Fang Zheng practically stormed out of the meeting room. Once it was over, Qing Shu quickly caught him and took him aside.
"It isn't good for you to act like that. You're an elder now, Fang Zheng," Qing Shu said. "Which means that other people will look closely at how you behave and react. Since you're also Fang Yuan's younger brother, it also reflects badly on him if you can't seem to control your temper."
"But the way they were talking inside..." Fang Zheng said, shaking his head. "They're calling my older brother an 'old man' behind his back as if he's shirking his duties, when in reality, he's just trying to keep the clan safe."
"I know," Qing Shu said. "But there must be a good reason why Fang Yuan kept the news of the spirit spring potentially dying a secret. It is to prevent panic, and so we can't let them know that."
"I don't get why they're behaving like this," Fang Zheng said. "As if my brother needs to be here constantly..."
Qing Shu smiled and shrugged. "Tell me, when you were young and felt like things were overwhelming, who did you want to go to?"
Fang Zheng's honest answer was, "No one because there was no one there."
"Both of us are orphans, so I think you can understand this," Qing Shu said. "When you're scared, the one thing that you want is the reassuring hand of a parent. I'm sure you must have sought that many times over when you were younger, to no avail."
"The elders right now are much like scared children. Don't look at their ages. Our clan has stood for a thousand years, and never has it been in such a state of disaster. Despite their vast life experience, they have no precedent for what is going on now. At any moment, it seems as if the flame that is the life of our village could go out. What do they wish for during this situation? Stability. Naturally, they want something to lean on, someone who would tell them that everything is alright, someone like Fang Yuan.
"But brother is not even a quarter of the age of some of those elders..."
"It isn't about age; it's about power," Qing Shu said. "He is Rank 5. When the chips are down and push comes to shove in this world, only strength matters." He gazed far into the distance. "I've realized that now. Although clan ties and family bonds are important, without power, they cannot assert their full force. Fang Yuan is Rank 5. Even though he has just stepped into the realm of Rank 5 and is among the weakest of them, he is still far stronger than any Rank 4 Gu Master. Why do you think no more demonic Gu Masters have come to try and attack our village? Is it just because the Tie Clan was here recently? No, it's also because they fear Fang Yuan."
"I just thought," Fang Zheng said, sighing, "that things might be different once I got to Rank 3." Rank 3 Gu Masters were the backbone of the village, the ones who were in charge of everything, and everyone looked up to them. Fang Zheng had felt ecstatic when he reached that realm.
However, now that he was there, it felt that he had climbed to the top of a mountain, only to note that there was an even bigger peak right next to him, which he had only noticed now that he had climbed to the top.
Unfortunately, he knew that Rank 3 was likely going to be his limit. It had taken a monumental effort to get him to this point, and even advancing to another minor realm might be difficult unless he advanced his Vital Gu. For that, he would need to find, according to his brother, two more Liquor Worms. Even one was difficult to find; how would he find two? Alternatively, they could try to reverse-refine his Four Flavors Liquor Worm back into two Liquor Worms, because the clan had its own sequence of advancement for the Liquor Worm to Rank 3. All of that, however, had to wait.
"Oh, as Rank 3 Gu Masters we are quite powerful," Qing Shu said. "But that doesn't mean that we can shoulder the burden of the entire clan on our shoulders. Not even Fang Yuan, who's rank five, can do that. That's why we have to work hard, don't we? He may be the main pillar, but we are his support."
Fang Zheng had initially felt bitter towards Qing Shu, simply because he thought that Qing Shu was undermining his role as Fang Yuan's main helper. He had thought things would change when he got rank three, but even now, Qing Shu was still ahead of him whether it came to experience or cultivation. However, there was no room for his personal discontent, he knew. Not right now. For now, they had to put up a united front against the others.
"I'm heading off towards the academy now," Qing Shu said. "If you want, you can also come by and just see how things are going."
"You're going to the academy? Why?" Fang Zheng asked.
"Oh, I'm just giving them a lesson or two," Qing Shu said. "Gu Yue Ye is the academy head, but he's not an elder, and I think if I were to drop by to teach them, they would appreciate it." There was another reason, of course. Qing Shu wanted to make sure that things were going smoothly at the academy. It was Fang Yuan's pet project, after all.
"Alright then," Fang Zheng said, also personally interested in how the academy was going now with the fewer number of students.
As he walked into the gate which had been recently repaired, he thought about giving the academy elder a visit for old time's sake - before remembering that the academy elder was dead.
'It looks so... empty...' he thought to himself.
It was almost like walking into a ghost town. It didn't help that most of the buildings were still damaged adding to the uncanny feeling one got while walking in.
The students were assembled in a courtyard. Given how few of them there were, there was no need to clean up most of the mess in the courtyard in a certain corner - Gu Yue Ye might have felt that way but Fang Zheng felt that it would be better for morale to have it tidy.
The students were practicing the basic moonblade techniques against grass puppets, much like he had done. He recalled how he had accidentally managed to hit the grass puppet right where it was important, only for the contest to be won by Fang Yuan.
'Mo Bei... Chi Chen...' They had been his rivals during that time, and were now dead. So were most of his classmates. He had known, from what others had told him, that such things would happen over time. Just not so soon.
"Hello everyone, we have a special guest with us today," the instructor said. "Oh wait, I'm sorry, two special guests here. Elder Qing Shu and Elder Fang Zheng, thank you for joining us!"
The students were divided into two groups not based on size - but based on whether or not they were Gu Yue clansmen or not. The mortals were off to one side and the youngsters off to another. It wasn't a significant separation, mind you, barely imperceptible, but to Fang Zheng who had only recently been in their shoes it was more than obvious.