Aki dismissed Passionate Seeker and began his flight back towards his residence. He gazed idly at the landscape around him while musing about his findings.

Ostensibly, Aki’s tour of the inner sect departments had been for the purpose of familiarising himself with the inner sect, but in the end he had learned more about was how core disciples in the sect operated. Elders seemed to have very little to do with the actual day-to-day management of the sect, leaving matters in the hands of their core disciples while focusing on their own pursuits. Despite this, the disciples did not have much authority, only being able to follow orders.

The core disciples seemed to be stuck in an awkward spot, balancing the roles of worker and student. A student is always subservient to their teacher, whereas a worker must be a lot more proactive. Aki mused that they were rather like internships of a sort, though not necessarily the good sort.

The elders just dump their work on the disciples, then disappear off without asking details about how they are doing or giving more precise instruction. The disciples don’t even receive authority to make many decisions at all on their own! The elders are just handing off a bunch of work, saying “Good Luck!”, offering no explanations, then disappearing.

Aki’s internal ranting about the elders suddenly ground to a halt, as he realised a concerning matter.

Wait a moment, isn’t that pretty close to how I have been treating my own disciples so far?

Aki landed onto the ground and began to pace around, walking a circle around a rather nice pine tree. He started to analyse the matter. If it was true, it would be a matter of grave concern.

Am I becoming just like one of the unreliable elders at this sect? Unacceptable! That can’t be true! Let’s look through the situation. If I go through the points one by one, I’ll be able to debunk this farce!

He twirled around triumphantly, changing the direction of his pacing. First point: have I dumped practically all of my duties onto my disciples?

Aki tried to see the matter from various different perspectives, but inevitably he arrived at a single conclusion. He slumped against the tree, not able to deny the reality of the situation

I totally have! I’m totally slacking off while giving away all my work! How could this be! After a moment of moping, he resumed his pacing as he continued the examination. That was only strike one after all.

Ok, moving on, second point. Have I neglected to ask my disciples how they are doing with their work, just leaving them to their tasks without any oversight? Have I granted them authority to act as they see fit?

Aki thought of Passionate Seeker who gave him periodic reports every day, which he would then remark on. He had also granted her a lot of leeway to make decisions, but was she actually aware she could use that? Still, it seemed a decent enough effort. Ok, I think that’s one point in my favour.

However, Aki could not ignore that he had not spared much attention for Spring Melt who was currently overseeing matters in the outer sect, the very place he was going to reform first. Yeah, I’ve kinda neglected her, haven’t I? Here I have been, plotting reforms without even asking the very person running the place for her opinion. My projects with the other disciples are still relatively new, so I can’t really judge how I’ve acted with those yet. Let’s call this one a draw.

Changing the direction of his pacing, Aki moved onto the last main point. Have I given mysterious tasks without explaining the reasoning behind them? Aki had always felt that people worked best when they understood what they were working for, so this was somewhat important to him. As he reflected on his actions in the sect so far, he had to grimace.

Yeah, I haven’t been doing this too well either, have I? Whenever I do offer an explanation, it’s usually been an excuse I made up on the spot to cover up the real reason. Other times I offer no reason at all for my orders. Still, part of that is due to the need maintain my cover, I can’t act too suspiciously. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s a point in my favour.

With the facts laid out, Aki slammed his head against the tree. He couldn’t deny the truth and had to admit it. I haven’t been acting like a proper elder at all! How could this be? I’ve totally become an absolute no-good-elder, just like the others!

However, it only took a few more slams of his head against the tree for Aki to beat down the gloom. He rose up out of his depression, a new determination gradually starting to burn within.

People develop by realizing their mistakes and overcoming them! If I have not been a proper elder so far, then I’ll just have to start being one now!

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His resolve set, Aki looked around and noticed the tree now had a little path ground around it. He shook himself out of the reverie, then flew off towards his residence, brimming with a new resolve.

His rapid mood recovery was helped along quite a bit as Aki remembered one of the most important duties of elders. At least I’ve been teaching my disciples well! I think my lessons have been rather good, actually. Everyone is convinced of my cultivation genius! He hummed cheerfully the rest of the way.

After preparing some tea, Aki retired to plan in his courtyard. A proper planning session needs tea and a fitting setting! It would not do to brood in the darkness of his room, no pleasant plans could be formed in such a place.

Let’s see, how can I improve the situation for my disciples? I’m not really capable of handling many tasks by myself yet, so I can’t decrease their workload much. Some of those projects, especially the one Summer Warden is working on, are simply too important to be left to the wayside.

What I can offer, however, is a listening ear to any troubles, and the authority to grant more resources should they be needed. The best course of action should then be to every now and then call them over to ask how their work is progressing, and also to make sure they understand that I have given them much authority to see to matters as they see fit.

I’m not sure how much of an explanation I can offer to them at the moment as to my purposes. At this point making cultivators here have a better work-life balance is just my personal fancy; I don’t have any actual data showing it’s a better method.

I’ll need to perform some experiments on how changing the schedules of disciples would affect their cultivation progress, and then move on from there depending on the results. I think I can offer explanations on some more minor matters; I’ll have to try that.

Then there’s the matter of team building I’ve been thinking on. All the disciples in this sect are very individual, viewing their peers as competition and their elders as someone to be obeyed. Even when I’ve seen my disciples meet each other, they haven’t really chatted or anything. I wonder how I could make them into a proper team?

Considering all these factors, Aki arrived at a singular solution, or at least the first step to one. It was time to arrange the first proper sect development council meeting.

It took Aki a few days to arrange the council meeting. He made enquiries on the progress of his disciple’s projects so that everything would be in place for the time of the meeting. He decided to hold the meeting in his courtyard, at his tea table. This was solely for the reason that it was the only place with enough seats for everyone to be able to attend comfortably. Eventually the time for the meeting arrived.

It was the first time Aki was seeing all of his disciples at the same time, which made for a curious spectacle. They treated each other rather formally, offering greetings to their elders. To his surprise, Aki noted that Winter Gale was treated as the eldest sister of them all. Internally he had been viewing her as a bit of a youngling. I suppose that is rather wrong of me. There’s just something so teddy-bear like about her... Offering a mental note of apology, he resolved to fix the matter.

Spring Melt had offered to prepare the tea for them all, which Aki was initially alarmed at, but the tea he was served was not as thin as he had feared. Aki had seen that she had fiddled with some sort of weave while preparing it. Wait a minute, is she actually discovering an [Infinite Tea] technique? Faintly concerned, Aki sipped his tea while observing the disciples who had all now sat down.

Spring, Summer and Winter, huh. I’ve heard that Dao names are often given to disciples by their masters, so I guess the original sect leader liked his sets. We’re just missing one, who know how long that one will remain in closed door cultivation.

None of them were conversing with each other, just silently sipping at their tea, waiting for Aki to start the meeting. Winter Gale seemed aloof as ever, pointedly not carrying a bag full of spirit fruits. Perhaps this was due to the presence of Summer Warden next to her. The progress on his project had been promising and he seemed eager to announce his findings once the time came.

Spring Melt was absent-mindedly frowning at her tea while fiddling with some sort of weave. It seemed to carry the Qi of water and fire, and something else Aki was not able to identify. Has she managed to isolate tea Qi? Passionate Seeker seemed attentive as ever, notepad at the ready. Aki decided that it was time to start the meeting.

“Greetings disciples. The purpose of tonight’s meeting is to form plans on the development of the outer sect. Disciples, do you know why I have chosen to call all of you here?”

Nobody offered an explanation immediately, as everyone was busy thinking quietly to themselves. Eventually Summer Warden chose to speak.

“Master, as my duties have nothing to do with the outer sect, are you perhaps planning on giving us all a lesson during this meeting?”

“Close, but not quite, disciple. There is indeed a lesson I am pursuing with this meeting, but that lesson is that you all do have something to offer for the development of the outer sect. You are all talented disciples of the sect with varying experiences and perspectives on matters, would I not be a fool to not include all of you in the decision-making process? I am sure you all have much to offer.”

Aki rose up to stand, adopting a proper lecturing posture.

“I have recently realised that I have not really included all of you, my dear disciples, in the decision-making process of the sect as much as I should have. From now on, I want all of you to tell me more actively about your views on different matters, not only as students, but also as co-workers.”

Aki gestured towards his students, his hand moving past them one by one.

“I am the leader of this sect, and you all are my disciples. You all are an integral part of running the sect for me, so from now on...”

Aki paused for a moment to give his speech some more dramatic flair, then glanced back at his pupils with a fatherly grin.

“I am declaring this group as my sect development council!”

The declaration seemed to stun everyone for a moment; bearing such a title was surely a great honour. Aki sat back down, adopting the manner of a committee chairman.

“Now, it is time to start the outer sect policy debate. I look forward to hearing all your views, disciples.”