They reached Yuxan’s office only a few minutes later, having only crossed paths with a few other instructors— all of which had the presence of mind to scurry out of the way at the… whatever it is they were watching. They didn’t understand, but one didn’t need to understand a trainwreck in motion to know that they really ought not to get pinned between the earth and crashing metal and metaphors he’d begun to lose track of.

The door swung open, and he let all that bleed from his mind as he stepped into the familiar space. “Yuxan.” Then, his eyes caught on the other people in the room. “Instructors Nin, Ceng. Guxi.” Outer Disciple Ohm Zhihu. He didn’t say the last one but he did let his gaze hover on her for just a moment too long. An acknowledgement— that he knew she was there, even if the others had no clue.

Guxi frowned. “That’s Councillor Qin

, Instructor Leng.”

“Call me Mingtian.”

She refused to rise to the bait. Better than the first time he'd talked with her, when she’d thrown around her spiritual pressure like a child throwing a tantrum, but then again… this was clearly far more serious than that had been. Before, he’d been a librarian with some minor skill for formations. Now… he was important. More important than he’d been before, at least.

That carried something. He narrowed his eyes. “Councillor, then. What’s the occasion? Surely I’ll see you tomorrow at the staff meeting.”

“I cancelled that,” she said with a wave of her hand, as if she had the power to do any such thing. Yuxan’s expression tightened ever so slightly, but he didn’t contradict her, which meant it was real. “I just wanted to inform you that some new rules needed to be created for the upcoming Applied Combat final examination. With how different things have become, I’m certain you understand.”

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“What rules?”

“Some simple changes. A prohibition on consumable formations in the duel portion. Their use is wildly unfair, and worse, unpredictable. They have the possibility to be deadly— no instructor could in good conscience stand by their use in duels that can already get rather dangerous without them.”

Suzhong rolled his eyes from where he stood beside Instructor Nin. “I told you before and I’m telling you again, they’re perfectly safe. Plus, nobody was ever hurt by a few small injuries anyways.” Nin just elbowed him in the side, and after a grumble or two, he did shut up… but, it’d already told him everything he needed to know.

In some ways, she was right. Unrestricted, formations could allow an otherwise balanced duel to become deadly. Yet, they offered as much in defense as they offered in offence— while it was patently obvious that Suzhong was just bloodthirsty, the use of formations properly managed would have been safe. It was a clearly political move.

There were any number of arguments he could have made. Some of them might have even been quite eloquent. Looking into Guxi’s eyes, though, seeing Jie’s slumped posture and Suzhong’s fuming anger carefully banked behind a respectfully dour look… he recognized the look of someone who’d won. It’d never been about the safety of students in the first place. She was holding something else over Yuxan— he wouldn’t reverse his ruling by mere words.

So if he couldn’t win, what was the point in even playing? Instead, he just smiled brightly. “Well, thank you for informing me. You didn’t need to, and I’m grateful for that.” Guxi blinked, momentarily taken aback— “and, that brings up something I’ve been meaning to mention. Now that you’re all here, I thought it’d be a good time to bring it up.” A pause— “I’m resigning.”

With that said, he just leaned back and watched the chaos unfold.