Walking to the third and top most floor in the building, elder monk Chen stopped in front of a room labelled conference hall three, inside was a plain white room with a large round table with eight chairs. The table was made in such a way that there was no head table and placed in the centre of the room. Three of the eight chairs were already occupied when elder monk Chen walked in, his textbooks in hand. Taking one of the empty chairs, monk Chen got comfortable, after a while he announced

  “let us begin the...

  “skip the rubbish, Chen Man” one monk interjected “get straight to the point. What happened?”

  “Sun Mo, have some decorum!" an old female monk with full white hair whispered with power

  The elder monk Sun Mo settled down.

  “First discussions” monk Chen continued unbothered “who will go first?”

  “There is a chapter from professor Cai Lun ‘The Void’ I want us to dissect, I will read it out.” the old monk started.

  .......................

  Back in the classroom, after a series of lectures which Gabriel had stayed through when no one had given him any instructions. One of the monks walked up to him.

  “Who are you?” The monk -a male- asked, he had one eye covered by a black eye patch.

  “Gabriel” he replied, noticing the other monks staring at them. The one eyed monk frowned at the answer.

  “You know what I mean, how are you here?” The one eyed monk persisted

  “I just am.” Gabriel answered again, this time there was a small smile on his face

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  The one eyed boy’s frown turned to a scowl and he stormed out of the classroom murmuring something about abuse of power and corrupt monks. Da-hye and the other monk left the classroom soon after but not before the other monk introduced himself as Samuel.

  Gabriel alone in the classroom sighed ‘maybe antagonizing his classmate wasn’t such a good idea’ getting up from his chair, Gabriel made his way out of the classroom building. He saw some disciples sitting in meditation under a huge willow tree in the centre of the temple. The temple was small compared to Samsara institute or his home university. It had at most a hundred people in total with seven elders. Each elder was a monk in the sixth tier or first rank disciples, they were as powerful as his uncle. Elder monk Chen Man was the designated leader of the elder monks or vice Abbott leader of the whole temple.

  The Chen Sun temple had three major buildings at three story tall each. They were located at different sides of the huge willow tree, the first building was the building with classrooms which Gabriel had just walked out from. The second building was the dormitory where all disciple and. Initiate monks stayed. The last building was filled with offices, one of them being monk Chen’s office. The offices were for those directly involved with the administration of the temple. Not all elders had offices, it was selected based on merit and whose work needed it more. The elders could be called upon to help if need be but for the most part, the elders just meditated or whatever elder monks did and taught disciple occasionally.

  The fifth tiered or second rank disciples were the once actively in charge of teaching the younger disciples and initiates. They took care of most of most of the actual day-to-day running of the temple, which includes the organisation and disciplinary duties. The fourth tiered or third ranked disciples are the major workforce and students of the temple, they are the ones saddled with all the more menial works that are needed to be done for the full functionality of the temple, these includes cooking and cleaning, farming and livestock rearing among a host of others done in rotation of course.

  All other buildings were scattered around the three main buildings and the huge willow tree, like the library, the elders cottage homes, the communal kitchen -some in closer proximity to others-.

  All this buildings had one thing in common they were bungalows in design, one floor each but apart from that they differed. Each built uniquely wide for their purpose. Going around the entire temple to find monk Chen’s cottage had taken Gabriel the better part of the whole day and evening was already approaching. Heading into monk Chen's cottage, he found the place empty. The elder monk had yet to come back.