“Ah! What the hell, why did you hit me?!”

Xi Shen screamed in pain from being hit in his head.

Staring at his little brother, Fu Wei had an enraged expression on his face as he said, “That’s for casually mentioning such a sensitive piece of information, which you shouldn’t have known about in the first place. I’m guessing while you were sneaking around in the archives you hadn’t seen the information where it said that the Star Bound Continent also had spies in our ranks as well. Next time think about what you say before you say it. If you end up spilling important information that could put our Li Clan, or even the entire continent itself in danger, then believe me I would personally skin you alive."

After growling out those last words, Fu Wei said again, "Father pampers you too much, if anyone else had done the things you’ve done they would’ve been killed thousands of times over.”

With an ugly expression on his face, Xi Shen didn’t respond to Fu Wei’s rant and only remain silent. But he thought to himself.

‘To think I would be in this humiliating situation in this life. I think I’m getting too used to playing the part of a little kid. I’m a grown-ass old man for god sake!’

Xi Shen then recalled the first time he realized he was reborn years into the future. At first, it wasn’t so easy to adapt to this era or the current situation he was in.

And seriously, who could?

Imagine spending your entire life in an era where your life was not your own, you were living for someone else's sake, only to then die and leave all of that behind. How should he act while having the thoughts and mentality of an adult in his sixties while being in the body of a child?

Should he act his age and draw suspicion to himself, or should he embrace his current situation until he reached a stage he need not act anymore?

After considering it, Xi Shen decided to choose the latter. However, having to hold himself back in certain situations where he liked nothing more than to spout profanities or having to go through frustrating scenarios like this made him slightly regret his decision.

Though after thirteen and a half years in this body, he came to realize he maybe didn’t have a choice in the first place. He didn’t know what it was, or where it came from, but at certain times he would actually feel like he was a young child again.

This has made things for him a little easy as he was able to accept the fact that he had parents once again, and even an older sibling. But this also made him question how he came to this era, whether he had reincarnated as a baby, or his soul had possessed a baby who was being born in this era.

He had mixed feelings if it was the latter but there was nothing he could do if that was the case, what’s done was done.

After scolding Xi Shen, Fu Wei sighed before he said, “As for answering your question…” Fu Wei paused to think for a moment then said, “...They might be slightly stronger.”

Hearing that, Xi Shen was slightly taken aback, something about that felt off. He felt that along with being born into the most powerful force on this continent, he should have been born on the most powerful continent as well.

‘Huh..? That’s a strange feeling.’

Ignoring this weird feeling, Xi Shen said to Fu Wei, “Is that because of the Profound Sword Sect?”

Fu Wei nodded his head and then said, “Father said that he suspects that they had gained some sort of heaven-defying treasure in the past. However, after that, he said everything was normal in their sect. But several months ago, a disciple of theirs was able to fight across realms and defeat 9th stage Foundation Realm cultivators despite only being in the 1st stage of said realm.”

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Hearing that Xi Shen’s eyes couldn’t help but widen slightly.

‘There’s someone so talented? Even to geniuses on the Maple Continent just being able to battle across two or three minor realms in the Foundation Realm could make that person a once-in-a-thousand-years genius.’

This sudden news to Xi Shen was really making him question the talent of this person. It was to the point where he was wondering if this person had somehow obtained a Dao Foundation, or something similar to his.

As Xi Shen was thinking to himself, Fu Wei’s voice echoed again, though this time he had a solemn expression on his face.

“And that’s not even the unbelievable part about the whole situation. What is, is the fact that he was only considered to be an Inner Disciple of the Sect.”

Xi Shen snapped out of his thoughts, and his head immediately swerve to look at Fu Wei as he heard that. He then asked in disbelief, “Are you serious? He was only considered as an Inner Disciple?”

“Yes, that’s what the reports said. Though it was also discovered that he was the little brother of their Legacy Disciple; someone being groomed to become their next Sect Leader.”

With that Xi Shen finally understood why the Maple Continent might be weaker than the Star Bound Continent. And he was amazed that a single Sect could influence the power balance between two Continents to such a degree.

This made Xi Shen’s curiosity about the Profound Sword Sect as well as that mysterious treasure increase. Thinking about his two God Beast abilities, a big grin started to form on his face as his golden eyes twinkled with a tinge of orange.

Suddenly out of nowhere, a voice boomed out across the entirety of the mountain.

“THE START OF THE PARTICIPANTS’ TESTING MAY COMMENCE!!!”

Xi Shen’s focus went to the side stages where the Outer Disciples battles would occur. The amount of focus the Celestial Academy placed on the Inner Disciples' competition was a lot more than the Outer Disciples' own.

The first battles would be the Outer Disciples' free for all knock-out rounds, where all the disciples would gather on one stage and battle to knock each other off. This round was mainly done to weed out the weaker disciples until the last fifty participants remain from the several hundred disciples. Those fifty participants would then be separated into brackets, with ten in each.

In these brackets, the participants will battle each other one-on-one and the person who remained undefeated in their bracket would move to the next round, which was determining the top three.

With five participants in this round, the rules were the same as in the previous round, where they would each battle one on one until the first place, second and third place is decided.

Compared to the number of Outer Disciples participating in the Freshmen Competition, the Inner Disciples numbers weren’t a lot, as they were around forty of them.

This was due to the fact that only people below the age of sixteen could participate in the Freshmen Disciple Competition.

The age of sixteen was the deadline set by the Celestial Academy for disciples to become a Sea Expansion Realm expert. If either the Outer Disciples or Inner Disciples fail that requirement, the former would forever stay an Outer Disciple and the latter would be demoted to an Outer Disciple with the only chance of being promoted is if they reached the Nascent Soul Realm before their twenty, which to even people with Sky-grade talent consider being impossible.

Only three people in this generation had enough talent to accomplish such a feat, and those three are so well known that they were named The Three Peaks.

What this also meant is that not only do the new disciples get to compete in this Freshmen Disciple Competition but so do the disciples who entered the Academy three years prior.

Because of this, the winner of the Freshmen Disciple Competition would always be someone from a previous year, and never the current year’s newly admitted disciples. This was simply because the previous year's disciples have begun their cultivation much earlier, and they have competed in one or two competitions before, so they have an overwhelming amount of experience compared to the newer disciples.

This was how it has always been in the Celestial Academy, and in all the years, only a handful of extremely talented freshmen disciples who entered the Academy in their first year had gotten first place. And as anyone might have guessed, the crown prince Li Fu Wei and the Celestial Academy’s current number-one genius, Ling Tian, was among those extraordinary individuals.

These three in their youths achieved feats that were still being praised even today.

With all of that said, one could see the reason why Yang Su getting first place seemed highly unlikely. Even Fu Wei was skeptical when he heard Xi Shen mention such a fantasy-like scenario.

After the Elder’s shout, all the Outer Disciples huddle up in several makeshift lines as they got ready to go up to the stage and test their current cultivation and age.

This was an absolutely necessary process before the Academy could start the competition, and even though having a higher cultivation base than everyone else wasn’t enough to disqualify a participant, being even a day older than sixteen while having it would.

So to prevent cheating such as that to occur and ruining the entire competition, the Academy checked each and every participant before the competition.

But from this alone and not to mention the different rounds in the competition, one could understand why this single event would last an entire week.

Yes, that’s right, an entire week.

Watching the disciples go up one by one to test their age and cultivation base, Xi Shen was starting to get horrified at that fact.

He was going to have to sit through the entire competition only to wait until the final days when Yang Su and the Inner Disciples would compete after the Outer Disciples matches were over.

'Ugh, kill me now.'

Xi Shen thought while covering his face.