Before Aster noticed countless of figures were floating in the sky, their cultivations varied from the peak of the Stellar Constellation to the Star Tribulation realm, everyone had a blazer which identified them as members of a certain peak, and some had an emblem meaning they belonged to a faction, those were all inner disciples.
The law enforcer wanted to start with the ceremony as soon as possible because he knew that the more, they waited, the bigger the wave would be, but Aster showed no interest in that, he instead carefully observed the punctuations on the black stone stale.
Becoming a core disciple from the very beginning is harder compared to ascending to one later on, the sect has calculated that the participants who get to the third trial always round about the 50,000, the estimate of men and women is set to fifty-fifty, and while only 30,000 points are needed to become an inner disciple as well as a level 4 talent, for women to become core disciples they need to get two million points in total.
Meaning that at most there will be four new female core disciples, but of course such a situation has never happened, in fact there has never been more than one core disciple appearing among the new disciples… until this day.
“How can such beauties be so abnormal”.
“The were accompanying that guy who killed almost all the participants… they are also monsters”.
And other comments like that could be heard from the crowd, while Alice and the others weren’t killing their opponents as they had no grudge against them, they beat them black and blue at first sight to strip them out of their points.
The scene was weird, because during the first minutes they didn’t fight against anyone and instead looked for the others, but then after reuniting, they seemed to argue over something and then the nightmare for the other aspirants started.
Inside of the female training grounds, Tiana saw Alice and Aria argue with each other before they became flashes of light and started beating the hell out of the other participants.
Alice’s explosions eliminated a bunch of them and those who managed to resist the impact, were immediately knocked out by her bare fists.
Aria was a bit less brutish; she immobilized her opponents with ice before taking their tokens in in large quantities using her soul energy.
“You aren’t going to win me by being gentle, ice princess~”.
“Humph, elegancy is important for ladies, you violent dragon woman”.
While those two argued, they kept sweeping away any other participants even stealing the points of the other in the process.
“Are… they always like that?”, asked Tiana to Kana who was fighting some early-stage Stellar Constellation cultivators from time to time.
Kana easily dodged the attack of a spear and used the semi manifestation of the bow to scare her opponent, before casting a whirlwind around her, successfully taking the token.
Tiana was dumbfounded at Kana’s idea, she had never heard of someone using its own intent as a distraction to launch a surprise attack, and to see a young girl using such a cunning strategy was a bit shocking.
‘Well Aster has the same age… I guess no one in the group can be judged by normal people standards’, she thought.
Kana looked at her own token, unfortunately she couldn’t fight with the stronger cultivators, but using that method she has reached nearly fifty thousand points, which is not bad at all, considering she is only an early-stage Star Formation cultivator.
Of course, this was only possible because she was insanely fast for her realm, while in the air she could actually match Alice’s flying speed, taking her opponents by surprise, Aster also taught her to take advantage of that, anyone who underestimated her would pay the price.
“Sister Alice and sister Aria like to make bets, to motivate themselves they put something they like on the stake and the winner gets the prize”, said Kana as she kept her token in her pocket.
Tiana finished her opponent with the bladeless side of her spear shooting a flash of white light destroying the weapon of her opponent as well as her token, before she flew towards Kana.
“What could motivate those two, to compete with such enthusiasm?”, mumbled Tiana, in her experience none of the girls in the group lacked anything, resources, treasures, manuals, spirit jades, they had whatever they needed or would get it as soon as possible, in fact she wasn’t sure how deep Aster’s pockets were, but judging by Lilia’s spaceship, she supposed that even the treasury of the Barbarian Heart sect would fall short.
“More time with big brother of course”, answered Kana as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Tiana chuckled and then they kept looking for other participants to defeat, she had already reached the points needed to be a core disciple, so she didn’t mind making Kana company in the meantime.
…
Back at the neutral city, Felicia giggled at Aster.
“You two siblings really like to do things that draw a lot of attention~”.
Erick agreed with his mother.
“Brother you were awesome back there, those idiots thought they could beat you someone who can fight head on against Mortal Transcending cultivators, with numbers HAHAHA”.
Aster smiled as he laid back on Lilia’s bosom, earning some envious gazes from a lot of people, his eyes glinted for a split of a second as he saw that strange gray mist he got from Isaac, coming from somewhere on the crowd.
As soon as the clock reached the end of the hour assigned for the third trial, the neutral and throned elders whose seeded disciples were females, gave the law enforcer begging gazes, which made the latter smirk.
“It’s over”, with a wave of his hand, the law enforcer took all the girls out of the trial grounds, out of the 28,000 female aspirants, about 23,000 had haggard appearances and afraid expressions as they looked at Alice, Aria and Tiana, in comparison those who fought with Kana had relieved expressions, some even approached and greeted her finding the little girl adorable, or at least not as crazy as her companions.
Judging by Alice’s sulky expression and Aria’s triumphant smile, it wasn’t hard to deduce who won their little game.
“Big brother, how did I do it?”, asked Kana as she sat on his lap.
Aster patted her head, happy with the result of the little training sessions they had, Kana wasn’t the close combat type, in fact given her attribute she was perfect for long ranged fights, maybe that’s why she resonated with bows, still Aster didn’t want her to be defenseless so with Lilia’s help, they taught her to redirect attacks instead of parrying them.
“I saw your fights, you were great, using that semi manifestation to distract you opponent was a good idea”.
Kana snuggled in Aster’s chest happy to be complimented by him, the moment was broken due to the law enforcer talking to them.
“Ahem, a ceremony must be upheld to declare you all core disciples, come to the stage please”.
Aster nodded, he stood up and got up the stage followed by Alice, Aria and Tiana.
“You are all joining the battle peak, right?”, asked the law enforcer.
Aster and the others nodded in response, and the law enforcer took out a series of things, but as he was about to start the ceremony, a sudden burst of spirit pressure coming from above drew everyone’s attention.
“Now, Salazar, this is such an important milestone in the history of the sect and you just wanted to take the decision by yourself?”.
Aster looked at the newcomers, one of them was the red haired elder which he of course recognized, the other one was an old man with an erudite look, but cunning eyes.
Salazar frowned, but he relaxed a few seconds later.
“Ramon, you are just the treasure keeper, while we both are law enforcers, in terms of authority when it comes to admissions, you can go to hell”.
The atmosphere tensed up as soon as those two stared at each other, but things got better when a green haired woman wearing a white dress stood in the middle of them.
“Salazar, normally I would agree with you… but this time Ramon has a point, while he can’t interfere in your area, I at least want to hear your reasoning”.
Salazar nodded but then he handed Aster a ring with a sword emblem which he immediately put on, then the stage lit up and the projection of a winged sword illuminated the sky, not only of the neutral city, but the skies of the four planets as well as the fifth one.
Sending the whole sect into a turmoil, the projection of either a sword, an anvil, a lotus or a cauldron, means that a new core disciple has appeared, but only those who got that status since the moment hey joined had wings added to their projection, curiously the wings of the battle peak core disciples didn’t have feathers and instead had a design which resembled… those of a dragon.
“You!”, the law enforcer called Ramon took a moment to process what just happened, while the green haired woman sighed.
Salazar smirked as he pointed at them.
“Don’t think that I don’t know why you are making such a fuss, you two want your own disciples to get the honor of being the first ever male core disciple”.
“This kid eliminated about 17,000 enemies whose cultivations varied from the Stellar Constellation to the Stellar Axys realm, with a single slash of his sword, now Ramon if your beloved youngest grandson can do that, then I will step aside and leave you do what you want, if not then shut the fuck up and don’t meddle in my admission trials!”.
“Hahaha, it’s been sometime since the four of us gathered and you two are already fighting, Sal is going to kick your ass Mon, besides he is right, your grandson is shit compared to this kid”, a fourth person abruptly joined the conversation, it was a middle-aged man who was only wearing shorts and sandals.
Ramon looked at the newcomer and his expression became grim, he snorted and the left followed by the red haired elder.
“What just happened?”, mumbled Aster.
The last elder who arrived, laughed as he descended from the sky next to Salazar and leaned his arm on his shoulder.
“You became the first ever male core disciple, and since the regalia of the battle peak was casted, no one can take away your status, unless all the peak masters agree to it of course”.
“William Talis, it’s a pleasure kid”, said the elder as he offered Aster a handshake.
‘What a weird guy’, thought Aster, but he still accepted the handshake, for two reasons, first this weird elder spoke on his behalf, or at least was against the other elder and the aura he gives off, is somewhat similar to Lilia’s… in other words he is a Gate Transcending realm body cultivator!