Even the academy’s staff felt what had happened before his eyes unbelievable, “The crystal cracked?”
He looked at the broken pieces of the silver halo on the floor. The glittering metal affirms that what just occurred was not his imaginations.
“Y…your soul power is beyond our measurement crystal,” even though he was the one that told them the results, it felt farfetched to his ears.
The soul potential that Kairos have can be described with one word. Unmeasurable. He had a serious temptation to call out the one who said such ridiculous things as a liar until his brains finally clicked: if he refuted himself, he might receive pension the rest of his life for turning into a lunatic for his work. Fortunately, the temptation passed quickly.
The stronger one’s soul is, the abler the person to absorb the Heavenly Energies and use the elements. This advantage will become more and more distinctive as a person’s cultivation level increases. With this kind of soul power, Kairos can breathe in and out elements.
The ones in the hall are stunned into silence. Things happen around their student president and mostly brilliant beyond belief.
They expect to have gotten used to it by now, but the meaning behind a soul that could break the silver halo, the runes of measurement, still shook them to their core.
“There… there actually is no precedent of this happening… I’ll get someone to inform the principal. The rest of you, don’t stand just there gaping like fishes, we are continuing the aptitude test. Kairos, please wait a moment.”
While there were no previous cases of the crystal cracking during the measurement process, there are still incidents where a crack appeared on it after years of wear and tear.
The staff member stepped forward to repair it, taking a bottle out of his robes and poured its content on the crack over the crystal. Shimmering crystal dust flowed down along with a blue solution, covering the damaged area and neatly reforming a perfect surface in no time at all.
Now all that is left is the silver metal pieces on the ground.
The halos that float around the large gem are actually powerful runes that scan each student that places their palm on the crystal surface and will react powerfully causing trembles and reverberations during the process. It is why the staff member has a bottle of crystal repairing solution on him.
He picked up all the broken runic metals on the ground and expertly placed them in a circle.
Unlike a cracked crystal, the occurrence of the halos breaking is much rarer. Fortunately, because Jones had broken a halo before, the school prepared a strengthening tool and a repair kit just in case.
When Jones first joined the academy, he had surprised all the instructors with his robust constitution. In order to find out the extent of his talent, they had bypassed the standard procedures and dragged him to one of these rooms to test him despite the costs.
On that day, what happened next made even the head instructors rush over to the school, as the red measuring halo for bloodline testing lies broken on the ground.
Since everyone knows that Jones will be taking the test again, they had prepared many things in advance. They just did not expect to use these things before the boy’s turn.
The staff took out the repair kit, a small brown artefact that looked like a fossilised rock, and held it above the broken metal pieces. After infusing his internal energy into the artefact, the fractured pieces flew up into the air, hovering at a close distance with each other.
“Go,” he gestured towards the crystal, and the runes flew around the large gem and re-joint itself. It took merely five minutes to repair everything.
When the crystal is good as new, he motioned Kairos to step forward once again. This time when Kairos infused a bit of his Ki into the gem, the staff member fortified it and the measurement halos with a strengthening artefact. While this causes a great deal of energy exertion on the user of the artefact, it is better than to repair the crystal again from underestimating this mysterious student president.
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Kairos, in order to avoid a another commotion from happening again, did not dare send in pure soul power nor the sentient dragon Ki within his body.
However, the effect of his refined Ki on the crystal is still out of expectation for the young boy.
He did not know that the Ki within him have already been mixed with his soul power and the frost and fire dragons within himself. Even if he wants to hide it, it is difficult to do so.
A beautiful glowing golden orb of light appeared in the black hue of the crystal. The size of the sphere shows that Kairos’ cultivation has reached Entry D rank and the brightness shows how pure his Ki is.
“D ranker?!” the staff looked at him wide-eyed and then checked the chart he has on hand.
On the papers, it definitely says that Kairos was a J ranker before the exam. Although he had already heard the information about the top students of the year have a bunch of students that rushed to E rank during the exam, he had thought that it was just exaggerated rumours.
It is not unthinkable that the boy was mistaken to have a rapid increase in cultivation; he could have found a powerful artefact that allowed him to fight E rankers or used a secret technique. However, the results from the test exceed everyone’s expectation. One must know that the entry into D rank is the first bottleneck on the path of cultivation. It requires a person to skilfully control and project one’s Ki to form a barrier, yet he only took two weeks to achieve this.
After a shocked moment, the staff took a second look and noticed that the glowing orb is rather dull, “As I thought, this boy had rushed his cultivation by too much and left his Ki extremely unrefined. One day he will regret this when later on in his cultivation path he starts to encounter more and more blockades.”
“Well done on reaching D rank. You must have crossed E rank after the exam ended, however, your Ki’s purity is rather poor.
It is vital that you do not rush your cultivation but build up your foundation first. The importance of having a purer Ki is that…”
While he was giving his advice to Kairos, the small golden orb started shimmering, and before everyone’s eyes, it snubbed out.
“Whoa! What happened?”
“Did it malfunctioned?”
“OHH Is the crystal going to crack again?”
It did not slowly dissipate like how it should have after the measurement is done but vanished in an instant. This prompted everyone that is close by to lean forward and try to peek into the dark crystal. They broke ranks and curiously searched for where the orb had gone with their faces close to the black crystal, but no matter how they looked it seemed to have disappeared entirely.
This is something that never happened before.
Just as everyone’s eyes were glued to the crystal, and their faces moving closer for a better view, an intense ring of light radiated outwards.
“ARGHHHH! MAA EYES!”
Golden runic symbols flew out one after another in all directions, flying from where the orb was towards the surface of the crystal and dissipating when it exits the gem.
Symbols after symbols flew out in quick succession, and everyone reeled back.
The testing gem has triggered off something within Kairos’ Ki and was dispersed.
They did not know, but when his energy entered the jewel, it had been scanned thoroughly by the runes within, but because his energy is not Ki but a higher form of energy, it had been unresponsive to the crystal.
The dull glow was due to the jewel trying to figure out the purity of his ‘Ki’.
After multiple unsuccessful attempts, the runes started to increase in power to scan Kairos’ energy over again. This is an automated function for the rare situation where a practitioner’s Ki is incredibly impure, and the glow becomes too dim to be analysed.
However, Kairos’ Ki was an amalgamation of sentient energy-form dragonlings and the source of all martial arts, Origin Energy. When the runes continuously probed it, it was understandably upset, and gave the rude snooping runes something like a backhanded slap, admonishing them back into their place.
Kairos quickly disconnected the power he is infusing and stepped backwards along with the others.
Seeing the odd reactions from the crystal, the staff used the most ancient and effective repair method when dealing with faulty devices. He knocked it repeatedly with his knuckles, hoping that whatever was amiss inside the crystal might be clinked into place with his help.
At the same time, while he is masterfully dealing with the broken equipment, he somehow managed to divide his attention and shot Kairos with questioning eyes. Not many possess such giftedness to be empathic and concerned with someone else while working on such a delicate situation, yet he succeeded.
The staff noticed that Kairos did not seem to know what happened and was ready to most kind-heartedly help the boy recall but at this time, footsteps suddenly pattered into the otherwise silent room.
Like a lion woken from its slumber, he turned his head swiftly towards the one who caused the disturbance. What if his precise repair method had an accident because of such callous disruptive interference?
Unfortunately, he came face to face with Principal Gai who had barged in to see the situation. Instead of praising him for his valiant efforts, the principal wrongly shouted at him, “Are you a caveman?! That crystal is powered by runes. How will knocking on it help?”
“Sir!” the staff shouted and apologetically bowed his head. As a wise man, he knows that the principal wins this time around, and he strategically backed off. Next time, he will prove he was right!
After hearing how Kairos’ soul measurement had cracked the crystal, Gai could not suppress his curiosity and rushed over, “What’s happening here? Why is everyone crowding around the crystal?”