Journey of the Scholar

Huojin stood motionless, his mind swirling with the intensity of Zhen's words. The battlefield around them seemed to blur as the flames crackled and hissed.

Zhen's confession of jealousy had struck a chord, unlocking something deep within Huojin that he had buried for years.

"Why can't I beat you?!" Zhen's voice echoed in Huojin's ears, but it wasn't just the words that reverberated—it was the raw emotion behind them. The frustration, the envy, the bitterness of always being overshadowed.

But as Zhen lay there, defeated for the moment, Huojin's own thoughts began to spiral into a painful recollection.

"Expectations…" Huojin whispered to himself.

People always saw him as the prodigy, the one destined for greatness. The disciple who could never fail. The one whom the sect elders had lavished with praise, resources, and guidance. But what they never saw was the weight of that pedestal, the crushing burden of always having to be perfect.

Huojin's mind drifted back to his early days at the True Sun Sect.

He could see himself, younger, more naïve, standing before the towering gates of the sect for the first time, filled with excitement and ambition. The world was open to him, and he felt invincible.

"Huojin, you're going to be something special," one of the sect elders had told him on that first day, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You have the potential to surpass all who have come before you."

At the time, those words had filled him with pride.

To be told he was destined for greatness, that he was different from the others—it was intoxicating.

But as time passed, those same words morphed into chains that bound him tighter and tighter.

The expectations.

In every training session, he was watched. In every battle, he was scrutinized.

Every success was met with a nod of approval, but every mistake—however small—was magnified, dissected, criticized.

The pressure mounted, and with each passing day, the weight of those expectations grew heavier.

Huojin remembered a particularly difficult training session, where he had been sparring against several senior disciples.

His flames had faltered for just a moment, and in that split second, one of the senior disciples had landed a blow on him. It wasn't a serious injury, just a minor cut on his arm. But the disappointment in the sect elders' eyes had cut far deeper.

"You mustn't falter, Huojin," one of the elders had said. "You are our hope, our future. You cannot afford to make mistakes."

Those words haunted him.

Expectations.

Huojin trained harder, longer, pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion.

While others rested, he continued to hone his fire techniques, burning with a desire to meet the standards set for him.

But no matter how much he achieved, it was never enough. The praise he received only served as a reminder that he could never let his guard down, never falter.

He became a prisoner to those expectations.

"Huojin, why aren't you resting?" one of the senior disciples, an older boy named Liang, had once asked him late at night when he found Huojin training alone in the courtyard.

"I can't rest," Huojin had replied, his voice weary. "I have to be better. I have to live up to what they expect."

Liang had looked at him for a long moment before shaking his head. "You're pushing yourself too hard. You'll break if you don't take a moment to breathe."

But Huojin couldn't afford to break. In the world of cultivation, in the True Sun Sect, breaking meant falling behind, and falling behind meant failure. Failure wasn't an option—not for him.

Expectations.

The word echoed in his mind, growing louder with each memory.

The world only saw the talented young cultivator, the rising star, but they never saw the sleepless nights, the endless pressure.

They didn't see the fear—the fear that one day he would falter again, and this time, there would be no forgiveness.

Huojin's flashback deepened, taking him to one of his darkest moments in the sect.

It had been a tournament within the True Sun Sect, a competition meant to showcase the strongest disciples.

Huojin had been the favorite, the one everyone expected to win. But that day, something had gone wrong.

His flames hadn't burned as brightly as usual. His movements had felt sluggish, weighed down by the constant pressure. And in the final match, he had lost—a single misstep had cost him the victory.

The silence that followed was suffocating. The crowd had been stunned. The sect elders had watched him with cold, unreadable eyes. Huojin had felt their disappointment like a physical blow.

Afterward, in the quiet of his room, Huojin had stared at his reflection, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white. The defeat replayed in his mind over and over. The shame, the humiliation—it was unbearable.

That night, Huojin had made a vow to himself. He would never fail again.

No matter the cost, no matter the sacrifices, he would never allow himself to fall short of their expectations. He couldn't bear the weight of their disappointment again.

But in making that vow, Huojin had chained himself even more tightly to the expectations that had haunted him from the start.

He became obsessed with perfection, with being the best, and he had sacrificed everything for it—his health, his peace of mind, even his relationships with his fellow disciples.

Zhen's words brought all those memories crashing back.

Huojin stared at Zhen, lying there on the battlefield, his body battered, his flames flickering weakly. And in Zhen's jealousy, in his frustration, Huojin saw a reflection of himself.

Zhen had always envied Huojin for the praise and attention he received, but he had never understood the price that came with it.

The sleepless nights, the constant pressure, the fear of failure—it was a burden Huojin had carried alone.

"Do you really think it's been easy for me?" Huojin said softly, his voice barely above a whisper. Zhen, still recovering from the impact of their last exchange, looked up at him, confused.

"What… what do you mean?" Zhen asked, his voice strained.

Huojin sighed, his flames dimming slightly as he allowed himself a moment of vulnerability. "You think I've had it easy because of the praise, the resources, the attention.

But you don't know what it's like to live under the weight of their expectations. Every day, I feel like I'm walking on a tightrope, one wrong step and everything comes crashing down."

Zhen's eyes widened in surprise. He had never considered that Huojin, the one who seemed so perfect, so untouchable, could feel the same pressures he did.

"Expectations," Huojin repeated, his voice heavy with the weight of the word. "They're not just a blessing, Zhen. They're a curse."

Zhen stared at him, speechless. The flames between them crackled softly, casting flickering shadows across their faces.

For the first time, Zhen saw Huojin not as the untouchable prodigy, but as someone just as trapped as he was.

The flashback in Huojin's mind continued to unravel, taking him deeper into his memories. He remembered the sleepless nights, the constant pressure to perform, the endless cycle of praise and expectation.

No one had ever seen the toll it took on him. No one had ever asked how he was holding up under the weight of it all.

And now, standing here on this battlefield, facing Zhen, Huojin realized that he had been running from those expectations for so long that he had forgotten what it felt like to be free of them.

The flashback wasn't over, but the memories were too painful to continue. Huojin shook his head, trying to push them aside, but the weight of the past still clung to him, like chains that refused to break.

Expectations.

Even the mightiest can be weighed down by the burden of expectation.

They were still there, still pressing down on him, even now.