Knowing that they have a strenuous day ahead, the rest returned right after Snow.

The night went by uneventful, and early next morning they rise to the fresh cool breeze. The smell of spring is already heavy in the air, reminding them of summer break is soon to start.

Before the long break, the current progress of each student must be measured, and the six of them quickly dressed up and gathered on the ground floor. Their tiny pets have all been taken to play at the training grounds by Aisa. There’s no fear of them meeting any danger when they are taken care of by a primordial dragon.

Kairos and Jim’s contract beasts are still in the egg form, so they have no choice but to keep it in their pouches until the condition is right for the infants to hatch. Before meeting an ideal environment, those crystallised eggs will only continue remaining in stasis.

To take their aptitude test, the group have to head over to another section of the school.

After a short moment’s walk, the boys came to a large and short building, and in front of its entrance stood a great many people.

This is the assessment hall where all the students have to go to before each year’s holidays, and because of this, not only those that had graduated twelve years old classes with Kairos are here but the rest of the school as well.

It took a while for everyone to enter the building, but they are quickly separated into their age groups. As they stood at attention, a senior staff member came by to address the crowd.

“Quiet down everyone. We will begin the yearly aptitude test soon.

Just as the previous years, let us congratulate our new second-year classmates for passing their exams!”

Rowdy applause sounded in the hall after the staff member repeated his yearly speech. Unlike the previous years, however, the applause this time was loud and sincere. It seems that the crystal recording of the final year exam has been seen by most of them already, and their excitement has not yet died down.

“Alright, alright, we don’t have the time. Let’s try to finish this aptitude test by three days this time.

All student presidents, please ready your guys for your appropriate tests.”

Recently Kairos has become more aware of his role as leader. The uneasiness he had when taking command just a month ago has dissipated. What replaced it is a sense of confidence when leading his friends.

Fortunately, because he considers everyone that chose to follow him as his friends, he avoided the trap of thinking that the group’s success is his individual effort and this made him even more respected than before.

Even now with his elevated status as their student president, he did not act as if he is a head taller than the others.

Kairos was definitely elated at his recent successes, and being the centre of attention in the school has really made him and his friends proud of themselves, but every time they thought of Calculus, their eagerness calms down.

Seeing how the Devilheart’s heir acted high and mighty all the time caused all of them to be nauseous and helped them avoid becoming the same kind of person with a fervour.

Within the assessment hall, four rooms are prepared for the students of each age group.

The student here is those that have moved up a grade. Those that failed had to find a living on their own while those who graduated from their final years were likely to be snatched by the Empire’s ministration body, the combat sector, or high-levels from different factions.

Being in this place means that they are still getting tested.

Kairos gathered his group with a single word. With half of the now-second year students under his command in a life and death situation just a week ago, they are able to organise themselves much better than even the seniors.

Although the way they assembled look unstructured, the leaders of the group are all pushed to stand at the front. This means that Luciette, Alucard, Jones, the four captains of Snowdrifts, Kairos’ four brothers, George and even Calculus are standing right at the front.

The arrogant young noble’s face is incredible to watch as he held his unhappiness in check while obeying Kairos’ command. He looked like he just swallowed a fly as he stiffly falls in line with the others.

Unlike what he thought, however, Kairos made no attempt to mock him and simply ensured that everyone is in organised rows and ready for the coming test.

“Let’s go,” he said plainly, then brought everyone towards the second years’ testing room.

A colossal crystal, as large as a boulder, floating in the middle was the first thing that caught their eyes when they entered. It was a wide and spacious place, large enough to hold all of them at once with less than half the room filled.

The crystal’s hue is entirely black, with a shimmering reflective surface, and three wrought metal halos of red, silver & gold colour that spins around it hovering above the ground.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The metal halos did not touch the crystal nor each other, but continue to spin slowly round and round. When examined carefully, they’ll discover that the rings were formed from connected runic words which power the aptitude crystal.

A junior staff member stood next to it waiting for the students to spread across the room, then with a loud and monotonous voice he spoke,

“Students. You will hereby be tested your latent abilities first.

Keep in mind, the results will reflect your future potential.

Thereafter, we will confirm your current cultivation with this same crystal.

Finally, you will enter the small room adjacent to this for your combat ability test.

Once finished you have to wait for everyone before going off. Your student president will address all of you in preparation for next year.

Right now, will the student president and his group if he have any, come forth for the test first?”

Following the staff’s instruction, Kairos, his group of brothers, Jones and the four captains - Long, Silver, John and Sasha - all went close to the black crystal.

Giving Kairos an indication to start, the young boy went forward and placed his palm on the black crystal.

Sensing his touch, the halos seemingly came alive, avoiding his arm and started to spin away from him.

Extracted from his hand, a small strand of light to measure his latent abilities entered the crystal. At that short moment, Kairos felt a tiny amount of his vitality went down, and the skin of his palm felt raw and stinging.

The strand of light split into three to measure Kairos’ talent, the red coloured light for measuring bloodline, silver for measuring one’s soul, and gold for measuring one’s cultivation talent (Dao).

Almost immediately, the red strand of light dulled and dissipated.

“Bloodline, underwhelming,” the staff announced with a bored tone, but the response from the entire student body was huge as they gasped with shock.

“Underwhelming?”

“What? Isn’t the lowest possible result ‘extremely poor’?”

“Maybe he meant to say overwhelming?”

Having a good bloodline means that the person has a stronger body, inherited from his or her family, and sometimes even unique traits or gifts. It measures the physical talents from one’s lineage, including strength, stamina, vitality, and also how easy it is for these aspects to improve.

For Kairos, these aspects were all detected to be terrible. If he were not a cultivator on the path of Dao, with his kind of frail body, even farming would be too hard of a work for him.

Compared to the usual first years who passed the final examination – even those that are walking the scholarly career path – Kairos’ bloodline is much too inferior. In other words, it shouldn’t be possible for him to be here, much less become the student leader.

While the others were noisily discussing, the golden strand started glowing powerfully.

It formed into a beautiful symbol and caused the entire crystal to tremble and start humming divine-sounding song.

Its tune resonated with the energy that is in the air, then the symbol glowed extremely brightly before disappearing like the red strand did previously.

“Peak Mortal’s Way! H…HEAVENLY PATH!!” the staff roared with excitement after seeing the brightness and the symbol. The usual patterns that appear are either the ancient character for ‘Righteous faction’ or Demonic faction’, but this time, there was only one word: Heavenly.

In Gaia, it is generally acknowledged that there are three aspects which largely determines how quickly and how far a person can cultivate, they are the physical, mental and soul aspects.

The mental aspect is, of course, the Heavenly Path, and its brightness shows how advanced his Dao is.

Those who practised the Origin methods had unknowingly tread onto a legendary path of cultivation. Most practitioners walk the way of the demonists or the righteous. The former cultivate a mentality of self-fulfilment, often honing one’s murderous aura, seductive charms, or other techniques that were commonly labelled as sinister; sometimes, even reprehensible and will be hunted down by the righteous faction once discovered.

The latter cultivates a mentality of correctness and virtue, often refining one’s fortitude, vigour, and spirit. Although, at the same time, these practitioners are often labelled as hypocrites and disdained by the Demonists.

The final one, the Heavenly Path, was instead so rare that their numbers could never form a faction on their own and were sometimes thought to be myths. Unfortunately, because they did not know anything about it, there was nothing to prevent the crystal from revealing it publically.

When the students heard it, everyone uniformly has the same expression on their faces: Wide-eyed and mouth agape.

“Heavenly path?”

“The legendary Dao which the founder of Saint Empire walked?”

“THAT founder? King of the humans, Fuxi? I didn’t know he was a Heavenly Path cultivator… are you sure Kairos is also one? I mean, we’re comparing with the great Human King here.”

“There’s no doubt about that! It’s fitting how someone with an underwhelming bloodline could be this strong if he is on the Heavenly Path.”

The noise redoubled immediately, their discussions on his terrible bloodline talents was replaced by the implications of a Heavenly Path cultivator.

No matter the demonists or the righteous, those that allowed powerful negative emotions to form in their Dao Hearts will fall away from their path of cultivation and delve into madness, but for someone who is on the Heavenly path they are able to understand the heaven’s way and treads more firmly.

In the past, Jones suffered a terrible shock when his father died, and for the longest time, he was trapped between his anger and grief.

While practitioners tend to have particularly strong resolve, they are likewise rather obstinate. This negative emotion that was buried in his heart before he became a martial artist slows his cultivation progress to a crawl. If not for his ridiculous talent that defied all odds, he wouldn’t have stood at the top of the first years in cultivation.

On the other hand, if Kairos or other Heavenly Path cultivators faced the same situation, they could easily dispel it.

Negative emotions such as those that Jones faced would have easily been dispelled if Kairos or any of his brothers were in his shoes. This resolute Dao is just one of the advantages of being on the Heavenly path.

While the students were in heated discussions, the final, silvery strand, started twisting and turning within the crystal, trying to become a symbol of its own to signal the strength of his soul.

The practitioner’s soul potency is incredibly essential. While it is possible to be improved, it is the most challenging thing for a person to train, and in fact, many consider cultivating their soul an impossibility. At least within Saint Empire, the majority deems soul strength a part of one’s latent talent.

The silver strand started spreading throughout the crystal from within, its light began to envelop its surrounding as the colour slowly expands. Within a few seconds, the silver strand has converted the entire floating crystal from pure black to pure silver.

It glowed majestically until a crack suddenly fissured across the length of the hulking gem, from top to bottom, and right afterwards, the silver halo violently broke apart into pieces, shattering onto the ground.

The crystal returned to its original black colour and floated brokenly.