The novice courtyard is organized from the lowest level to the highest in novice disciples, novice elders and the great novice elder.
The functions of a novice elder are simple, to keep the novice courtyard in order and the most important, to attract students under his wings and to guide them on the path of cultivation, helping them to enter the senior courtyard.
The number of students an elder can have is limited only to his ability to attract the attention of the disciples, so there are great variations among the number of students under the elders, some have only one student while the number of others exceeds one hundred.
The relationship between students and elders is a win-win situation since the student receives help from someone more experienced in the cultivation path which helps to avoid making numerous mistakes and for the elders the greater the achievements of their respective students, the greater the rewards given to them, varying from contribution points to cultivation pills and treasures.
Obviously a man of infamous reputation like Arthur couldn't attract a single student because people didn't want to become a laughing stock along with his teacher and also because they doubted his orientation skills, so since Arthur became a novice elder, he survives only on the small base salary that every elder receives every month.
But not all is lost, besides the great novice elder there are only 18 novice elders, however there are thousands of novice disciples, consequently only a small percentage of them have the privilege of being able to receive private guidance from an elder, the "trash disciples" who are at the bottom of the ranking could never achieve something like this.
The elders seek to welcome as students only those disciples who are at the top of the rankings of the rookie courtyard since obviously they are part of the elite among the disciples and have a greater chance of making great contributions to the sect, helping the "trash disciples" would only be a waste of time for them.
Arthur obviously sees these disciples with other eyes, it is a fact that he is a novice elder, may be the worst but he is still an elder, as for his reputation, well, these disciples are not in a much better situation than him, if he extends his hand to these desperate people there are great chances to capture some students successfully.
But what about their talent? With his gigantic experience of his countless reincarnations Arthur can even teach a pig to talk, why couldn't he awaken the latent talent of these disciples?
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Eleanor bowed respectfully to Arthur and opened her mouth to speak.
"Master, one of the disciples I researched is named Oliver, a young man of 17 years old."
Oliver is an orphan who was found by the patriarch in a village destroyed by bandits, in the heat of the moment he brought the boy to the sect and took care of him, but when he discovered that the boy had no talent for cultivation his attitude towards the boy changed completely, since then he has never contacted Oliver again despite not having expelled him from the sect.
Obviously everyone in the sect knew about it and was jealous of the way the patriarch took care of Oliver, so when the boy was left by the patriarch people decided to vent their frustrations on him making him an outcast and a laughingstock.
"Interesting, good work Eleanor, what about the other disciple?"
An expression of happiness appeared on Eleanor's face when he heard Arthur's praise, but listening to the second part his expression changed, with feelings of bitterness and hesitation appearing on his face.
"Master... I'm not sure how to talk about this person... his situation is a little different from the other two..."