Trees withered and lay bare for all the world to see, but eventually, new leaves bloomed again, the leaves grew vibrant and released a sweet smell onto all that passed through its shade, once more the trees did wither and the sound of crackling leaves could be heard as each passerby crunched on the parched leaves.
Three and a half years quickly passed by and Lirians fourth school year was quickly coming to a close, the traffic on Xelia seemed to only get worse over the years, as they sat in the crawling traffic the sound of glass shattering caused Lirian and Anya to turn their heads, someone had done it again.
A second-grade cultivator had rammed into the side of the limo and pushed herself through the reinforced glass as Anya sealed of the assailant's movements Lirian gathered the energy around him and poured the undiluted energy into the woman's body, she couldn't resist under Anya's seal.
Her body started to contort and if Anya hadn't been sealing her movements she would have trashed violently, a minute of the torture passed by until life was completely drained from her body and Lirian nodded in satisfaction as his fate particles increased.
He shot a quick glance outside and chuckled while resuming his relaxed posture in back seat of the limo, "There is a sniper at three O'clock," as he spoke the sniper fired out a bolt of wild energy from his weapon, it had enough power to kill a third-grade in a single shot but Anya merely raised her hand and caught the energy beam.
It crumbled to dust in her palm and as she was about to turn the sniper into a pile of bloody mist another energy beam took the sniper in the head and turned him into a headless corpse.
Anya gave a quick glance at the new comer who killed the sniper, it was one of the guards assigned by the Eden family and there were several officers in uniform standing behind him, they quickly took control of the panicked crowds and got the traffic moving.
Lirian lounged on the seat and casually flipped through a page of a lovely novel he had been reading recently.
"Could you at least show a little more concern when someone tries to kill you!" Anya complained about his laid-back attitude.
He looked at her in amusement, "If I concern myself every time some small fry, that doesn't even know who they are being used by tries to kill me I'll never have a carefree moment,"
"And besides," he smiled as the cool summer draft entered the limo, ", it's nice to read a book while enjoying the breeze, from time to time."
"Speaking of which we need to get another new limo, I swear this must be like our 12th replacement already," it was a bit strange being rich, the limo could easily be fixed but it seemed that high society had some policy about never fixing something if it can be replaced.
It's not like money was ever a problem for Lirian, with his monthly allowance alone he could buy two limo's every month and still have extra credits on the side for his own personal enjoyment.
They reached the school almost half an hour later than usual thanks to the delay, due to his late arrival he wouldn't be able to meet the other candidates so he went to class directly.
The first one to greet him as he entered was obviously his very delightful teacher, she never missed an opportunity to scold him, "Late again, I'm not even surprised by your lack of time management skills Lirian."
"Aren't you delightful as always miss Hira," he said sarcastically, "Another idiot tried to kill me today, so bite me if I'm a few minutes late to class."
It wasn't like homeroom was important to him anyway it was just a lecture about cultivation that he already knew and using the pods to either open energy points or cultivate which he wasn't allowed to use.
"With an attitude like that I'm wouldn't be surprised if hundreds of people tried to kill every day, I myself feel the urge to strangle you at least a dozen times a day," she retorted, not even caring that he was the target of an assassination, it was already like the hundredth attempt since he started in the academy and it wouldn't be the last.
Lirian had met a match in this teacher of his, if he wanted to get personal about her failed marriage, he could but that would just ruin the fun of the game, the way to make a teacher cry was to make them feel stupid and incompetent or to just frustrate them to the point of tears, making things personal ruined the game.
"Tsk," he clicked his tongue and greeted his classmates as he went to his seat.
Most of his class had already entered the realm of cultivators, and the remainder were all at the threshold, they just needed a little more time and they would successfully become cultivators.
He turned and flashed Hinata a quick smile before turning around to face the teacher, she had become a cultivator at record speed it only took her one and a half years it earned her a great deal of attention, after that she expressed her interest in joining his clique, he natural allowed her into his group, and made a habit of feeding her idiotic stories to tell Telamon.
He smiled happily as he thought of how frustrated Telamon would get as he heard story after story that did nothing to help him understand Lirian, by now Telamon most likely realised that Lirian figured out that Hinata was his spy, but what gave him a real headache was the fact that all his other little spies were saying the same things and he would have no clue as to how Lirian figured out the identity of his spies.
As he looked at the system with a pleasant smile, he heard miss Hira beginning her lecture.
"Soon all of you will be official cultivators but that is only the beginning of your journey, once you stand at the boundary of the next life hierarchy ascension you will all be required to stop and earn the cultivation techniques for your other centres of power."
"It is important to remember that by advancing a single centre of power to the next level it will make it much harder to cultivate the centres of power that are not yet developed."
This was a very common problem amongst uneducated cultivators and those from undeveloped worlds.
Balance is always required and without it, the results are terrible, even with a perfect body technique, a person would only be able to push themselves as far as the fifth-grade, and that is the absolute limit, once the body reaches that level it will completely suppress the other centres of power.
Without mana, the body loses its ability to gather energy and without a developed mind one becomes incapable of intelligent thought, to be blunt they become mindless animals and once their energy reaches zero, they die.
The process is similar no matter which centre of power one chooses to focus on if only one centre is solely focused on then the other two will be suppressed.
This is why people chose one centre as their focus and they utilise the other centres of power to stabilise themselves by finding cultivation techniques that have synergy with their focused cultivation path.
For example, if a mage focuses on ice magic, they will learn body cultivation techniques that grant them greater resistance to temperature fluctuations and they will learn train their mind with techniques to better see and understand the ice laws allowing them to better imitate the real nature of ice.
There were other reasons to temper one's other centres of power as well if someone neglected to train their mind and faced a mental psychic of the same level, it would be easy for the psychic to attack their mind and completely shatter their consciousness before they even moved.
Miss Hira said something along similar lines to the students and she quickly added, "Starting from next year we will be going through autopsy records and scans that detail the erosion of your other centres of power if you only focus on one, and there will be a few dissections that you will be doing to confirm your knowledge."
"Lastly, all of you have to enter the first-grade before you return for your fifth year if you do not you will be held back a year because starting from next year you will be required to go on expeditions together under the leadership of the candidates," she said glancing at Lirian.
It was usually the student's job to guard and protect the candidate but in Lirians case she couldn't bring herself to see him needing the guards it was probably a first for a candidate to be so capable, at least it was a first for her and she had thought well over two hundred different candidates in her life.
Lirian nodded in acknowledgment, this was one of the more important tests to determine the capability of the candidates as leaders, Cole, Media, and Wentian had gone through their first expedition while he was in the school, Media graded horribly, she lost three members of her class at the time and even considered dropping out as a candidate due to her failure.
As for Wentian he lost a single member, it certainly lost him some points but he was still graded pretty good, losing one person was pretty common, as, for Edith, Tobias, and Cole he heard their stories, they were born to lead and scored very high on their tests without a single casualty occurring.