He breathed in, and cycled his domain, letting the warm touch of infinite radiance soothe him as much as it always had. Standing there, for a moment, outside a classroom— his classroom, knowing that the fates of every single child in there was on his shoulders.

Perhaps that was a little too harsh— a memory of his time in the sects. But it was that same sort of harshness which made standard, to which he held himself to and always would— for their sakes, and for their sakes for his own.

He breathed out, and pushed open the classroom door.

His entry wasn’t very dramatic. The students didn’t even stop talking which— if they’d been cultivators, and he’d been their master, would have never happened. He frowned slightly. That would have to change, quickly enough… He stepped up to the front of the room, and its broad whiteboard— which was an awesome technology, he’d have to bring one back with him when he ascended back to the immortal realm— pondering the best way to start the class.

For a minute, he just stood there, gauging the reactions of the various different kids. Some of them were interested in him— the other first step cultivator, which was both the right attitude to have and also annoyingly competent, and the kid with clear offworlder descent also… Lily, though that was more a respect thing, and Avyr, for much the same reason. Not many else…

How to go about making an impact. To really get their attention…

So, he discretely summoned a brush from his spatial ring and started writing runes on the whiteboard. Stroke by elegant stroke, each one gathering just a little more attention from the class until— he formed a hand seal with his left hand and slammed the right one down onto the board. A cacophonous snap echoed throughout the room, causing a few students to yelp or jump in their seats. Even the more attentive ones jumped back a bit.

“Good morning, disci— students.” Students. He was supposed to call them students. “Some of you might recognize me as the assistant librarian from the precinct library across the way. You may call me Instructor Mingtian, or Master Mingtian, or in informal circumstances, Mingtian. Do not refer to me as Instructor or Master Leng.” He leveled a look at Lily, who flushed in embarrassment and shrunk down a bit. Good, maybe that’d finally get her to stop calling him Mr. Leng

. “I will be teaching you the profound and mystical art of formations. I do not usually teach. In fact, I rather dislike teaching— but while I’m here, I will expect only the utmost from you. I don’t particularly care what you do, so long as you give the entirety of your effort, each and every class.”

He took a deep breath, again leaning on his domain to hide his nervousness. What to even teach? It wasn’t like he’d made a curriculum or anything, and basic formations was so broad a topic as to essentially be meaningless. Perhaps… “can anyone here tell me what a formation is, at the very heart of itself? Except for Lily.” Her answer would be no doubt profound, but he’d not explained this even to her.

For a long while, nobody answered— until the outworlder boy raised his hand. Mingtian mentally flicked through the student dossier he’d read on one of the school computers, trying to remember… Urmaphara Il? Yeah… he nodded, calling on him. “Um…” a bit nervously— “formations are arrays of runes—” Mingtian fought not to wince at the use of arrays in a definition of formations, and probably even succeeded— “which together form an effect greater than the sum of its constituent parts.”

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That was actually pretty close— except for the arrays thing— but not quite. “A decent explanation. Wrong. Anyone else?”

A girl, this time… the one sitting next to the first step cultivator… Yuo Guandong? He was pretty sure that was her name at least, raised her hand, and he nodded at her to continue. “Formations are the language of the universe.” She said it so confidently, too…

“Wrong, and also reductionist.” She blushed furiously, quickly sitting down in her seat. Was he being a bit too harsh? Nah, no way… “first, what is a universe anyways? I’ll leave the exact details of the interplay between realms, planets, and the Chaos Sea to your realm astrography instructor, but a key thing to remember about realms is that they are made of multiple different universes. Anyone else?” Nobody responded. “You won’t be penalized for guessing.”

Finally, someone he couldn’t quite place raised their hand. “Um… professor?”

“Go on.”

“Aren’t formations, uh… ways of basically just replicating what cultivators can do without actually having a cultivator there?”

He paused for a second, then grinned, really trying to remember who— Raya Leth. She didn’t look like much, clothes worn and hair unkempt, but that had been an insightful guess. “All but exactly correct. Historically, the first formations likely arose from cultivators who sought a way to use the metaphysical patterns of their techniques without actually carving those techniques in their spirit, which is still but must have been even more so in the past an extraordinarily exacting and dangerous course of action. Take this symbol.”

Bright, in its simple two dimensional form— the very first thing he’d taught lily, and for good reason. It was just a great rune, and he totally wasn’t biased at all. “This rune is the simplified form of countless years of development by cultivators over untold eons.” Older than anyone in this realm probably even had an idea of. Older than him. “But, if you look at the rune from its three dimensional structure… you can see a much more complicated form that mirrors what you might find in a technique dedicated to making light. Any questions?”

The first step cultivator— the Young Master— raised his hand, and Mingtian waved to him. “Instructor, politely, how do you know this?”

Mingtian grinned. Because I’m the closest thing you’ll ever meet to a god. “These are all theories in academic spheres, some more or less popular than others. Dig deep enough into the nature of formations, and anyone could figure out as much. Any other questions?” None. “Good. Today, I’m going to go over five simple runes and their basic connections. Make sure to take notes.” What followed that was… a normal lesson, more or less. It was bare-bones simple enough that all he had to stress about was making sure he picked the right runes. There was a bit of a kerfuffle where some of the students hadn’t brought proper brushes, but they weren’t doing anything too crazy, so he just called Lily up and had her write out the runes on a handful of paper slips he gave her. It’d be more useful to her than listening to something as basic as this.

For some reason, that earned her an annoyed look from Guandong. He’d have to watch out for that, lest it become something actually problematic…

For now, though, it was fine.

A good first lesson.

A good first step.