of an eight year old, he wouldn’t have cared one bit for her or any other girl.

Fortunately the last opponent fell as easy as the previous three and since he was of a smaller stature compared to the giant from earlier, the guy elegantly landed outside the arena, loosing his consciousness. Unfortunately he had to bear the stress Alex accumulated while trying to resist the hormonal storms, but luckily the palm strike was not lethal.

The second part of the exam was the Qi aptitude test. This was something new to Alex and he curiously observed how a well trained boy, few years older than him, pressed his palms on a two and a half meter tall black stone slate engraved with strange symbol formations and channeled his Qi into it.

The stone slowly began to change its color and turned in to blood red color, then brighter red that transformed into purple. Afterwards the transformation of colors slowed down and in the end the stone turned dark blue and after another minute dimmed down transforming back in the original black color.

“Naji Nagi, blue! Next!” Judge ruled and the boy with an unhappy expression stepped aside.

This was nothing new to the present crowd, in fact, this could be considered quite a decent result, therefore an officer in imperial uniform immediately approached him to explain his future prospects. Even if he didn’t get into the academy, he had a decent talent.

Alex knew that in order to get accepted, one had to turn the stone greenish at least. All the lucky ones who managed to achieve that, passed the test and stood not too far away with wide and happy smiles on their faces. A bit further stood Jamil with his squad of nobles and by their theatrical and exaggerated importance it was obvious they had passed as well. The ‘chosen’ ones, whose trikutas were already open, stood even further, ignoring everyone and pretending none of this had anything to do with them. They were already officially saints and one could not blame them for feeling superior even to those who theoretically became their school mates.

“Name?” Judge’s call brought Alex back to reality.

“Alex Collins.” He replied and observed the old man sitting at the desk more closely.

He was dressed in a gray linen robe with academy’s symbol embroidered in front. For some reason Alex felt a sense of familiarity with him, but since below the crudely plated straw hat he couldn’t see the old man’s face, there was no telling if he had met him before.

“Mhm.” Old man nodded and wrote Alex’s name down, “Where are you from, Alex?”

“Londsted.” He immediately gave the prepared answer.

Londsted was a city of a similar size to Haldenburg, but on the north western side of the continent. It was occupied by the empire more than fifteen years ago and was a politically more appropriate origin to officially come from.

“Age?” The judge asked.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Twelve.” Was the Alex’s answer.

There was no way he would tell his actual age and even then probably no one would believe him. Even claiming he was twelve most likely put him as one of the youngest participants who came this far. And judge’s next words confirmed it.

“Not bad, not bad! You’ve got a talent! Even if you fail the next part, don’t be discouraged! Empire is in need for talented young people like you!”

‘Ye, my dream is to become empire’s tool and work myself to death expanding the emperor’s influence!’ Alex inwardly laughed.

“Now, stand over there!” Judge patiently instructed and pointed at the spot by the stone slate, “Put both your palms on the slate and channel in it your Qi using the most powerful technique you know. It’s harmless, so no need to worry.”

‘What a weird man.’ Alex thought to himself while following the instructions, ‘He already had to go over the same sh*t with several hundred candidates, but neither he sounds tired nor annoyed.’

But then the sweet scent of lilies assaulted his senses once again. Mathilda’s twin apparently won her last fight and also joined the finalists making Alex’s life miserable again.

‘No, no, no!’ He inwardly shouted, ‘Not again!’

Earlier he already got distracted because of her and now she showed up at the most crucial moment almost as if spiting him.

Alex took a deep breath and put both his palms on the stone slate. He closed his eyes and with a thick stream of Qi let all the frustration out. Probably he got a bit pissed off, thus he didn’t hold back at all and the exercise even felt soothing.

The seven soul particles happily danced in front of Alex not caring for his problems, at first chaotically, but then slowly positioned themselves in a regular heptagram. Realizing he managed to calm down, Alex inwardly sighed in relief and almost stopped, when he noticed three irregular spots simultaneously becoming clearer in the middle of the heptagram. Those were definitely soul particles! And three at the same time!

A wave of joy overtook him, but then suddenly a realization stuck as well – every time he found a new soul particle, he lost himself in meditation for at least a couple of days! Slightly panicked, Alex forced himself to open eyes, but what he saw made him sigh in relief – he still stood at the stone slate, it was still a middle of the day and the people around him were the same, except they were looking at him a bit strange – even the young saints stared at him loosing their nonchalant bearing.

“How did you do it?” The old judge broke the silence.

“Sorry, what?” Alex asked in confusion.

He barely understood where he was, to not speak about what transpired while he discovered his soul particles.

“You didn’t notice?” Judge asked in surprise.

“I’m sorry! Did I take too long? I focused on my soul particles and because of that I sometimes loose the track of time.” Alex honestly explained.

“Oh, really?! Good, good, good!” The judge said ‘good’ three times while happily nodding, “Not bad at all, Alex Collins from Londsted.”

“The stone is obviously broken from the overuse!” Suddenly the boy, who took the test before Alex, shouted, “Or he cheated!”

“Young man, watch your tone!” The judge’s tone immediately became cold.

“Sir, I don’t mean any disrespect, but he already cheated during the fights!” The boy continued, “I watched him fight the last two matches – there was no way a small kid like him could win with one punch. Everyone could knock him down with their left hand! The fights were obviously prearranged!”

He barely managed to finish the last sentence when the boy’s eyes rolled back and he fainted on the spot.

“Anyone else has a problem?” The judge asked in a loud voice and everyone immediately realized that this old man was actually a saint.

He took off his crude straw hat and people could clearly see his widely opened trikuta.

Seeing the crowd calming down, the judge said, “When he wakes up, banish him and his family from Tabulan!”

‘Small world!’ Alex inwardly grinned.

Only after the judge took off the hat, Alex understood why he previously felt familiar – it was the fist saint he met in this world – Wazir! It was also one of his father’s killers, but, of course, Alex didn’t care about that. Turns out that after few years of service in Haldenburg, the old man was transferred to the academy. Maybe it was a promotion or a demotion, or maybe it was because of his advanced age, but it wasn’t Alex’s business. From the four saints he had known in this life, this was the only one with a considerable amount of common sense and it could become handy to be familiar with someone in the academy. Obviously he didn’t intend to reveal his identity, but it is always good to know the ‘right people’.

Soon after the boy fainted, few guards rushed over and brought him away and the incident was over. There was no one present who lacked sanity and wanted to pick a fight with a saint, a member of the academy at that.

“Alright! Alex Collins, white. You should join the others over there and wait until we are finished. Should not take longer than an hour, maybe two.” Wazir said in his previously calm tone and then put the straw hat back on, “Next!”

“Hmph! Showoff!” Alex heard a girls voice snorting from behind as he left, but could only smile and shake his head.

He still had no clue what happened, but apparently he passed.

“Nabia Poram from Tabulan!” Alex heard the girl impatiently introducing herself even though the judge didn’t ask.

‘That’s a funny name!’ Alex thought to himself and proceeded towards Jamil who energetically waved inviting him over, ‘And kind of sounds pretty.’

“How the hell did you do that?” Alex’s thoughts were interrupted the moment he approached the ‘second most important group’.

Jamil was surrounded by the nobles Alex had met during the previous month as well as a dozen other boys and girls with bulging spots on their foreheads. All of them seemed to be interested to hear Alex’s answer.

“Could you explain what exactly happened? I had my eyes closed the whole time and didn’t notice anything.” Alex asked in exasperation.

“You dumbass!” Jamil punched his shoulder, “You got ‘white’! The best a couple of those guys with open trikutas got was golden! What trick did … oh, no! Is it really broken? Look!”