Fang Xiong was rudely awakened by a big bump and a sudden, sharp stop.

If it wasn't for his fast reflexes, he's have fallen onto the ground. Angry at this happening, he kicked his carriage door open and got ready to shout. His shout, however, was stuck in his throat as he looked around him.

The mercenaries were all looking at him with curiosity and so were the other people in the busy street.

Fang Xiong reddened slightly and collected himself before looking at one of the mercenaries next to him, a tall athletic woman, "Hey, you! Why have we stopped?" seeming to not hear the disrespectful tone in his voice, the woman looked happy and walked up to him.

"Young Master, we're in the city that houses the academy and we have to stop as there's no room for any more carriages," the woman seemed happy to get the chance to talk to Fang Xiong but he just ignored her after getting the information he needed.

Figuring he'd have to make the rest of the way on foot, Fang Xiong got back in his carriage and picked up his suitcases before walking out of it again and beginning to walk off.

Of course, he was stopped by multiple of the mercenaries around him.

"Young Master, you have to wait for us to move with you!" "Young Master, you can't go on your own!" and "Young Master, don't go!" were said multiple times by the people around him but Fang Xiong just disregarded them and pretty much told them to go back and deal with the carriages.

This peeved more than a few of them off but the women of the mercenaries seemed too struck by his appearance to see his disrespectful attitude.

Fang Xiong didn't know this as he didn't care whether he was handsome or not.

He felt a man should be judged not on his face but on his power, so he rarely cared about how he looked.

Despite his lack of care, some people in the world would curse him for it as he had an incredibly handsome face. Sharp eyebrows and fierce eyes, along with a chiseled jawline and a straight nose, Fang Xiong looked incredibly handsome in a masculine way. Well, at least compared to the pretty boys one would usually see in a Chinese novel.

Fang Xiong kept walking in a straight line for a while before realizing one big fact; he didn't know where he was going.

He looked about for a while, looking for crowds of people around his age but in the end, he found absolutely nothing. He refused to ask for directions, his pride not allowing him to admit he'd make a mistake by walking off on his own.

So instead of asking, he wandered about the city, using his highly keen sense of hearing to listen in on other people's conversations.

Most of the conversations were complete babble. A "What do you want to eat tonight?" there and a "Want to go out tonight?" here, Fang Xiong's pride was slowly getting whittled down and that alone annoyed him to no end.

But the night is darkest just before dawn and upon a chance, Fang Xiong heard someone speak about the academy he was going to get tested at, "Quickly, Yu'er, we're gonna be late for the tests at Guaiwu Academy, so hurry up!" a masculine but soft voice hurriedly spoke to someone else within earshot of Fang Xiong causing his head to shoot in that direction.

Who he saw were two...peculiar people. The person he'd heard speaking was a teenage boy around 15 years old with emerald green hair and eyes, with an absolutely handsome face which looked slightly androgynous. He wasn't that tall at around 174cm and he looked quite slender and sleek.

"Calm down, Brother Yun, we've got plenty of time!" Fang Xiong looked toward the higher-pitched voice next to the green-haired teen as he heard it. He saw a purple-haired girl which cat-ears slightly twitching on her head, he looked down her beautiful but mischievious-looking face and saw that she had ice-blue eyes with slightly vertical pupils.

As he was looking at her, he saw her eyes flick towards his direction. Fang Xiong instantly knew he'd been discovered as he eyes flickered with a playful flame, "Ufufufu, look Brother Yun, someone's looking over at us!" her green-haired companion looked over to where she was pointing and saw Fang Xiong's utterly imposing figure, he cocked his head in curiosity while the girl waved Fang Xiong over, "Come over here so we can talk! You obviously want to talk if you keep looking at us like that!"

Fang Xiong wondered how he was staring 'like that' but he knew he'd been spotted and they invited him over so he could take it that his pride had been kept. He slowly walked over to the weird pair of people.

He did think about just walking away but he thought that'd waste a perfectly good chance at knowing where to go to get to the academy.

When he appeared in front of him, the two people could finally get a good look at him.

The teen boy had to look up slightly at Fang Xiong and couldn't help but shake his head at the youthful face on the body of muscles, he seemed like he was too young to have these muscles but he still had them anyway. The girl didn't seem that bothered by Fang Xiong's appearance, she was more curious about who the big guy was.

"So, why were you staring at us, big guy?" the purple-haired girl looked up at him with a wicked smile on her face. Fang Xiong thought about how to answer her question without embarrassing himself.

"I'm going to Guaiwu Academy myself and I haven't seen any other people on about it, so when I heard him," Fang Xiong nodded his head toward the green-haired teen, "Talk about you two going to it, I was curious about the two of you."

The boy and girl seemed to think this was an acceptable answer and both gave him a nod before the girl started speaking again, "Oh, so that's how it is? I just thought you were stunned by my beauty~" she put a hand underneath her chin, seeming to support it and flashed a beautiful smile at Fang Xiong.

Fang Xiong deadpan expression at her so-called beauty caused her to flinch back a little, "Woah, it was a joke, you're supposed to laugh, big guy," as if she remembered something and wanted this awkwardness to pass, she quickly carried on speaking, "Anyway! My name is Shi Yu, what's your name, big guy?"

Seeing her unused to his peculiar behavior, Fang Xiong cracked a small grin before answer, "My name's Fang Xiong," he turned tot he green-haired boy, "What's your name?"

The boy seemed glad to finally be involved in the conversation and quickly did a mock bow and introduced himself, "My name's Cuilong Yun, I'm unfortunate enough to be Yu'er's childhood friend," Cuilong Yun put his hand out for Fang Xiong to shake.

Seeing that the man was friendly enough and didn't seem like an ass, Fang Xiong reciprocated the handshake.

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"So, when are you two heading to the academy? The tests are gonna start soon and I wanna do them quickly," Fang Xiong couldn't bring himself to ask them to guide him, so he used Cuilong Yun's earlier impatient to his advantage.

The green-haired boy in questions seemed to be invigorated by Fang Xiong's question and turned to Shi Yu and locking his arms under her arms and over her chest, "He's right, come on, we're going!" he picked her up, Shi Yu starting to kick her legs like a child having a tantrum.

"Put me down Brother Yun, please, I haven't had my food yet! Look it's here, just let me eat it!" no matter what she said, Cuilong Yun didn't put her down. Fang Xiong looked at the two massive chicken legs that had been put on the table and felt his stomach rumble.

He looked over at Shi Yu, "You've paid for those, right?" Shi Yu looked at Fang Xiong like he was her savior and started nodding her head vigorously. What she didn't know was she'd unleashed a monster.

"We can't have the food going to waste now, can we?" Fang Xiong went and picked up the two massive chicken legs and before Shi Yu could even smile thankfully at him, he started devouring them.

"NOOOO! STOP EATING MY FOOD!" Shi Yu renewed her efforts to get free but they were worth naught and Fang Xiong continued to devour his 'snack'. Cuilong Yun couldn't help but look at Fang Xiong in disbelief, he'd never known anyone to eat that quick, even his gluttonous childhood friend, Shi Yu. The meat practically flew off the bone and down Fang Xiong's gullet.

He also looked at him in pity, because when he let go of Shi Yu, she'd undoubtedly go after Fang Xiong with a vengeance because of this incident. Cuilong Yun promised himself he'd try and keep the little demon in his arms away from the brave soldier that was Fang Xiong.

After a few minutes, if that at all, Fang Xiong had devoured the chicken legs and threw the bones on the ground. This left Shi Yu limp and lifeless as she kept mumbling about chicken legs.

They carried on walking, while Fang Xiong and Cuilong Yun occasionally talked to each other about the academy and the city they were in.

The city they were in was named Guaiwu City as the academy was what the entire city was built around. As such, the academy is in the center of the city and a bit of distance away from where Fang Xiong found the two teen's earlier.

But after a 10-minute walk/jog they arrived at the location. At this time Cuilong Yun put Shi Yu down and unlike he expected, she didn't try and rush Fang Xiong to attack him. Instead, she simply walked up to Fang Xiong and poked him hard in the chest, "You owe me soooo much food~!" she didn't seem angry but both boys could tell she was.

Fang Xiong, however, just shrugged his shoulders and agreed. It wasn't like he was going to see these people a lot, right?

Those three stood at the gates and looked at them. They were massive, thick metal bars, which seemed unbendable by even the heaviest forces, were all curved into arches, causing all three teens to think about how they got them to be curved in the first place as the metal truly did seem that strong.

On top of the arch, there were 3 words written in bold, red paint.

"Win Survive Thrive"

This seemed to be the motto the academy used and just understanding the meaning made Fang Xiong's blood boil, causing a savage smile to spread across his lips. Both of the other teens had smiles of their own but when they saw Fang Xiong's smile, they felt that they might have met some kind of battle maniac.

Shrugging off these thoughts, all three of them walked in through the gates which were partially opened for recruiting students today.

It didn't take too long of a walk to see the mass crowd of people wanting to be recruited as students with multiple lines spanning off of the crowd and toward dozens of desks with people on them. Fang Xiong looked at the people on the desk and saw that they were wearing a red robe with golden lines on the edges of the arms and around the waist and down the chest.

Altogether it looked like one big rune of a red canvas. It looked quite appealing but Fang Xiong had a scowl on his face.

The red robe looked to be the attire students had to wear and it looked much tighter than his tank top and shorts, causing Fang Xiong's hatred of constrictive clothes to flare up. It wasn't like he was scared of being in constrictive places, he just hated clothes that restricted his movements and by the looks of the robe, his movements could possibly tear it apart.

Still following Shi Yu and Cuilong Yun, Fang Xiong joined the massive crowd. Feeling the suitcases taking up his hands, Fang Xiong just stored them in his spatial rings to keep them out of the way for the upcoming tests.

. . .

They must have waited for a solid two hours before getting to the lines coming from the crowd. Luckily they got into the same line and started to expand on their pseudo-friendship they'd started on the way here.

Fang Xiong found out that Cuilong Yun and Shi Yu were both half-breeds. Cuilong Yun was half-Fae, half-Human and Shi Yu was half-Kin half-Human and they were both brought up in an orphanage after their parents abandoned them for, presumably, being hybrids.

Once they started talking it seemed that they were complete and utter chatterboxes. Fang Xiong discovered they were both Qi Cultivators with Shi Yu being in the 10th Layer of the Houtian Realm and Cuilong Yun being in the 1st Layer of the Xiantian Realm. To top it all off they seemed to have special attributed Qi but as talkative as they were, they never mentioned what attribute it had.

He learned they were both 15, two years older than him, and that they'd known each other for a solid 12/13 years.

For what he told them about himself, was very little so he had to put up with the constant badgering of the two of them. He'd pretty much only told them about the fact he cultivated Ki and that he was 13, which seemed to blow their minds.

His Cultivation Level and his special Attributed Ki because of the Heavenly Beast Method were kept secret from his new friends/potential sparring partners.

Finally, they got to the person on the desk and Cuilong went up to give his information. Fang Xiong ignored Shi Yu's continued questioning about him and listened in on the conversation between Cuilong Yun and the girl at the desk.

"Name?" the girl asked with a boredly without even looking up.

"Cuilong Yun."

Scribbling it down, the girl asked her next question, "Cultivation System?"

"Qi."

"Age?"

"15."

With this, the girl filled the form out and looked up to pass it to Cuilong Yun. When she looked up, she was a bit shocked by Cuilong's extremely handsome appearance but she still gave the slip to him and stutteringly spoke, "T-take this slip to the testing areas," she turned around and pointed around the corner of a big building behind them, "You have to go down there, o-okay? Do you need me to show you?" her red blush made her already pretty face look even more enthralling but Cuilong Yun seemed to take no notice.

He smiled thankfully at her before answering, "No, I'll be fine, thank you for your help!" and with that, he walked past the girl who seemed like she could finally breathe properly again. The girl got herself into order before calling for the next person in the line -- Shi Yu.

Similar questions were asked and similar answers were given and the slip was given without any red faces or stuttering this time and Shi Yu joined Cuilong Yun a few steps behind the desk girl.

Fang Xiong walked up to the desk and answered his questions all in one.

"Fang Xiong. Ki Cultivation. 13 years old." His quick-fire answers were all caught by the girl and just by muscle memory she instantly filled in the boxes for the slip before looking up to hand it to him.

Again, she was shocked at his appearance.

She didn't know where she got her luck but she had gotten two extremely good-looking guys in her line today.

One with an incredibly handsome, pretty boy-kind of a face, pale white skin and a slender yet toned body, and the other one a tall, equally handsome teen but with more masculine features than the previous one and to top it off an incredibly attractive athletic body that could be clearly seen even through his clothes.

She couldn't believe her luck and thought she'd have to tell her Big Sis Xiao Mei* about the good finds she'd seen today.

( *Author Note: Yes, this is the Mc's older sister and I'm using Big Sis as an affectionate term for an upperclassman who just happens to be a girl. The same applies to upperclassmen who are boys who will be referred to as Big Bro. )

Fang Xiong, took the slip, said thank you and walked over to the two who were surprisingly still waiting for him. With Fang Xiong here, all three of them continued their walk to the Testing Grounds.