Mingtian had a devious plan.

  As it went— his weeks, by dint of how they'd been scheduled— he ended up back in the same room he’d taught in only a day prior as Yuxan gave a long-winded speech about the glory and greatness of their rather inglourious and thoroughly mediocre academy. “…cannot forget the contribution of our instructors, who have striven to make this semester another incredible one. According to what I’ve seen, this month has been one of the year’s best— our students, fresh and enthusiastic, and our capable staff canneling and transforming that into something marvelous…”

  The man wasn’t so crass as to actually say Mingtain was partly responsible for that, but given the looks he kept getting, and the seat of honor he’d been given, and… all the other many, many small little factors all combining, he could tell. A blind person could probably tell. Lily would probably be able to tell. Yuxan, for all he could be a right trickster under the right circumstance, wouldn’t know subtlety if it hit him in the face.

  “…encourage you to address any problems you’ve noticed, and assist one another in upholding the virtues of our academy and of East Saffron.” He bowed to light applause and finally— finally— vacated the stage. Which was almost worse— so long as he was rambling on, everyone was forced to sit there and respectfully watch in silence, but the moment he was finished, the mingling began. With the mingling, of course, came the politicking, and he most certainly did not look forward to that.

  Sighing, he stood, slipping into the forming crowd as fast as he could. Kaihe would almost certainly come to annoy him, and Suzhong would almost certainly come to annoy Kaihe, and Yuxan would try to butter him up, and Chaoshang would… no, better to escape that while he still had the chance. Such was the essence of his plan at least— there was, he knew, at least one reasonable person in the whole mess of squabbling fools.

  He slid up next to a small crowd, arms crossed as he simply… melted into the silence of the discussion. It wasn’t anything important, for the most part— merely an argument over resource allocation under the new restrictions— but compared to the sort of inane discussions that he had to put up with every day from the elite teachers, it was remarkably well-grounded in reality. So, he tried his best not to mind it too much.

  One of the younger teachers was arguing about creating a good foundation for students to grow off of, while another teacher he didn’t recognize was arguing that the older students needed more supports because their activities were more resource intensive in nature… and, the person he’d sought out for only mildly selfish reasons was arguing that if they really wanted to sort out proper resource distribution, they first needed to stop competing and start cooperating.

  It was pretty much exactly what he’d expected of Jie, but he found himself pleasantly surprised regardless. Everyone was ignoring him, sure, but still.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “You clearly don’t understand—” the latter of the debaters paused as he finally clocked the Mingtian’s presence, eyes widening slightly. “Oh.” He bowed, a slight thing— but a bow nonetheless. Clearly all Yuxan’s postering hadn’t been entirely useless, if he’d managed to get it through the skulls of the instructors that he was someone to be respected. Now, if only he’d wanted that in the first place… “Instructor Leng.”

  “Call me Mingtian. Leng isn’t my name.” Not something that most immortals had a problem with, unless they decided to start a clan… but he and Baixue, still, to this day, shared the surname. Despite everything…

  “Of course, Instructor… Mingtian.” Then, a gleam entered his eye, the sort of the gleam that Mingtian saw unfortunately often in what was, ostensibly, an academy for mortals. The gleam of someone who has an idea they thought was genius— “say, what do you think on the matter? You teach one of the elite classes, no? I’ve heard that Yuxan specifically recruited you out of recognition of your prodigious skills in the art of… refining, was it?”

  “Formations.” Mingtian leveled the man with an unimpressed look, so scathingly as to make him blush. He’d obviously known that— he wasn’t so dumb as to think that a mortal could possibly be a master refiner.

  Sure, he was probably the best refiner in the entire realm, but that was beside the point. Nobody knew that. The man was only caught off guard by his bluntness for a moment or two, recovering remarkably adroitly… for a mortal, at least. “Of course, of course. Formations— you’ll have to forgive me, I’m a year down from yours, so I haven’t had much chance to observe your students in action. Though, I can’t help but be glad that my elites—” a subtle glare sent over to the woman he’d been arguing with— “will get to benefit from your classes next year.” Right. Definitely… “surely you understand— without the appropriate supplies, runecrafting must be next to impossible.”

  “Paper, and ink. And brushes, but the students can provide their own brushes.” It was really that simple— what else even would they need? They weren’t creating grand arrays or emplacing permanent formations— those, regrettably, were outside the purview of a single year course on the matter. Perhaps if they’d been in Foundation Establishment or above… “as for my opinion,” he continued before either of them could crow over their victory— “I think that Jie was insightfully cutting with his remark on the true nature of your debate.”

  Everyone in the group turned to Jie at that, the small man gulping at the suddenly pressing attention. “Um… I just…”

  Luckily for Jie, he didn’t have to finish his sentence.

  Unluckily for Jie, the distraction only made it worse.

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  Discord.