Week 9 Story: The Headmaster of White Lotus Academy

There once lived a headmaster who oversaw the White Lotus Academy, a school for young wizards. The headmaster was a powerful wizard, and many students hoped to learn from him.

One day before going out, he told a group of students to watch over a small wooden box for him.

"But you must not open it," the headmaster told them.

They promised they would not before he left. Not long after, the students' curiosity got the best of them and they open the top of the box. Inside, they found a small toy car. To pass the time, the students played with the car but made sure it was back safely before the headmaster returned.

When he got back to White Lotus Academy, the headmaster burst into the room yelling, "Why did you disobey me when I told you to not open the box?"

The students denied that they had ever even touched the box.

"Why then, did my car crash when I was returning?"

The students knew they had been caught, but the headmaster decided to give them another task to let them redeem themselves.

"Sit by my fireplace and make sure the fire does not go out," the headmaster instructed.

He left, and several hours later, he still had not returned. The students were tired of adding firewood and decided to take a break. They all fell sleep, but woke up and realized the fire had gone out. They relit the fire soon before the headmaster showed up.

He entered the room yelling, "I cannot believe you have disobeyed me again. Because you let the fire go out, I had to walk back in the cold."

One particularly brave student said, "If you are really such a powerful wizard, then why can't you stop your own students from disobeying you?"

All the other students paused, waiting for what the headmaster would do. But he did nothing.

The next day, the headmaster sent the disobedient student to clean the grounds. As the student scrubbed the stone gargoyles that adorned the front of the academy, the headmaster turned the student into a gargoyle himself.

A few weeks later, the student's father showed up, saying he had not heard from his son in a while and was worried about him.

"Sir, I can assure you your son is well. In fact, right now he is off studying," the headmaster asked when the father entered his office.

The father felt better, but was stopped by a group a students on his way out. In hushed voices, they told him what had really happened.

Enraged, the father decided to go tell the Director of Wizardry what had happened to his son at White Lotus Academy. The director sent guards to bring the headmaster and his assistants to the Department of Wizardry to be properly punished.

The guards got the sorcerer and his assistants into their car, and they began the journey. They soon were stopped, however, by a dark cloud in the middle of the road.

"That is the Dark Spirit of the Mountain. My assistants know how to get rid of it. Let them out of the car so they can save us," the headmaster said.

The guards followed his instructions, but the first assistant was consumed by the dark cloud as soon as he took a step toward the spirit. The second assistant tried, but was also consumed. The headmaster said that he would try, as his magic was more powerful than anyone else. But he too was consumed by the dark cloud the moment he left the car. The dark spirit immediately disappeared, and the guards realized they had been tricked by the headmaster.

Author's Note: I decided to write a story based on "The Sorcerer of the White Lotus Lodge." In this story, a sorcerer gives a few tasks to students and they disobey him. For their first task, they are ordered to watch a covered bowl and not touch it. They, of course, remove the cover to find a small ship and touch it. The sorcerer returns and tells them his ship capsized. He then tells them to watch a candle and make sure it does not go out. It does, and the sorcerer tells them he had to walk in the dark. One students insults the sorcerer, and he turns the student into a pig and sends him to a butcher. The student's father finds out and tells the district mandarin, who then tells his supervisor. They send soldiers to take the sorcerer, his wife, and their son to the capital to be imprisoned. On the journey, the are stopped by a giant who eats the sorcerer and his family, and the soldiers realize they have been tricked. I decided I wanted to set my story at a school; reading about the father showing up to figure out what happened to his son made me think of a teen mystery. I realized I needed some way to incorporate magic, though, for many of the events of the story to happen, which is why I decided to set it at a wizard school. 

Cloud from pxhere

Story source: The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).