Four levels from the threshold.
He had walked through four encounters and emerged from each of them carrying something that had not been there before, not gear, not skills, not stat upgrades, but a kind of understanding that the deep zone seemed to be producing deliberately, the way a careful craftsman produces not just the object but the person who made it.
The architectural spacing of the trees continued. He had stopped trying to identify the logic of it. The pattern served a purpose he was not meant to understand from inside it. The mountain had built this place the way an examiner builds an exam: the structure was not for the subject's benefit. The structure was for the result.
Lei Bao was still quiet.
