Guo Jia's eyes widened. "How could…" But the words died in her mouth. With the way she was behaving, it would have been obvious to anyone watching her.
Guo Jia was quite gifted, soaring through the minor realms of Qi Condensation with little effort and at a rate that shocked many people. 'Genius', 'Talented, and 'Gifted' were words often thrown around when describing her. Naturally, many people had great expectations from her, and she had continuously met all of them without fail until very recently.
There was a downside to being gifted. When one had never tasted true failure in their lives, they would not know what to do when such a thing inevitably happened. The higher one soared in the sky, the more it would damage them when they fell to the ground.
Guo Jia had tried to ascend through a major realm to Qi Refinement, but had failed. It was the first major shock of her life, and the first time she had truly stumbled.
Naturally, all she had to do was try again after preparing for the ascension. It was not uncommon for people to fail this jump from Qi Condensation to Qi Refinement two or three times before finally succeeding.
Guo Jia knew that. However, she couldn't square that fact with the image of herself she had built up in her head. Something that had been encouraged by her parents, peers, and teachers.
'You're a genius - you should've succeeded on your first attempt! Other people might fail, but how can you call yourself talented if you're the same as them? Don't you see how you've disappointed everyone around you?' - a voice in her head echoed over and over.
It had been two years since she had failed, and in that time, although she had prepared enough resources to attempt it again, she hadn't.
That little voice in her head had gotten worse, giving birth to a heart demon. This eventually led to a vicious cycle where it would cause her to doubt herself more, worsening the heart demon, and it causing her to have more such negative thoughts.
She had developed a severe case of imposter syndrome, doubting whether she was even half as good as everyone told her she was. She even looked back on her past achievements and started wondering if they had all been due to luck.
With this, her own self-doubt sealed off any chance of success at ascending.
But, she realized what the sect janitor was trying to say.
"When this coin is not worth any less just because it fell out of my pocket, why should you think of yourself as any less due to a single failure?" he asked her, before chuckling and picking the others up.
Guo Jia stammered. "B-But what if I'm not good enou-"
"Do you trust my judgment" the sect janitor asked.
Guo Jia nodded. He was a Golden Core cultivator, so obviously if he said something and she said the opposite, it was he who was right!
"My judgment is that you are still one of the most talented Initiates in the sect," he said. "And I have no doubt that you will accomplish great things in the past."
"How can that be true when I can't even ascend to the Qi Refinement realm?" she protested. That was the easiest of the major realms to ascend to, going from Qi Refinement to Golden Core was even more difficult! When people told her she might even be the next Nascent Soul cultivator in the sect, she had believed them, but now, she looked back at such statements as being hollow and worthless. How could she soar among the clouds like so many people had told her she was destined for, when she had tripped on such a relatively minor obstacle?
"Sometimes, when we run ahead, trying to go as fast as possible, we stumble," the sect janitor said. "But that only means we need to take a moment to dust ourselves off, pause to see what we were doing wrong - maybe even slow down a little. But that doesn't mean we give up advancing entirely. Trust me when I tell you that I know that you can do it."
"But I-" Guo Jia wanted to protest, but then realized the trap she was in. She had admitted to herself that if the sect janitor said something which went against what she believed in, she would've been in the wrong. With that same logic, she was also wrong here!
The sect janitor could guess what was going on in her mind. "Calm down for a few days, meditate, and when you think you're ready, try to ascend again."
Guo Jia let out a defeated sigh, and then a gentle smile. "How can anyone win against you?"
"Win against me? Here I thought we were on the same team," the sect janitor said in mock shock. He laughed and handed her a gold coin. The Initiates, no matter how talented they were, would have trouble getting their hands on real currency. They were usually paid entirely in sect merit points. 'Money will spoil them,' was one of the lines of reasoning behind the decision, though the sect janitor knew it was a way of keeping the Initiates in line and dependent on the sect. He did not approve of this method, but was not at the level where he could change this fact. "Buy yourself something nice from outside."
"I think... I'll keep it as a token to remember the lesson you taught me today instead," Guo Jia said. She wanted to refuse the coin, though from what she knew of the sect janitor, that was an exercise in futility.
"So be it," the sect janitor said.
However, Guo Jia had not left. "Thank you… I don't know how I can repay you?"
"Repay me?" the sect janitor asked. "For what? All I did was drop a few coins while cleaning. If anything, I should be thanking you."
He did not do what he did for glory or fame. He did it because he never wanted to see another incident like what had happened to his friend so long ago repeat itself.
He did it because he wanted to see the sect grow to be a place where cultivators could thrive together. Of course, there would always be rivals and competition, but he wanted to see them limited to the point where they encouraged people to do better, not to knock each other down.
The sect system had its flaws, for certain, but he still believed in its inherent goodness. What would the world be without sects? People would be chained by the ties of clans, dissolving into a thousand different factions at odds with each other.
The only reward he needed was seeing the dark clouds over Guo Jia's head lighten up. Soon enough, he was sure, they would dissipate completely.
With that out of the way, he turned his attention to actually cleaning up the floor - he had been walking over the same areas he'd already mopped while trying to teach Guo Jia a lesson and now had to do them again.
With that out of the way, he turned his attention to this new Initiate he had heard so much about - Tang Ze!
Much like with Guo Jia, it was easy enough for him to blend in seamlessly while cleaning.
Unlike what the prefect who had complained about Tang Ze damaging the martial arts dojo thought, he had no desire to scold Tang Ze for what had happened.
After all, he was the sect janitor - and fixing up such a mess at his level was child's play. Not to mention in a sect that specialized in cultivation, accidents like that were expected to happen. Sure, it was important to let the Initiates know to be more careful in the future, but he was sure that Elder He Xuan had done so already.
If the newly hatched chicks could not even spread their wings or were afraid to do so - how could they learn to fly? As such, why would he want to demoralize the person who had done this even further, when it looked like they had learned from their behavior and had no intention of repeating it?
He did want to see what this new Initiate was like though, just so that he had an idea of what kind of person could do that kind of damage accidentally and that to in a single blow.
If what he was hearing was true, then that meant that this Initiate could very well become the top body cultivator in the entire Raswatian Empire.
Groups of Initiates passed by him, and about an hour later, it finally happened.
The sect janitor saw Tang Ze walk past with the rest of his squad members.
But the gentle smile that had played on his lips while mopping was replaced by shock and bewilderment.
"This is....!"
The sect janitor, despite his years of study and experience, had never seen a heart demon as vicious and huge as the one that clung to Tang Ze.
He generally saw heart demons as dark clouds that usually hovered over people's heads, typically only as small as tiny specks of dust, or, if they were particularly big, as clouds about the size of one's fist.
But the latter were rare, and those that were even bigger rarer still.
This boy though... it was as if the heart demon was the main body and the boy was the heart demon instead!
The miasma didn't simply hover over his head, it engulfed him to the point that it looked like Tang Ze was walking around with a dark fog all around him.
"This..." the sect janitor took a few steps back when he saw this. He could no longer keep up the façade of a tranquil expression - the mask slipped off to reveal his true emotions.
He had only wanted to see Tang Ze so that he could gauge the man's strength somewhat; he had not expected to find a heart demon of this magnitude!
Heart demons were not just dangerous to an individual cultivator, as he could very well attest to.
But, his desire to solve such problems was not just born out of a desire to deal with heart demons for other's sake.
His disposition did not want to see someone suffer like that, and if Tang Ze had a heart demon that was of that size, then he truly must have been suffering deep within. The sect janitor felt that he had to find a way to help the man.
From that point onward, despite oftentimes 'conveniently' doing things like washing windows or mopping the floor where Tang Ze popped up, he had not found the right time to strike a conversation with Tang Ze.
He also hadn't been able to find any information on him, despite asking around. What was his background? Where had he come from? If he knew the answers to those questions, he would be more easily able to figure out what had caused such a grave heart demon to develop in the first place.
Despite all of his inquiries, however, he turned up very little. No one knew which village Tang Ze was from, and the sect janitor had not heard of his parents before, and per records they had not been members of the sect. 'Tang' was also a rather common surname so he could not really rely on that for any clues.
Still, it was clearly imperative that this had to be dealt with as swiftly as possible given just how powerful this heart demon in question was.
What to do?