Chapter 1: East Lake Academy

I took a deep breath.

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3

4

I counted slowly, trying to relax my scowl before opening my eyes. I exhaled through my mouth slower than my inhale, a small stream of breath flowing out until my lungs are completely empty and inhaled again.

My eyes shot open, the amber colored irises dancing in the sunlight, reflecting a world that was covered in the color of a blazing flame. I steadied myself and clenched my fis--

"'ey girly, you gonna get up 'ere or what? You takin' up everyone's time" I jumped up into the air, startled slightly at the annoyed voice.

"S-sorry, hehe" I apologized with an awkward laugh.

Oh man. Now back to what I was doing. I clenched my fists and looked up at the testing stage, dropped my shoulders and marched up there like I was going to war. Well, this is war. It's war to get into the most prestigious magic academy of this hemisphere, the East Lake Academy and this was the entrance exam to get in.

The first exam lasted a week, but only because of the sheer number of examinees. Everyone wanted to attend this academy. First year begins from as young as 15 and you can apply until you're 19 years old, the year before you become an adult. And the best part, if you got in, tuition was free (sponsored by the rich and powerful for good reason), food and board are free, everything was taken care of. Their motto? Your job is to study. Their claim to fame? Powerful syncers of all classes ready for work on graduation day and a 98.9% graduation rate. The caveat? A 0.05% acceptance rate. That's right, 0.05%. There are usually more than 7000 applications per year. I'm really bad at math, but you get the point. It's hard to get in and people all over this hemisphere of the world come, like, basically all of Asia and even parts of Europe.

And I'm here right now about to take the exam that will determine the rest of my life. Yep, let's go. We can do it. I'm going to do it. You're going to do it Yin.

I lifted my right hand and hesitated for a second, the examiner in front of me stared at me, bored. They've probably seen it all, a student like me psyching myself up and hesitating at the last second? That's not even rare, probably every other kid acts like this. There was even a kid only a few minutes ago who threw up all over the examiner.

"Just do it will you? You're holding up everyone else" he sighed.

I slammed my hand down with all my strength onto the button mechanically attached to an 8 trigrams plate. The contraption was strangely low-tech, looking like it was duct taped together reminiscent of a 4th grade science fair project, but everyone knows that this is the invention of a century and earned the inventor a Nobel prize for it could test your path! That's right. My path. The button lit up, absorbing the energy that naturally resonates out of every living being as a proof of their existence. The light entered a series of tubes attached to the trigrams, the tubes were all over the place, some thin, some thick, branching like a tree with some thicker ones sticking out indicating the main branches and tons of smaller branches sticking out of each main branch. I get dizzy just looking at it. The important part of this first exam was being powerful enough to resonate at all.

The light flowed through the tube steadily, an indication that my power is still at it's peak. This is a good sign, the further up the tree I can go, the more powerful I am, the thicker a certain branch is, the more of that branch I represented. The main branches were the 10 heavenly stems, each representing the yin and yang of the five main elements, wood, fire, earth, metal and water and hundreds of sub-elements in between like weather, spring, light, sand, ice, and many more I don't even know of, but the ultimate goal, is to be solidly in a main element. Why? Because they were the most versatile.

I watched the light flow, praying to an unknown force above, please, let me have a main element. Main element syncers have better futures, they can do anything and have it easy. Sub-element syncers have to rely on their own creativity and imagination to do things! I'm lazy! Give me the lazy path! My light flowed straight down the fire path, barely flowing into any of the other paths. I got excited. It flowed so far down the fire path that it immediately went straight down the yang fire path with little to no deviation towards the yin side at all. I was less excited. When the light was almost at the very tip of yang fire, it suddenly deviated entirely into the lightning path. My heart, stomach, guts, everything sank into a pit. A number popped up at the top of the trigrams, indicating my score with an icon beside it indicating my path.

"Oh my!" the examiner stood up and exclaimed, his jaw dropping almost to the floor and glasses nearly falling off his face. Yeah, that's a new one you've never seen before huh?

"What's wrong?" the nearby examiners looked towards us, some even getting up to walk over to see what was happening that could make an examiner jump up in shock. Surely it's a genius student right?

I covered my face with my left hand and lowered my head in embarrassment.

"I-it's a score of 999" the examiner shouted.

Out of 1,000 almost perfect, the highest of all time.

"What? Let me see!" "No me!" "Get out of the way!" the examiners around started rushing towards us, even the examinees behind me waiting for their turn were shocked and started talking amongst themselves about how amazing of a genius I must be.

"It's 999!" the examiner at the next table over was the fastest to rush to us and saw the number right away and shouted "of.. lightning?"

Everyone froze in their tracks. Even the students at the very back of the line became silent. The silence was so audible that I could almost hear someone's stomach growling in hunger from waiting in line to be examined all morning. My face was hot like I had just stepped into an 80 degrees Celsius sauna room, the head rising from my neck all the way up to my forehead. Smoke must be rising out of me. I wanted to disappear into the ground. In fact, I prayed that a sinkhole would open up and swallow me and remove me from the world. The silence was so palpable that my skin started to crawl.

A clap could be heard from behind the stage.

"Congratulations on passing the first part of the examination!" A deep, elderly voice resonated through the examination area, permeating the silence with a sense of authority, giving me a little comfort.

An elderly, bald man wearing a monocle appeared from behind the stage. He was hunched over but still about 180cm tall, how tall must he be when he was straight? His face was full of wrinkles in every spot but lacked any semblance of a beard. He looked like a shar pei.

"Dean!" my examiner called out.

I'm sorry for calling you a shar pei.

"Hahaha" the dean man bellowed "this is the first time I have ever seen a score this high, you must be very gifted. It's too early to welcome you to the East Lake academy, but congratulations on passing the first exam!"

"T-thank you" I turned to him and bowed slightly, head still down. My embarrassment still weighing me down, yelling at me to flee.

"Go back now and wait until the first exams are over, come back in a few days when we start the second examinations. I'm sure you'll do fine, but just for good measure" he snapped his finger and a cup of liquid appeared before me "have a drink of this before you go, it'll help you relax and concentrate your energy."

"Thank you, Dean" I bowed again and chugged the cup of liquid. It disintegrated in my hand as I ran off the stage back to the inn I was staying at, running away from my problems like I tried so hard to fight those last few minutes.

"Dean, was that... d-did you just..." one of the examiners stuttered behind me as I fled.

"We have to nurture our young ones." The dean said softly, his gaze following me until I disappeared from sight.

I would learn much later down the line that this was a cup of the dean's famous herbal tea. It was so famous that not even the richest people in the world could buy it with money, a cup of it was so hard to make that it took the dean 5 years to extract the essences needed and that was just the extraction part. And the effects? To untangle the overflowing resonance and organize a syncer's paths clearly, essentially laying or fixing a foundation for a syncer to which they can add on their experiences to grow far stronger than anyone else.