In the eyes of the Earth Sages, scarcely any facet of life lay beyond the cultivation of virtue. Nearly every act, no matter how mundane, could be harnessed to reinforce the moral principles established by the first Grand Earth Sage himself. Having already demonstrated how Earthbending might be employed with deliberate grace to inscribe revered passages from the Analects, and how the careful raising of ancestral tablets through bending served to honor one's forebears and strengthen filial devotion, the sages proceeded to yet another exhaustive discourse. By the time the lecture finally drew to a close, it had consumed a considerable portion of the daylight, leaving many students weary from its relentless breadth.
"And thus, the first Grand Earth Sage's disciple succeeded in reforging a fractured lattice of alliances and treaties, bending them to the will of his sovereign. In doing so, irreversibly reshaping the political landscape among the warring states of that era."
Zhu Xi's lecture today had drawn students from beyond the outer walls to a shrine dedicated to the most gifted disciples of the first Grand Earth Sage, all in hopes of these young minds absorbing the heritage of a tradition that had inscribed itself over the millennia.
The Middle Ring, though lacking the gilded excess of the Upper Ring and the restless vitality of the Lower, still housed its share of luminaries. There is no shortage of famous figures whose names endured in quiet reverence. Among them remarkably is an Avatar from eons ago, who also had studied directly under the first Grand Earth Sage himself.
A skillful diplomat amidst an age of incessant warfare, the Avatar wielded words with the finesse of a master merchant and the foresight of a seasoned strategist. In his dealings with the myriad kings of the era, some whom are vain or magnanimous, he proved remarkably adept at discerning the desires that lurked beneath their crowns.
Rather than relying upon force, he manipulated the currents of human nature itself. He appealed to greed where avarice prevailed, to pride where vanity reigned, to vengeance where old grievances festered, and above all, to the insatiable hunger for prestige and glory that so often consumed rulers of nearly all eras. Through using little more than carefully chosen words, he set into motion an intricate web of rivalries, alliances, and conflicts whose consequences would reverberate across generations.
Kings marched against kings. Armies clashed and bled upon distant battlefields. Once-prominent lineages dwindled into obscurity, while others rose upon the ruins of their rivals. His most extraordinary feat lay in persuading ambitious monarchs to challenge adversaries far stronger than themselves, convincing them that triumph over a mighty foe promised immortal renown whereas victory over a weaker neighbor offered only fleeting rewards and emboldens their own rebellious nobles.
Through this labyrinth of diplomatic maneuvering, the Avatar accomplished far more than the preservation of his sovereign's vulnerable realm. He altered the destinies of five neighboring petty kingdoms, reshaping the political landscape of the age without ever drawing a blade.
Satchiko stood among the gathered students in her plain academic robes, her gaze resting upon the spirit tablet bearing the Avatar's name within the temple hall. As a warrior, she was no stranger to hardship nor to failure. On occasion, she could not help reflecting on how eloquence, wielded by those who shunned direct force, could nonetheless yield devastation on a scale no blade could match. Where Zhu Xi sought to frame the Avatar's manipulations as acts of noble service to his sovereign, Satchiko found herself quietly relieved that her own scholarly father had confined such tactics to the resolution of petty disputes in the village market rather than the orchestration of history's bloodier turns.
"In serving the first Grand Earth Sage, the Avatar was like a thirsty man who comes upon a river and drinks deeply, yet never perceives its depth," Zhu Xi intoned to the students about the sheer vastness of the sagely philosophy that have governed the Earth Kingdom's culture and politics. "Such exemplary figures are worthy of emulation."
Obviously, it was also said that the first Earth Sage had imparted to this incarnation the discipline of Earthbending, while non-bending students were instead instructed in archery. In those distant, almost mythic ages, such transmissions of skill were rare and sacred. Yet, it seems that both Earthbending and marksmanship had been reframed less as instruments of war than as conduits for moral cultivation and virtue. Naturally, the Earth Sages were master philosophers, wherein ethical refinement consistently outweighed martial utility.
The students bowed in unison out of ritual courtesy, Satchiko among them, carefully ensured that the combat Earthbending scroll Shan had given her remained concealed within her sleeve. As was customary during Zhu Xi's visits to shrines, tombs, and temples dedicated to sagely figures, reverence concluded the lesson.
And thus, the day's moral cultivation came to an end.
The students eventually headed to the university grounds. Although a single student, Npauj Npaim, was singled out by Zhu Xi and a small retinue of Earth Sages, who purportedly taken a particular interest in her unusually deep grasp of the Sagely Analects. Even among her peers, there was an unspoken acknowledgment that the girl from the mountains possessed an almost unsettling breadth of mastery across disciplines offered here, as though she had lived several lifetimes learning them, each written phrase engraved into memory with meticulous precision.
Having spent a considerable stretch within the city's rhythms, Satchiko had begun to acquire fragments of urban etiquette. She offered a bow, perhaps named the much more formal variant of the gongshou etiquette, to her new classmate before departing with the cohort. Both hands moving with careful imitation of the Earth Sages' deliberate and ceremonial gestures, one hand folding the other. It was an imperfect mimicry, but deliberate enough to at least avoid offending those same sages whose favor she suspected might prove precarious should word of her being the White Scholar's pupil reach their ears.
A few familiar students called for her to walk with them. Being of similar age, their demeanor loosened after the strain of lengthy lectures delivered by those so-called sagely people. Laughter and idle complaints threaded through the air. Yet Satchiko allowed herself no indulgence in their ease. The more she learned of this vast institution, or how it drew students from every corner of the continent, the more she suspected it was not without precedent in earlier Earth Kingdom dynasties. Such academies, she reasoned, had likely flourished only in times of relative peace, when the machinery of governance could afford the luxury of dispersing knowledge beyond the capital. Which is why even being admitted into this circumstance commends a level of privilege, one Satchiko acknowledged she had scarcely earned.
"Those sages can be quite talkative," remarked a student beside her, sighing as they merged with the dispersing crowd. "Have you ever heard anything more tedious? You'd think this place would teach something useful instead of endless recitations of Earth Sage doctrine."
Satchiko said little in response. The world beyond Ba Sing Se's walls was fractured by war and uncertainty, and it was difficult not to read such complaints as the naivety of a distant noble's child rather than genuine grievance. Yet she herself was no true peasant either, she understood enough of privilege to recognize its many disguises. The longer she remained among this disparate assembly of students, the more she suspected that the grand design behind their gathering was not as transparent as it appeared.
As the Earth Kingdom's capital city for most of its history, Ba Sing Se valued diplomacy and the cultivation of external bonds. She learnt in the classes that was undeniable even in times of great warlordism and political fractures. Still, even she is no complete stranger to simplicity. One could easily imagine quieter, less conspicuous means of achieving such ends than turning the city's most prestigious institution into a stage for political gains. And besides, every student here is an Earthbender. Which is a narrowing of criteria that felt at the very least deliberate.
"Well, you outsiders ought not to complain too much," another student interjected. She claims to be technically a local. But being born outside the outer walls, she too was given a place in this institution but is far familiar with the city's history. "In the old, old, old, old, old days, the Earth Sages and the Ministry of Rites held an even tighter grip over education. At least across the dynasties, they expanded the curriculum. You know, medicine, engineering, those real disciplines. Even the ancient Earth Kings weren't foolish enough to believe that calligraphy and ceremonial rhetoric alone could govern the realm. Even so, perhaps we do need these sages sometimes. At least a few of them aren't quite so exhausting."
That last supposition may contain a grain of truth. After all, those staunch traditionalists remained deeply entangled in the world of calligraphy, annotation, and scholastic ritual. Satchiko could still recall Earth Sage Zhu Xi, their perpetually weary lecturer, occasionally muttering about an ill-defined rivalry with the Earth Sages of Omashu, as though such distant competition carried any real consequence beyond lecture halls and ink-stained scrolls. But did any of it truly matter to those who governed Ba Sing Se? Or was this entire endeavor of assembling Earthbending students from across a fractured realm nothing more than an elaborate vanity, or perhaps a calculated distraction? A way to occupy the local Earth Sages, whose authority might already feel eroded by the arrival of outsiders who are more competent.
If more people learned to read and write with fluency and intent, what remained for the Earth Sages to claim as uniquely theirs beyond ceremony and rite? In a world already unsteady with war in the absence of an Avatar, would such a shift not render them quietly obsolete?
Satchiko halted.
The thought lingered too sharply, too unformed. It is practically an untamed hypothesis without evidence born of imagination rather than reason. The kind of reckless conjecture better suited to a delusional teenager who couldn't even bend earth normally.
A few students ahead noticed her pause, one turning back to ask why she had broken stride on the way to the dormitories.
"Why did the Earth Sages ask Npauj Npaim specifically to stay behind?" Satchiko asked, still struggling with the unfamiliar name of a dialect not her own.
A more easygoing student in the group shrugged, motioning for her to keep walking so they might reach their destination without delay. He suggested the explanation was likely simple, the Earth Sages had been impressed by Npauj Npaim's performance as student. Specifically, the uncanny and flawless recitation of the entire Sagely Analects, word for word, without a slight hesitation or error.
"I wouldn't trouble yourself over what the Earth Sages think," he added. "They still believe everything can be solved by studying the writings of the First Earth Sage hard enough. Yet these are the same people who somehow never manage to locate the Avatar within the Earth Kingdom. The last time a delegation like that waltz through my village, they were convinced the son of a blacksmith was the Avatar just because he could bend mud in a specific shape, poorly at that. If it were up to me, I'd say give them their polite words and let them keep their theories, but don't take any of it too seriously." He gave a faint, dismissive laugh, claiming that the blacksmith's son is always complaining of hunger despite the village's relatively prosperity and geographic safety from the horrifying wars nearby. "And then another group of Earth Sages from a different state came along and made the exact same mistake again!"
The details drew a ripple of laughter from those nearby. Within the shelter of Ba Sing Se's towering walls, such moments of levity could still survive. It is fragile, but intact and untouched by the distant churn of war. Yet Satchiko merely observed. Her thoughts drifted elsewhere, quietly assembling fragments of today's lecture. Npauj Npaim's so-called exceptionalism and the Earth Sages' pursuit of the next incarnate inevitably felt surprisingly convenient. She wondered whether any of it was truly connected, or merely an elaborate theory stitched together to justify why Ba Sing Se periodically gathered Earthbending youths like herself, sequestering them behind lecture halls to recite philosophical doctrines and the sayings of the first Grand Earth Sage.
Her inward speculation while marching alongside the dispersing students was abruptly interrupted when one of her classmates signaled for the group's attention. Ahead on their return route to the institute stood a local Earthbending school. Yet what drew the eye was not just the building itself, but the uneasy congregation before it. There is a scattered crowd of onlookers, soldiers stationed in silent vigilance, and two robed figures affixing stamped strips of paper across the small wall's gate as though sealing a verdict into the wood itself.