Lily pouted. Was she really so easy to read? She’d only… sat there half-present through the entire meal, dreaming of the possibility of becoming a cultivator. Alright, maybe she’d been a bit obvious… but did he really need to write his note like that!

Scribed onto the top of her daily worksheet, in Mr. Mingtian’s annoyingly perfect hand, a message for her— “don’t do anything stupid.” She wasn’t going to! “I know you were going to.” Okay maybe… “You’re not at the level of expertise yet to make that sort of formations. For Avyr, he needs to meditate on his path and set the foundation for what he wants to pursue in his cultivation before you could even make a formation for him, and right now anything you make would more likely hurt him than help. Much the same for you— remember that you’re an amateur formations master compared to the cultivators in the sect. If you want to build a formation that can raise either of you up a step, you need to improve greatly first.

“Furthermore, you’d be best served by waiting— competing against Qin Xinshi as a mortal will ensure you have the best possible showing. I wasn’t lying about that. That, and unlike Avyr, you don’t have the first step in your path already taken— if you can earn them, the treasures the sect will give you to raise your cultivation will probably complement each other greatly, something that Avyr won’t be able to take advantage of.

“Be as smart as I know you are.

“Leng Mintian.”

But…. repudiation of her plans as it might have been, it wasn’t entirely a dismissal. That much was obvious— instead of the usual worksheet, it was more a work packet,

seven whole pages stapled together, filled with delicious, delicious knowledge of formations. It would be hard— doing just one worksheet a day had already been somewhat tedious with her schooling, but seven? It would push her to the brink.

Such was the path of cultivation though. If Mr— no, if Master Mingtian asked it of her— if he trusted that she was able to keep up, then she would.

No matter what.

She refused to fail.

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………

“It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I can… see.” At least Mingtian’s note to her had been instructional— and, all the formations work had been rather enlightening despite how exhausted it’d made her. This, though? “I have no clue what he means.” She looked down at Avyr’s note— he’d gotten it after Master Mingtian’s second lecture, and resigned herself to just being baffled.

“Meditate on the nature of the transformations of your Self, and chart the course of your Path beneath the illumination of your Intent. Only then will you be ready.” A full week after he’d gotten it, Avyr clearly hadn’t made much progress at all. It must’ve been frustrating— he didn’t have anything as concrete

as her own course, cramming her head full of runes and connections and all the little things that made formations formations— no, instead he had to deal with this confusing mess.

As per the usual, they were spending their lunch period in the library. Unusually, they weren’t studying or doing anything— rather, Lily had been roped into… whatever this was, after Avyr had finally caved and told her about it. Frankly, she hadn’t thought that stupid obtuse instructions like this actually existed outside of bad media dramas.

“Hm…” she leaned back against the big cat, tapping her chin in contemplation. “Well, I don’t imagine you’ve just tried to do what it says? Self, Path, Intent. You should know yourself pretty well, and you know that you’ve been following the Writ of the Peerless Paw, so really all that’s left is Intent.”

“I don’t think that’s what it's asking. If it were, then it’d be a fair bit easier… no, I think it wants the Path to be the final node of the meditation— what is striven for. The problem is that it’s just so… nebulous. It could be anything. Literally anything— two core formation cultivators could be living under the same roof and have paths as wildly divergent as the stars in the sky. How do I know I’m correct?”

Lily shrugged. “Does it have to be correct? It’s only Shedding— I don’t think you can do a lot there anyways, so… so long as it's yours, what does it need to be perfect?” Avyr was silent for a long moment. “That or you could just ask Master Mingtian—”

She got pushed over for that one, and lost her Avyr-pillow privileges for the rest of the day. A shame— his fur was just so soft…

It had been funny.

Worth it though.