In their first martial competition, my students were pitted against Yan’s students.

Yan’s class was somewhat unique among those that I had seen. Usually, a Master would choose students with matching blessings and complementary affinities when possible. For example, Grandmaster Ning and Master Sun had chosen our class to all have comprehension blessings, and one of the classes we fought against only had students with elemental incarnation blessings.

In contrast, Yan had chosen students with wildly different blessings. One student could create an earth incarnation in the form of a large stone golem, another had a blessing that improved her stamina, and a third had one related to herbalism.

It took me a while to understand why he would choose such an odd mixture of students, but when I saw him writing in a notebook after class one day, I understood. He wasn’t focusing on having the best class possible. He was studying how these different blessings could be used. His plan wasn’t too dissimilar to things I had done in the past. He was giving up short-term gains for information that would be valuable in the long term.

Still, when I compared his class to mine, his had a clear advantage. Two members of his team had blessings that none of my students were able to match. Those two could easily defeat anyone my class had to offer. However, if the students paired off to fight in just the right combination, my class did have a small chance to eke out a victory.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t provide them with any advice. They had to decide their strategy by themselves.

In the end, it was close, but my class made two fatal mistakes.

The first was allowing Leng JunWei to fight first. He had been cultivating lightning qi and was working to develop his calligraphy talent in a way that would help him as a talisman artist. He was the second-best fighter in my class. Against him, Yan’s class sent their weakest fighter. Leng JunWei won, but it was a strategic defeat as my class had wasted a valuable asset.

The other mistake was saving Jin ZiHan for last. She was forced to fight against Yan’s most ferocious student, Cai XiaoYu, a girl blessed with seemingly endless stamina.

Jin ZiHan had dedicated herself to her studies and was making excellent progress. Her innate comprehension of both cultivation and fighting would have made anyone jealous. However, when faced with an opponent with bottomless reserves of stamina and who had trained relentlessly to be able to cultivate while fighting to give herself an endless supply of qi, Jin ZiHan had no chance.

It wasn’t just that the girl had more stamina when fighting. Her stamina blessing also meant that she could train longer and harder than anyone else. While Jin ZiHan might have a better innate talent for fighting, the girl she fought had trained relentlessly and was far superior. Jin ZiHan gave it her best effort, but the result was a foregone conclusion.

After saying goodbye to Yan, I gathered my team and led them back to our classroom.

As I stood in front of them, I became worried about their mental states. Losing their first competition would have been hard on them. I had hoped for them to get a win that would buoy their confidence, but a loss might have been for the best.

“Sorry, we failed you, teacher.” Leng JunWei bowed to me.

I looked at him carefully. “Did you not learn anything from the fight, then?”

“I—” He stammered while trying to respond.

I looked at each of my students one by one.

“This was only your first test. There will be many more to come. There were two fighters in the team you faced that I knew you would be unable to defeat as you are now. If you won, it would have only been luck. Winning the competition wasn’t the goal. Learning from it was. In the future, you will need to face teams where every single member is as strong as those two. Accept your defeat today as a lesson and use it to push yourselves forward.”

I reached into my storage bag, took out five library tokens, and tossed one to each of my students.

“Go to the library and find a new technique. Starting next week, you will begin cultivating your true cultivation techniques. While you are allowed to use those tokens as you wish, I highly recommend that each of you consider picking up a two- or three-element cultivation technique. That would be the best way to put your affinities to use. If you already have a cultivation technique you’re happy with, you can look at martial techniques available.”

I tossed everyone a pill to disperse their current cultivation.

“You do not need to rush your cultivation, but try to ascend to Martial Disciple 2 as soon as possible. That will allow us to move forward with your combat training.”

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As the term wore on, I followed Instructor Sun’s method of fading into the background and only visiting my class once a week to give advice. They needed to learn to rely on themselves and their classmates.

Instead, I spent almost all my time improving my soul.

I had chosen to walk the path of the Universalist, but I wasn’t going to confine myself to a narrow path presented by the academy. Using the books I had purchased from the System as a baseline, I began studying all four paths anew. As I did, I cultivated the Path through the Silent Night technique.

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I did this to create a second layer of defense. My core ‘self’ was in the center of my soul. Around it, a small fence was in its earliest stages of construction, and outside this fence, I sowed fields focused on a desire to understand all the varied paths of the world. In the future, I would try to move my desire to learn alchemy out of my core area and into these fields.

In a narrow strip of land at the edge of my soul fields, I was beginning to grow a garden focused on my chosen path. I had said it was Universalism, but it wasn’t the Universalism of this world. I would follow the Mohist path from the Mozi, one of the books I received from the System. The knowledge and philosophies of this world would only be used as supplements.

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During my class’s second martial competition, they faced off against a team that was ill-suited to martial combat. The members of this team were more skilled in herbalism than martial combat. Once they advanced in their professions, they would possess deadly trump cards in the form of toxic plants and powders, but at this stage, they lacked any such advantages.

With my class’s dedication and focus on advancing their skills, they were able to easily win. I was happy for them. They needed this victory to boost their confidence, but I couldn’t help a twinge in my soul as I looked at the other class leaving dejectedly.

What had that other class learned in this fight? What did they gain from it? They learned that their martial skills were not good enough to be competitive, but they would have already known that. Had this just been an exercise in humiliation for them?

This feeling came from the newly budding areas of my soul. It was encouraging me to look at things from a Mohist perspective. I should care about all the students in the school, not just my own. I could have ignored this feeling, but I wanted to see where it would lead me.

Caring about the other students didn’t mean having my students throw fights, far from it. My class should always do their best. If they won, they won. If they lost, they lost. The victories and defeats weren’t what was important. Learning was. So, from this point of view, the problem wasn’t that the other class had lost. The problem was that they didn’t appear to have learned anything from their defeat.

I had always felt that the Academy was set up under a Legalist framework. There were clear rewards for succeeding in the martial competitions and Trials, and there were equally clear punishments for failure on a given task. No one had ever questioned the hows and whys of the ways I accomplished the tasks I was assigned. They only cared that it got done.

This could easily be seen at the end of my Martial Disciple term. They wanted us to advance through Martial Master as quickly as possible. When doling out rewards, the school didn’t care how that happened, only that it did.

However, I was coming to learn that a lot of rewards were handed out at the sole discretion of the instructor. So, while the school may be built upon a Legalist framework, could I build my class upon a Mohist one? What would that look like?

When we returned to the classroom, I looked at my students carefully. I decided not to praise their combat performance. They had won, but they hadn’t performed exceptionally. Their opponents had just been weak.

“What did you learn today?”

The question confused them, and no one had a good answer. They had been trying to win, not learn.

“From now on, you will have an opportunity to gain two library tokens during each martial competition. The first is for learning something new during your fight. The second is for your opponent learning something new during the fight.”

I looked at each of them with a soft smile. “You need to learn to fight. In the outside world, when you fight, all that matters is your survival. But this is a school. While you are here, your most important task is learning. Take risks. Try to be innovative. If you lose, it doesn’t matter. It is far better to lose while learning something new than to win and learn nothing.”

This sudden change caused a bit of confusion, but these students were blessed to be scholars. They were built for study and learning.

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This desire to alter the approach my class was taking during the martial competitions was partly spurred on by the small Mohist garden at the edge of my soul, but the areas built under the influence of all four paths and a desire for understanding had been a much larger influence. I wanted to see what would happen if I changed the rules.

Even then, these new influences were like subtle whispers. They encouraged me to look at the world differently, but the protections on my soul meant they could be easily ignored if I so desired. I needed to be careful to ensure it stayed that way, but so far, I had been impressed by the effects of my cultivation technique.

As the years passed, my students won some fights and lost some fights. After every match, they became stronger.

Jin ZiHan was the real standout. She cultivated a water-wood-fire technique. This choice was slightly odd since her highest affinity was with metal, but she didn’t feel a need to explain it to me. Perhaps she just didn't want people to think she was a refiner. In the profession classes, she studied both herbalism and alchemy. I considered stepping in to personally teach her alchemy, but the instructor provided by the school was decent enough that I didn’t feel the need.

Leng JunWei was cultivating a wind-lightning technique and was quickly developing a powerful ability with talismans. His calligraphy blessing didn’t help him with this directly, so it took him time to learn, but if he continued his studies, he would be a powerful cultivator one day.

The others did their best, but they didn’t have the natural advantages of these two and slowly fell behind.

After their last martial competition as Disciples, I laid out their final assessment. They had two weeks to advance as far as they could in the Martial Master realm. They could use any strategy they wished, but they could only use tools and items created by someone in the class.

While I hadn’t been allowed to tell them about the test beforehand, I had arranged things to give them a fair shot.

Using the understanding I had gained from Emperor Li’s alchemy books, I had developed a simplified version of a Rank 2 Qi Gathering Pill that most Disciples with the right affinities should be able to concoct. This didn’t have all the strength of a true Rank 2 pill, and it certainly didn’t have the advantages of a Meridian Builder Pill, but it was better than nothing.

After Jin ZiHan made a suitably profound advancement during one of the competitions, I had rewarded her with a portion of spirit fire for the Cold Mountain Fire and this pill recipe. I had also subtly encouraged her to learn to make Perfect pills to relieve hunger and the need for sleep.

Another student in the class had learned to make a decent quality Rank 1 Qi Gathering Formation, and with Jin ZiHan’s pills, they had more advantages in the final test than most students at the Academy did.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have anyone with a blessing related to cultivation techniques. They spent so long working on building decent meridians that they didn’t make too much progress by the end of their two weeks.

Jin ZiHan had reached Martial Master 4, Leng JunWei had reached Martial Master 3, and the others had only barely reached Martial Master 1.

To Instructor Yuan, this was a solid success, and she was happy about the overall results of my class, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. There had to have been a way to push them further.

It was too late for regrets in this life, but I would see what I could do better in the future.