Alex spent the next six months suppressing the memories of his past lives as he attended school and waiting for his cultivation training to begin.

First year students were placed in a separate building which was constructed like a large playground. The students were constantly shuffled around as the staff examined each student and taught them the discipline and focus that would be required for cultivation. During this time the children were kept from forming any meaningful friendships. At the end of those six months spring came and the children entered the second year classes.

At the beginning of their first full year of school the second year students were sorted into groups based on their expected talent in cultivation. The students were grouped A through F. Alex was placed into the E group. Alex patiently waited until it was time for their first cultivation lesson.

“Alright class. At this stage there aren’t any special methods for cultivating. You just need to focus on the world around you and try to start drawing in spirit energy. You may begin.”

Alex closed his eyes and began meditating. As he cleared his mind he gradually began to sense the spirit energy surrounding him once he had expanded his senses as far as they would go he began to draw the energy in.

The classroom was particularly rich in spirit energy so Alex focused his efforts on the most refined fragments surrounding him. The dense slivers of spirit energy slowly moved toward him. Each time a new sliver began orbiting his soul he reached out for another. Alex had managed to capture ten spirit energy fragments before his instructor called an end to the lesson.

Alex couldn’t help but smile. In his life as the Library Master he had needed a week before he could collect a single fragment. It had taken him almost twenty years to reach the second stage of the first realm. If it hadn’t been for the protection of his friends and his instructor he would have been kicked out of the monastery long before that point.

As Alex he should be able to reach the second stage before the end of the school year. This was much closer to many of his peers in his previous life and the fragments he was collecting were much purer than anything he had tried to collect in his past life. If he wanted to he could go much faster but that would only leave him weaker in the long term.

“Now remember class, don’t cultivate without an instructor supervising you. If you go too quickly you will hurt yourself.” Alex smiled and responded with the obligatory “yes, instructor” before he packed up his things into his spatial ring and walked out to the buss that would take him home.

Once on the bus Alex began refining the spirit fragments he had collected. A naked soul has almost no spirit power so it was a slow process. Despite this it was worth doing. The more he refined his spirit fragments the more spirit power they would add to his soul’s spirit power as he entered the second stage. With each cycle of refining and recovery Alex felt his soul grow stronger.

As time went by it was rapidly becoming apparent that Alex was falling behind his classmates. His instructor used a chart to keep track of how many spirit fragments each student had collected. Considering the density of spirit energy in their classroom Alex wasn’t concerned with his numbers. Most of the students were doing poorly compared to his own numbers. Despite this Alex quickly became an outcast within his group.

“Alright class. Most of you are beginning to reach the point where you need to begin doing soul exercises. These will strengthen your soul and help you pass through the bottleneck for breaking into the second stage. We will all be focusing on these for the next two weeks.”

Alex patiently followed the instructions. Spending soul energy by refining spirit fragments strengthened the soul by giving it more energy. The soul had to recover the energy before it could continue which prevented the person from over cultivating. However, unlike refining soul exercises didn't expend soul energy. Instead it was like using one's hands to stretch bread dough into a thin film. Making it too thin would just damage it. This process also had the side effect of making one's soul energy more energetic.

Alex slowly increased the intensity of his soul exercises until the instructor told him to stop. By the third day Alex figured out how hard he could push himself without stopping during a single lesson.

Once the two weeks of mandatory soul exercises were finished Alex began to gradually catch up to his classmates until he reached the point where he was the top of the class with 999 spirit fragments.