And so the next day the entire cohort assembled for the first proper day of learning now that they have been sorted into the different tiers.
They assembled in a room within the mansion, a large amphitheatre. The tier one students sat at the bottom of the semi circle surrounding Master Sheng. This is because it was a smaller circumference and so had less seats; those seats remain competitive.
In Tier One, the strongest tier, only five seats were filled though more stood empty, reserved for those who proved themselves worthy from the other tiers. But as of then there were only five filled: Hou, Hamar, Lan Qiang, Tianmo, and finally Jin. This was a large difference between the class of-
'Why's there so many people?! I only remember a few dozen people. Were there multiple people getting tested at the same time? I did see Master Sheng create clones yesterday....Have I never actually seen the real Master Sheng? I don't know how many but this must be... thousands!'
There was a reason for this though, Master Sheng was assigned the 'lower tier' students. Those from small backgrounds. Weak families. No families. Perhaps little potential, the outcasts of larger families. So of the thousands of students, there were only a few really talented ones.
So though he should have had more talented students, they were purposefully bringing together those the academy expected to fail.
Then above that tier was a large circumference few rows of seats containing tier two students. Those that wore the purple trimmed robes. Then above them a huge amount of rows of even larger circumferences containing those with red trimmed robes. Then only a few again rows of the largest circumference containing the few yellow detailed robes.
The tiers formed a pyramid: a handful of elites at the bottom, a massive sea of mediocrity in the middle, and a scant few strugglers at the top.
Master Sheng waited for everyone to filter into the amphitheatre and then shouted out, his voice reverberating through the crowd. the cacophony of everyone speaking quickly becoming silent. Only the rustling of clothes and sound of breathing remained,
"Welcome all. Now if you've joined the academy you must have some talent. To pass the joining test you all must have qualities that allowed you to get this far. But I don't know that is the same for everyone, and I want you all to remember this one thing-"
Hou looked around, seeing the massive crowd of diverse people. It was more people than Hou had ever seen in one room. Yes, he was in large cities before but nothing like this. Hou took in the amazing silence and saw everyone's concentration and looked back towards the front,
He turned around and wrote on a small chalkboard in front of him. As he did, the massive chalkboard behind him followed and wrote what he wrote. The sound of the chalk scratching on the chalkboard grating everyone's ears and he wrote a phrase out,
'Your roots are more important than your leaves'
He underlined it and the chalk snapped,
"Your roots are more important than your leaves. That is what I want you all to remember. If you have weak roots, you will fall. A strong foundation will allow you to grow stronger than ever. Keeping with the tree metaphor, big roots will allow the tree to access more nutrients. Yes some might not need big roots if people feed them, but if you were assigned to me you do not have those carers."
He slammed down on his pedestal,
"If you are here, you likely don't have the large support network that lets you flourish. And that's why I'm going to teach you all to grow a foundation. Grow those roots that let you tunnel deep and find those nutrients!"
He looked around and started to pace around the stage,
"I want you all to stop growing your leaves and bearing fruit. Right now a strong wind will topple you, I want you all to focus back on the basics. The basics that will allow you to surpass your limits!"
He breathed out and returned to the pedestal and picked up a new piece of chalk, then started writing onto his chalkboard.
"The very basics of basics. The Dao, the world and laws. This is the bare bones of everything and I want you all to really understand it."
He drew a box. And in the box he wrote out different concepts. Death. Life. Plant. Animal.
"This box is the Dao. It is everything and it contains everything. It is the world and it maintains the world. And inside you see daos. Think of them as a microcosm of the larger macrocosm. Each dao is a reflection of the Dao."
He picked up an eraser and got rid of everything. Then he redrew the animal dao but larger.
"This is the animal dao. You might've seen people use techniques like yesterday that imitated animals, commonly those mystical animals like dragons. What are they doing. Why do they do that? They do that to imitate and bring themselves, no align themselves to the animal dao. Bring forth its power in their technique."
Hou sat there as Master Sheng started to explain and his eyes dilated. He thought to himself,
'This is exactly what I need. I've been going through all these different paths and lives without a strong foundation. I understand now why Mo Huai wanted me to go here. And Master Sheng is the perfect teacher, he acknowledges that we might or might now know, but still explains.'
Hou leant forward and focused entirely on what Master Sheng was saying,
"The animal dao. That is just one path of many. But each path is an infinitely large universe with an infinite amount of different applications. For example the animal dao contains the animals life cats, dogs, horses. But what else does the animal dao contains?"
He pointed to a random person,
"You. What does it contain, you cannot say another animal though?"
"Ummm...."
Master Sheng shook his head, "Think about it, next!" He pointed to another person.
"Paws?"
Master Sheng nodded, "yes perfect. Next! But you cannot say a body part."
He pointed towards another person who quickly said, "food? L-like because you can eat animals?"
Master Sheng smiled and wrote down food onto his chalk board, "now that's a good idea, think outside of the box. Now you, thought of something yet?"
He once again asked the first person he asked, "...what about, no. I don't have anything."
"No, say it. You hesitated, you have an answer but are afraid it's wrong. Cast out your fear, and answer me."
"...okay..." He took a large breath and answered while wincing, "life?"
Master Sheng slammed his pedestal he was behind,
"Perfect! That is EXACTLY the answer I wanted. Now let me expand why. Life is under and inside the animal dao. But if we think back, wasn't life it's own dao?"
And so he erased the whole diagram and drew a new square. And then a square inside that. And a square inside that.
"So there's the Dao, the animal dao, the life dao. But inside the life dao is....the animal dao! So how can that be? How can the life dao be inside the animal dao if the animal dao is inside the life dao?"
Hou started to get absorbed into the lesson; he's heard all of this before. He's been told all of this. But he's never been taught it, he's never had the environment to really learn. He didn't need it to survive in practical scenario, this was him learning for real this time. He squeezed his fists and he began to smile.