Chapter 64: Building
We worked on reorganizing the academy.
I had walked with Bolin before the dawn, the two of us pacing the curriculum room with a charcoal stick and a strip of paper, marking where the cloth partitions would hang. By the second notch of the morning, the room had been divided into five spaces, and the open ground behind it had been cleared for the two drills that would not fit indoors.
We were prepared for the next round of cohorts: Five classes with six students in each class. Thirty students total drawn from villages across the Western Reaches at Commander Xu's behest.
Each of the founding disciples led a class of their own. Lin Zhi at the eastern partition, Sun Hai at the southern, Cao Yan at the western, and Mu Renshu at the northern.
The fifth class sat in the open ground behind the room and rotated through the four interior spaces over the course of each day, so that every student over the half-quarter cycled through four teachers instead of learning strictly through one.
Bolin supervised all five.
He moved between the partitions carrying nothing but a slip of paper and a charcoal stick, marking what he saw. By the end of each day his slip was filled. By the end of each week he had written a report in the same tight even hand I had grown to expect to see from him.
The reports reached my table on the first morning of every seventh day. I read them, marked and annotated them, sealed them, and walked them across the commons to the garrison. Fei Liao read them and stamped them and sent the next courier west with the stamped copies for Commander Xu to approve.
That was the chain. Bolin to me, me to Fei Liao, and then Fei Liao to Commander Xu.