Snake 22, Year 8693 of the Grand Wulin Era, Avarius Goldscale

We gathered everyone and marched home to the Myriad Existences Sect. The strongest people,the Mana Sea Cultivators were positioned at the compass points, with Regulus in the very center, guarding the weakest people, those who weren't cultivators. The cultivators at 5th layer Mist Sea and above made a large protective ring around those weaker than themselves, and it was under this protection that I'd have previously thought to be extravagant that we returned to the Sect.  General Gramps flew ahead of us, apparently sure we could protect ourselves, and excited to meet the higher-ups of the Myriad Existences Sect.

That General Gramps seemed to have scooped up Aelia and stowed her in the same ring he'd stored the family of our new sect members, while the Mana Sea Stage cultivator soldiers she'd lead to fight us looked sheepish. My young self wasn't sure why, but looking back, it makes a lot of sense, because even if they were obviously coerced into doing Aelia's dirty work they had still done it, and it likely weighed on their consciences and their pride that they'd been used as someone's private tools instead of the defense of their home and people they'd signed up for. See, especially early into their careers, soldiers don't like that "protect my home" is often interpreted by their superiors to be "Needlessly attack or antagonize someone else's home for political reasons." That's reasonable and natural, because sapient beings don't like to be aggressor unless they feel like they're justified in doing so, and even in the most justified war, the horrors of the battlefield, the horrors of taking another thinking feeling life, of watching your friends and comrades die, etch themselves into your brain, and so often, soldiers never get the therapy necessary to move on with their lives or get better. Sometimes that's due to not being able to bear the cost, sometimes due to their own stubborn insistence that they are fine,but most of all due to the worries of their superiors that it would break the conditioning that binds them so tightly to the armies they serve in.

It makes no sense, especially when therapy has developed over the ages into myriads of methods that vary by effectiveness and cost, and should be offered to anyone that needs it, no matter what. Even in mortal worlds, therapy is often readily available, how can societies whose way of life can lead to terrifying, eternal trauma  lasting for unlimited amounts of years and drive people with immense creative and destructive power to do things they should not , not have very advanced methods to deal with trauma and mental illness? In a world where someone with sufficient power can twist reality to match their misconception of it, it becomes even more imperative to treat those whose mental states twist their realities, and that's not even bringing basic compassion and the universalizing moral truth that no one should suffer without good reason into it.

At that young age, I didn't understand this, didn't understand their reasons, didn't really understand people all that well, even with my intellect and knowledge. Some things are just learned through experience, especially when you're the kind of person I  was and am, and people, no matter their species, are a strange thing you spend much of your life learning to interact healthily and nicely with. I could go deeper into my thoughts on the nature of sapient beings, but especially as you're seeing me through the lens of my young self, I don't believe that would be appropriate. I will at a later point when it's relevant, but for now that aspect of philosophy is not interesting or relevant.

After around two weeks (we went slower so the mortals could keep up), we arrived back at the Sect, and we found places for everyone to live and cultivate. During  got to know a lot about the soldiers and their families, and that Felix kid, you know, Regulus's little brother? He was around 5, and looked creepily like a small clone of his brother. He apparently thought Mingzhou, Alex,and I were even cooler than his brother. He spent half his time following us around, asking us to show off our moves or teach him things or help him take care of an orphaned young bear whose parents had been killed by some terrified hunters when they stumbled into the bears' territory looking for food and the bears had reacted badly.

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The bears in question hadn't been Magic Beasts quite yet, so the hunters hadn't felt super guilty, but they'd been looking to find a home for the unfortunate infant, and had met our group on our way back to the sect. It helped that, despite being a baby bear, its parents had been relatively close to metamorphosing into sapient Magic Beasts, and had been at the peak of Mist Sea, so their baby was the size of a miniature pony(around 28 inches tall) and very talented, social, and intelligent for a bear cub. He showed signs of being an Inferno Bear, from the fire dominated section of the local forest, so this made sense, but still, all that was pretty impressive, given he was half a year old at most. Felix took to him very quickly, as did Regulus's Birds, and soon Felix could be seen riding around on the tiny red-and-orange furred bear, feeding him meat, fruits, some vegetables (which the bear wasn't fond of), cheese (a big fan), bread(an obsession, probably why Felix later became renowned for his baking skills), and talking to and about him. At night, Felix could often be found cuddling the bear, which he'd named Cinere after the ashes that would emerge when he got excited and his feet burst aflame.

Cinere, for his part, quickly grew attached to many of the people around him, but especially Felix. He defined his  personal territory, his critical space to protect, as Felix himself. He wasn't necessarily aggressive to to people who were around Felix, but people who looked in any way to his ursine sensibilities as if they might hurt the kid were going to get an aggressive grumbling roar at minimum and a mauling at worst.This nearly led to a bad situation when some of the other similarly aged relatives of the soldiers picked on Felix for being so obsessed with the cub, but the situation was quickly deescalated by none other than myself. When we arrived at the Sect, Cinere and Felix refused to be separated in any way, so accommodations for a young bear were added to the room Felix would be staying in.

We settled back in to the sect, and as the new people settled, there was atmosphere of peace and contentment, everyone finding the places they wanted to be and the roles they wanted to play. As for myself, I just wanted to rest and get back to studying. That peaceful childhood, where I could do purely as I wanted and had little responsibility beyond self improvement, would come to an end soon enough, and I knew that, so I'd decided to enjoy it as much as I could.

As days and weeks passed, fading into months, and the wheel of the year turned slowy, I'd make sure to spend my time learning, teaching, researching, and helping, as was my want. I pretended that I was annoyed when others asked for this or that bit of knowledge or can you please help with this project, but I really enjoyed it, and very few people  in the sect couldn't see through the somewhat harsh exterior to how I actually felt. For their parts, Alex and Mingzhou did similar things, but those two were always emotionally open and better with people than I was, so it made sense that if I, the awkward, shy, dorky, cold-seeming dragon kid was doing that, my two social butterfly friends would be helping people as well. Alex was even more driven than I was, always working himself to exhaustion for the sake of others, and for his own improvement.

His parents talked to him several times about taking good care of himself, too, and knowing he was incredibly stubborn about it, would enlist Mingzhou and I to make sure that he got time to well, be a kid, relax and enjoy things before responsibility became an absolute imperative instead of something chosen. It seems almost silly that we were so serious about it so young.But, looking back it stuck,  and for good reason. Even to this day, despite being as powerful and important as we are now, we still take time to make sure we balance responsibility and desire, enjoyment and work, happiness and duty, like we did then. It's important to enjoy life and be able to have others help carry your burdens, no matter if you're a farmer or a soldier or a ruler or a god or even just a humble artist.