Hou walked around the amphitheatre and to the door, to which he opened and transformed. His body turned into a mist of black blood and shot away. Everyone else looked at each other and then walked forward together.
Each consecutively turning into a mist of blood which flew into the same direction. When their vision returned, everyone found themselves in the same small room.
At the front stood, a presumably clone version, Master Sheng. And there was a short row of tables to which there were five matching each person. And so, they all sat down.
And from left to right, from Master Sheng's perspective, it was: Jin, Tianmo, Hou, Hamar, Lan Qiang.
And so the first lesson commenced,
"As stated in the introduction, I want to focus on your foundations. I do not know all of your stories, so I do not now where your foundation lie. Some of you, I'm sure have amazing foundations. Others may not."
He walked to the chalkboard and drew out five different trees with accompanying different root lengths and tree heights.
"I want you all to imagine you are equal. I'm cutting all of you down to the same level. No matter your level you started when you walked in, from now on you are all the same. Got it?"
The class nodded and Master Sheng continued,
"Then let's take it slow and focus on your intuition. Without a strong intuition how can anything really be done. Without a strong intuition it is like being blind."
He threw a feather to each table, landing perfectly in the centre,
"Here is a normal feather, there is no trick. I want you all to use your intuition and tell me everything you can about it. You may not inspect it, or touch it. All you may do is use your intuition."
Hou said aloud, "what am I supposed to see, Its just a dam- just a mere feather! I can see all there is?"
He couldn't see how he could get more out of it and spoke out of instinct. And so Master Sheng chuckled and then said to him,
"Take as long as you like, if that's all you think you can get. Then hand it over and complete this assignment."
Hou squinted and seeing Master Sheng's smirk shook his head,
"No, I'll try..."
He trailed off as he said it and so everyone began. Some held their hands over the feather to have a focus others messed with their hands to induce a state.
Hou did not have these special methods but that didn't mean he had nothing. He had both the Celestial Ink and Yue inside him with their own consciousness and therefore intuition.
But also he had his quasi-Nascent Soul and it's intuition. But he still did not understand that one, do that's exactly why he chose to use it. This was the perfect time for him to practice.
Hou focused inwards and looked towards his quasi-Nascent Soul. At the body which was young, but old and a combination of all his different bodies and time periods. There were even scars of when he had many different parasites and symbiotes; and scars from his hundred years of suffering clinging to life.
He disembarked from his body and focused on his consciousness. In that form, disconnected from his body, he saw the world in a new light.
It was different from scrying and astral projection. Unlike astral projection which was squarely in the astral world, the quasi-Nascent Soul was in a sort of superposition of being within the material and astral worlds.
He could see the world but it was all peculiar and...weird. he couldn't understand it, it was an incoherent world overlapped with the coherent. The walls flickered, turning solid to liquid. The colours swirled and blended yet remained still but moving.
He focused onto the feather and his 'body', his quasi-Nascent Soul, began to dissolved. It turned into a mist which moved in the way he wanted and 'absorbed' the feather.
He began to get some knowledge about it. White. Soft but hard. Hard spine with soft outer. But then he kept dissolving himself into it. And then his vision started to shift.
The classroom morphed, it's colours changed and shifted. Turning from the white and brown and green into a bright blue. From a stationary point to a moving body.
Flapping wings. Heavy wind. Bright sun. Fluffy clouds. Large mountains.
Hou felt the memories and experiences the feather had been through and understood more of its essence. If somebody recreated the feather's material it still wouldn't be the same feather.
That new feather wouldn't have the experiences into its essence like this one. But this went conversely.
If a ship was slowly repaired and over time each material was replaced...it would still be the same ship. It's about the essence not materiality.
And so Hou continued to go inside the essence and focused where he was. What he was. He was a feather, but he was more. He was in the air, on a wing, on a creature. But it was far too big to be a dove, and he could see splodges of colour.
"Is that...brown? And that beak...those talons...this size? Am I the feather from a.... griffin?!" Hou had a sudden realisation.
Hou snapped back to reality, his quasi-Nascent Soul reforming and then jolting back into his body. The body jumped and Hou could feel his heart beating, his blood pulsing. He slammed his hand down.
He picked up the feather and walked to the front, in one swift motion, handing it over to Master Sheng.
"I figured it out. Or. I figured something out."
Master Sheng took the feather and then handed Hou a chalkboard and chalk,
"Write down your answer... Did you understand something? Foundations are what you build everything on, make sure they're strong. You may return to your seat."
Master Sheng took the chalkboard and then handed Hou a new item.
Hou took it, it was a blade of grass. He held it and placed it onto his table and begun thinking again,
"I just did this? Do I need to do the same? Did I get it right? Is that what I was meaning to 'find'"
Yue chuckled inside Hou's mind and spoke to him internally,
"Just do as your told. I'm sure everything he's doing, he's doing for a reason. Even withholding whether you were right or not."