“Nervous?”

He paused, silhouetted in the sunlight streaming through one of the library’s tall windows, its radiance catching on the clothes he’d carefully picked out for his first lesson. He was the Immortal Sovereign of Boundless Radiance, so far beyond the realm that if he was somewhere he could exercise the fullest extent of his power fighting its most profound experts would be like taking candy from babies, except easier— he did not get nervous over simple formations lessons given to mortals. Nope. Not at all.

“You’re definitely nervous.” Janus leaned against the wall beside him, looking a little amused. “I’m not going to say that you totally brought this on yourself, but…”

“Laugh it up.” He grimaced. Teaching formations was so difficult, and his restriction to mere mortal techniques, within the bounds of the realm’s arcane idea of what that even meant, only made it all the more. It was so much easier when his students were determined enough to understand and tackle their own inadequacies— for however long it might take them to improve. Teaching students, though… there was an onus, on him, to give them the foundation they needed to progress further in the art, and a single wrong word at the wrong time could sunder a talent irreparably.

It was just stressful.

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“I’ll be late if I don’t head out soon. Sorry for leaving all the library work to you…”

Janus waved a hand. “I don’t mind at all— it was like this before you came anyways, and it's not been so long that I’ve already gone soft from having you around.” He gave him a smile, warmly— truly, enthusiastically. “Good luck. I wish you the best.” As though they weren’t dancing around the topic that weighed heavy between them—

For now, though, Mingtian accepted the olive branch where it lay; he had too much on his plate at the moment regardless, and if Janus didn’t want to argue? Well, he’d take it in the spirit it was given. “You too.” Simply— then, he walked out, taking a deep breath of the crisp early-autumn air and following the path forward— to East Saffron’s 32nd Preparatory Academy, and his class. His class. Wasn’t this entire ‘pretend to be a mortal thing’ supposed to be a break from it all? He—

Paused, considering for a moment as he walked through the tunnel, his presence garnering a few curious glances from students who’d seen him in the initiation ceremony. It wasn’t like he’d been particularly stressed in the Celestial Realm. It was the monotony, more than anything, that had gotten to him— and in that regard, a little bit of stress could almost be considered a good thing!

Definitely.

Also, he was definitely not deceiving himself, because he was the Immortal Sovereign of such and so on, and pinnacle cultivators definitely didn’t fall prey to the same sort of traps as lesser daoists.

He sighed. Who was he kidding?

Then, without much further ado, he stepped into the academy.