It was a week before the opening ceremony and Lirian sat on the roof of the mansion a pair of binoculars in hand and he looked over into one of the neighbours' homes, the distance between the mansions was enormous but he had a great a binoculars that Anya had given him for his last birthday.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Anya standing there, she glanced in the direction Lirian was looking and could easily see everything going on, she could even hear the yelling if she didn't block it out.
"Did the husband get caught cheating again?" she asked with a slight smile.
"Yep,", Lirian replied, ", poor guy." both of them said together and chuckled.
The couple they spoke of had a tendency to cheat on each other all the time, the wife had a strange tendency to bring home different men, while the husband repeatedly brought home the same women, the husband also sucked at cleaning up after himself and his wife always found out, while he remained clueless of his wife's affairs.
The neighbour was one of those front-runners on the galactic markets for Xelia, and while he was a genius businessman, he was a useless detective.
The wife would always use his affairs as ammo to leave him defenseless and play the wife being cheated on, it was a very entertaining show for Lirian and Anya.
"I think that it's becoming too repetitive, maybe we should give the husband the ammo he needs,", said Lirian.
"But that will ruin it, if he's too dumb to figure it out it's his own fault."
"Yeah, but I can predict how the whole fight is going to go by now, it's not as entertaining,", Lirian complained.
After contemplating Anya said, "Then send it to him, hopefully, he uses it to its maximum potential," she chuckled.
Lirian tapped his watch and a few data packets were sent to the neighbour, he looked through the binoculars at the husband, unfortunately, he had none of his devices on him, "Looks like that fight will only happen later," he said with a sigh.
"Anya, can you bring me down, it's a long way down and my mom said she has something to speak to me about?"
Anya floated down with Lirian in her arms, she still looked exactly the same as the day he met her, fair skin, rosy cheeks, cherry-like lips and flowing raven that looked like a waterfall of darkness, and out of everyone in the mansion, he was the closest with her, she even helped him get away with a few very big problems he caused in the house.
Since his training with Taliyah begun, he didn't cause as much trouble, but it was impossible to stop a river from flowing and the things that he did were a lot more destructive, only during these cases he was genuinely experimenting with his powers and the accidents were real accidents.
The best part of all about Anya was her height of course, to Lirian his height was the biggest problem, he was surprisingly average when he ran a diagnostic with the system it told him that the energy of the world and the food of the mortal realm were almost useless to him, and as he thought of it made more and more sense, after all, he was originally a god and it was only the god realm that could properly nourish him.
The reason that it bugged him so much was that it made his body extremely lean, and by lean he meant the type of lean girls pursued for their own bodies, and it caused him to look more and more like a girl when he looked into a mirror, he often couldn't believe what he saw.
Part of the reason he enjoyed Anya's company so much was that she was only 5'2", while the next shortest person in the mansion was at least 5'10".
They soon came to Taliyah and Anya put him down from the princess carry she was holding him in, "Good, Lirian I've cleared out my entire day, we'll be spending the entire day together.", she said with a warm smile.
"Are we going to see another troupe perform, no offense mom but that last one was boring, aside from the part where the dire wolves got lose.", in truth the dire wolves getting lose was his doing to this day no one knew who the real culprit was, and they never would.
Taliyah's face cramped up, just once she wished she could say something to Lirian and not get a judgemental answer, "No dear, today we will be staying home, our training has been going on for over five years and our spars have never been for more than an hour, I've noticed that it no longer tire's you at all, so we'll be having a very long spar today, no stopping until you faint from exhaustion."
The spar soon began, and because Taliyah had given the entire staff the day off, many of them came to witness the spar, the occasional servant would catch a glimpse of their spars while cleaning up, and many rumors about Lirians skill were spread, it had to be known that even the weakest servant was a third-grade cultivator, so they were all interested in seeing a genius, even all of Taliyah's aides stood together to watch.
Among them was her chief aid Belinda and Helen, as well as six others, they turned one part of the yard into a little tea garden and watched while sipping on piping hot tea.
The spar soon began and Lirian moved conservatively, if he was going up against an army of normal people, he'd be able to go on for days with ease, but against his mother, every second of his was filled with tension and he had to put his best foot forward with every action or he'd end up lying down in the mud.
It was a strange feeling to have so many people around him but not trying to kill him, even though he knew they wouldn't dare to, he couldn't stop himself from constantly being on guard.
When he stood with his sword raised, all his ineloquent characteristics seemed to disappear and he became the epitome of elegance, it was only him his sword and his opponent, he rushed forward and used the sword form with the most power behind it, 'Breaking Tides', it had eighteen moves to it and for the opening strike, he used the ninth move.
He knew it would be an instant failure, and just before the sword met Taliyah's hand, he pulled out from the strike barrelled on the ground and used the, 'Rising Tide', another form its only use was for fighting opponents bigger than oneself.
He was only using the forms his mother taught him, but when he used it all the wasted movements were wiped out and he advanced releasing barrage after barrage of attacks on her.
Their audience watched in silent awe as the two danced around the ground, Taliyah only used her hands to seamlessly deflected attacks, while pushing her advantage and pushing Lirian back.
The aides watched on silently, but two of them were frowning slightly, it was Anya and another aid called Jane, they were the only two saints and they didn't like what they were seeing, the empress's movements were beautiful, but it was only that, if she fought either one of them with those movements, even if she was a half-transcender, she would lose.
As Lirian fought on, the openings in Taliyah's style became more and more apparent, becoming the sword is truly only meant for the gods he lamented in silence, their movements were more like a dance than ever before and their feet seemed to drift above the ground in perfect unison as each attack was perfectly diverted or parried.
In eyes of the beholders, it appeared like two tides constantly lapping against each other and harmoniously parting ways, soon Lirian saw an opening as Taliyah raised her hand in a vertical slice, and he used a technique that only those who are perfectly matched in skill would ever use against an opponent, and it could be called a desperate move, taking the enemies sword.
He moved in perfectly giving Taliyah no chance to stop her attack, he brought his shoulder into her strike, and a sickening crunch could be heard as his collar bone snapped, fresh blood flowed from his body and he felt his left shoulder dislocate, with his right hand he thrust his sword forward heading straight for Taliyah's heart.
He thought that he had won but the natural reflexes of Taliyah were beyond any mortals, and even in her shocked state she stopped the sword.
The eyes of the aides flashed in astonishment and even Anya was shaking from what she had seen, at that last second before he struck Lirian hesitated and his body slowed down, he probably didn't even notice it himself, but if he didn't hesitate that attack would have connected.
Anya knew well that in the entire Clovis empire as far as skill was considered she was recognised as the very best and the empress took second behind only her, they were both prodigy's that made the empire weep with joy, but the raw skill Lirian showed put them to absolute shame if they were prodigy's what word could fit Lirian.
His skill with a sword was unbelievable and he could control energy while having no cultivation at all, not to mention his wisdom and knowledge that was beyond his age, the thoughts of all present were identical at that moment, Lirians adoption was the empires greatest fortune, and with the wisdom, he shows, passing the two-hundred-year trial should be easy.