No one wished to bother Walker. Not because they were afraid of him or because he had explained that he needed to be left alone while he tried to spread his mana senses across large distances.
Simply put, they were worried about the mana they could see condensing around him.
While Walker had grown significantly and he was still starting to gather more about that, he also had to open his eyes when he meditated. He was causing manas to condense and be much more visually seen by those who would normally not notice mana unless it was denser.
Walker also made a show of doing so with much purer manas since he was clearly stronger than other people. He just had no idea that he made the mana in the area around him so visible that it caused some issues.
These strands of condensed and purer manas were actually like tendrils. They were connections to Walker as he reached out to sense the flow of mana to track down even more.
