How does one cultivate a resolute heart? The question had dominated Rejya Xinasa’s every action over the past eight years, ever since her master had returned and tasked her with raising not one but many disciples – an entire sect’s worth. The only problem was that disciples were normally left to either strengthen their hearts on their own. Many failed and most of those died.

The common understanding among every sect she’d ever heard of was that the disciples should be forced to compete to the utmost, up to and including subtly encouraging robbery, murder, theft, and all other sorts of underhanded tactics. The theory, she decided, was that the heart naturally rebelled against such ‘evil’ actions and that those who would undertake them – successfully, of course – would do so only because their heart was resolute enough to overcome the instinctive doubt and hesitation associated with such actions.

Truly, that would have been her answer save that her master had specifically instructed that whatever answer she came up with should be based on the culture and mindset of the world which he had claimed. When she had started this task she had despaired. Her first impression was that the people of this world had weak hearts down to the last man. Their lives were soft and comfortable. They were not driven to compete, not truly, nor were they tempered as cultivators would be, through trials where their very lives were forfeit if they failed. No, the majority of these people didn’t even understand what hardship was, much less how it should be overcome.

Still, she had studied the problem relentlessly, diving into the cultures of ‘Earth’ wholeheartedly. She had gone to college and dual majored in ‘Psychology’ and ‘Philosophy’. There she found an entire world of interesting information, much of which was surprisingly applicable regardless of culture. The more she had studied, the more she had realized that their answer to the question wasn’t blatant, wasn’t obvious, but rather pervaded everything they said and did. They didn’t often blatantly compete with each other, not the way cultivators would. Instead, they used artificial means such as grades and benchmarks to quantify their competitions. The best part was, to her mind, the fact that those who weren’t disciplined or resolute enough to compete simply… didn’t.

The final realization came after she’d finished her second-year midterms of college. She hadn’t invested in getting to know her fellow students and had actively avoided getting to know them, both out of disdain and a general lack of interest. That was her only excuse for why it had taken her so long to recognize what was happening. Her initial ‘freshman’ class had been huge, with over two hundred students packed into a giant auditorium. By the time she started classes in her second year, classes were down to twenty or thirty at most. By the time she recognized the trend, the majority of the students she had started with had been replaced with others. It wasn’t until a fellow student who she had grouped with for projects on several occasions failed to appear that she recognized just what had happened – those with weak hearts, or in this world’s terminology the 'lazy and unambitious', had been winnowed out. Those that were left were all relatively determined to succeed.

It was then that she once again started paying real attention not just to the material in front of her, but to the society around her. Once she did, she noticed that while the system used looked weak and permissive, it required a strong personal dedication and perseverance to succeed. A very large number of students were lured off the path with only a tiny fraction of those returning. Further, students were lost because they couldn’t find their Dao, which didn’t surprise her in the least. The number of those who found their true Dao Heart, regardless of the circumstances, was quite small. But she was genuinely surprised how thoroughly students were encouraged to seek it. Those around her were only rarely concerned with things like filial duty or other such nonsense that often kept people from pursuing their Dao.

Once her perspective changed she was shocked at just how effective the system of schooling was. Viewed as a systematized process of assisting one in finding their personal Dao, the number of success stories was almost frightening. Sure, even many of those who completed the process were failures from this perspective, but on every world in every plane she had been to, finding one’s Dao was considered a process of luck and fortune, with maybe one in ten thousand even finding the first steps on the path, with most of those being unable to follow it because of more practical concerns. The difference in this world was stark – people were not only encouraged to find their Dao but heavily rewarded when they did. The result was impressive – as many as 1 in 100 among the students who persevered through the second year of college found the steps onto their true path, and of those most followed it when they found it, with as few as 1 in 1000 abandoning the path for reasons unrelated to the path itself, such as financial hardship.

What had begun as a burden that she had assumed with stoic vigor changed into a personal quest for understanding the likes of which she hadn’t undertaken since she’d first set foot upon the cultivator’s path. The more she learned the deeper her respect for the cultures she studied. She began to understand her master’s obsession with this world and even share it. If they could take the lessons learned here and apply them to a sect? That sect would quickly produce geniuses at a rate that would make others die of envy. The only problem was... how? How could they use this system to find students who were suited to the appropriate Dao?

She hadn’t found a satisfactory answer, not really. What she had found was any number of theories, mostly associated with either sports or military psychology, for how to mold the appropriate Dao heart. Once she was able to wrap her mind around the purpose of these theories the world had opened up. According to the theories of Earth, a person wasn’t born with a specific Dao in their heart. Instead, it was shaped through examples and experience. Those who were given strong examples were more likely to follow those examples.

Those with ‘weak’ hearts were especially susceptible to molding, not only tempering their hearts to make them stronger but potentially changing their Dao entirely, leading them down paths that they might not otherwise have taken. Whether these were ‘true’ Dao was up for debate, but the theories came with strong evidence to support the idea that people could be molded to accept some variation of the desired Dao. It wasn’t ‘brainwashing’, not exactly anyway, but rather a complete system which both demonstrated a Dao and taught its values. One could still reject the offered path, but doing so was harder than it seemed.

After nearly five years of intensive study, Xinasa formulated a plan. The only problem with her plan was that it would require a ‘culture’ that fit their goals. This meant that every teacher, every caretaker, every potential role model would have to support the system. Doing it consciously might be enough for some, but a fair few would have to do so subconsciously - they couldn’t just espouse the culture, they would have to live it. Putting up a false front or playing along wouldn’t get the job done. Hypocrisy would come through regardless of intent.

Xinasa had decided that the only way to succeed was to become what she was espousing – she had to educate her fellow disciples. With that goal in mind, she had put together an entire training system specifically aimed at ‘indoctrinating’ her fellow disciples, especially those who would be interacting with the sect’s disciples regularly. Master Zhao had questioned the necessity of her training, to which she had responded by putting him through it. He had resisted at first, but by the time she finished, he was a believer, not only in her training program but in her fundamental goals. A two month accelerated course structure was adopted and given to any disciple who was expected to visit the sect. To her surprise, the results were overwhelmingly positive. It was, by all accounts, an overwhelming success.

Now she was viewing the results of that effort with her own eyes. In a very real way, she was the author of the entire sect’s training program, both in spirit and in fact. As she watched the students file into the courtyard, she was pleased to see the dynamics she had envisioned playing out. While other sects rigorously enforced discipline amongst their youngest disciples and taught them to suppress their fundamental natures, the theories of this world were to use that same fundamental nature as an advantage. Fighting against such nature resulted in wild swings of fortune, with either great successes or great failures, with mediocrity being by far the most common result. By leveraging the base nature of the individual, however, she could raise the average level of success quite a bit.

Of course, her goal was not to generate a group of slightly less mediocre disciples, but an entire group of geniuses. To do this, she couldn’t fight against their preconceptions of the world, not at first at least. Instead, she would treat them as frogs in a pot, slowly increasing the temperature. The cultivator culture insisted that tempering should be filled with life and death struggle, but she had accepted that this view was narrow – one did not attempt to create a masterpiece in one sitting. Rather, time and care were necessary, slowly refining the creation over many months or years.

This process had an added benefit that was required by her master, namely that of preserving the lives of the disciples. This goal had left her flummoxed in the beginning, unable to comprehend how such a requirement could be compatible with her goals. After all, if one were to be tempered, they would have to face the possibility of death. The master had even agreed with her but had insisted that such trials should be delayed until after the students reached their majority, lest they generate undue suspicion.

At first, she had scoffed, utterly unconcerned with the opinion of mortals. Her master had thoroughly disabused her of her arrogance. He had shown her information, public, freely available information, about the weapons of this world, the greatest of which leveraged the deep mysteries of creation. She had no hope of surviving such weapons if they were used against her. Her master was even doubtful of his ability to protect his students and disciples if one were to be used against the school. He would be in no personal danger, of course, but only because the weapon lacked any power to assail the spirit. These mortals, for all their mastery of the physical, utterly lacked any spiritual mastery.

As she watched the students practice she found herself more and more pleased. They lacked discipline, true, but she could already see her plans bearing fruit. Each set of twelve students, making up a single floor in the dorms, had a caretaker with them. Unlike the disciples doing the teaching, these caretakers partook of the lessons, providing a concrete example of how the students should be behaving. At first, the students seemed to pay little heed, many having to be called to task. By the end of this first lesson an hour later, however, the vast majority of the students were following the motions, dutifully applying themselves to the teachings. In another sect fear would have been used to motivate these students to practice, the punishments for disobedience being harsh, but here simple social pressure was enough. Sure, this first lesson was hardly perfect, but just from today’s observations, Xinasa was certain this method would bear fruit.

Once the morning martial practice was complete, the students took time to care for their basic needs before taking up normal classes. Here Xinasa had made an even bolder choice – she had decided that the normal academic studies should be taught by mortal teachers. Sure, the sect could have trained and furnished teachers, but she felt no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’. Instead, each teacher was accompanied by one of the master’s disciples, who were allowed and expected to learn both the teachings at hand and the process of how it was done. Eventually, the goal was for them to take over teaching, but only after they had fully absorbed the methods and processes first hand.

The after-school portion of the day represented the greatest trial of her proposed system. One thing that couldn’t be disputed was that the people of this world were physically soft, often going to great lengths to avoid any form of labor. To combat this Xinasa had to devise a system where the students were involved in physical activities often, both out of necessity and desire. It would not do to take a subtle approach everywhere else only to return to harshness when it was easier.

Her plan seemed simple on the surface but had required an excess of preparation to manage. First, she had to divide out the yang – those of more directly confrontational styles – from the yin - those who preferred more indirect competition. It had taken some research, but she had found the number of potential sports where students wouldn’t have to directly compete to be plentiful; gymnastics, track and field, swimming, weight lifting, and many more. She had carefully chosen a few that fit their purposes, such as gymnastics, which would allow the students, especially the females, to pursue strenuous physical activity without having to engage in base competition.

Of course, she had also chosen more competitive sports for the more yang oriented students. There was a plethora to choose from in Earth culture. They would work for the short term, but they simply didn’t have the required levels of competition necessary. Where their yin arts excelled, these people lacked in yang. So she turned to look to the other planes. After all, sports may not have the same level of fame on other worlds that it did here – after all, they glorified martial pursuits over any mere ‘sport’ – but they did have a few games that would suffice. One, in particular, caught her attention. It was specially designed to help noble children begin adapting to higher levels of strength early, levels of strength where the dirt gave under your feet and even stones felt soft.

The game was played between two formations, one above and one below, creating a disk-shaped playing field thirty meters in diameter. The goal of the game was to pass a chakram, normally played with a real bladed chakram, through several different-sized holes, with scores appropriate to difficulty. The real trick of the game was that the two formations would cause anyone who entered them to float approximately two meters in the air. Once suspended, one could push off the discs of force which caused them to hover as if pushing off thick mud – both above and below. The farther you pushed into either disk, the harder it pushed back, meaning that it would take significant force to hit either roof or floor, making the game relatively safe. Some injuries were normal and expected, but unlike some games cultivators played, this could be played by mortal children without them being broken by it.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to start with the game, obviously, but she quickly decided that it would become the primary competitive sport of their sect. All the children would learn to play it eventually. In the beginning, however, she would let them choose which ‘mundane’ sport they wanted to play - soccer, basketball, or hockey. Filling out the teams appropriately would take a bit of doing, but she was certain they would manage.

Once they selected their activity (they could choose any, but had to choose something) and spent some time familiarizing themselves, they returned to the courtyard where they had performed their morning martial exercises, except this time it was covered with comfortable mats made for sitting. Having been worn out by their relatively long day, the children all gratefully took seats, lounging and laughing while their tutors watched on with smiles.

Now came the most important part of the day. Unlike before, the mortal caretakers were ushered out, leaving just the children and the master’s disciples. Normally, any type of meditation or cultivation was done in private, save under extraordinary circumstances, but Xinasa had insisted on at least attempting this as a group first. None, however, had been willing to lead the effort, the risk of failure too high for them to take it on personally. So instead she had been left to lead the new students personally through this first, most important, step.