The northeastern mountain road was all his at four in the morning.
He had walked this road thirty nine times before every time he had to do some maintenance work on the formations over the four and a half years. He knew every part of this road like the part at kilometer eight and the narrow path at kilometer nineteen where the big granite walls made it hard to walk side by side. He also knew about the creek crossing at kilometer twenty six where the road changed from earth to loose gravel. You had to be careful not to slip, especially in the dark.. Then there was the flat part of the road at kilometer thirty eight where you could see the northeastern peaks of the mountain range in a special order, which became clear as the sun rose and the sky got brighter.
He did not need to think about any of this. He had walked this road many times that his body knew it just like he knew the formations in the northeast area. Through doing the same thing over and over for a long time until it became a part of him like he was born with it. The road was easy to walk.
He walked at a pace one that would cover forty kilometers in seven hours without him getting tired.
The boring layer was working at its best all the time.
This meant that the Seed of Current had to work a bit harder than usual to keep everything balanced. He had been getting used to this for three weeks to get ready for the Hollow, which would be more sensitive than the formations outside. After three weeks his body was used to it and it did not feel hard anymore. It just used a bit of his energy without him even noticing.
His body walked the boring layer worked and at kilometer twelve the first monitoring station on the road checked him and found that he was at the Body Tempering Layer Two. The same thing happened at kilometer twenty two and at kilometer thirty one.
Nothing special happened he was a regular person doing his job.
— ◆ —
At kilometer twenty three, the northeastern Greenwood formation was thirty meters to his left.
He had checked it forty three times before over four years of maintenance work and monthly checks. He stopped at the rock on the side of the road, where he could see the formation clearly and used the Aether Echo Script to read it at its maximum range.
The formation was quiet and stable. Did not need any maintenance work. He checked it for four minutes.
Then for the time he used another method to check it at the same time.
The Primordial Star Frost Internal Scripture, which had a way of reading the formation to see what it was meant to do. He had found out about this method six weeks ago when he was studying it in the library and he had been waiting for the time to use it. This was the forty fourth time he checked the formation and the last time before he went to the Hollow.
He used both methods for six minutes.
The Primordial Star Frost method showed him what the formation was meant to do. The formation was not quiet because it was not working. Because it was waiting for something. A special cultivation signature, a Five Root structure at the Foundation Establishment stage.
He thought about this for a time.
In four and a half years he had been checking a formation that was not really quiet but waiting. He had not been the type of cultivator or at the right stage to trigger it until now. He was still not at the stage but after he tried the next time would be different.
He updated his notes and continued walking.
— ◆ —
The flat part of the road at kilometer thirty eight showed him the peaks of the Azurefall mountain range.
He looked at the peaks for three seconds.
The Hollow was somewhere in those mountains. He would get there soon. The entry formation would appear in a clearing at the hour like any other formation. He had read about it fourteen times. He knew that it would be different when he saw it himself.
He walked across the part and reviewed what he had to do on the first day. Enter, get his bearings calibrate his ambient energy deploy his formation stones and establish a reference point.
Then he would use the Void Storm Wind Mist Scripture, to match his energy with the Hollows. He had designed a way of doing this three months ago because he knew that the Hollows energy would be different from what he was used to.
The Scripture said that the Hollow was a place to cultivate but he knew that it would be more complicated than that. He noticed things that others did not because he could read the energy in a way.
He continued walking and at kilometer thirty nine he saw someone ahead of him.
— ◆ —
The man was at the Foundation Establishment stage and had a clean and strong energy. He had a formation instrument kit with him with good tools that were fully charged. He was walking a bit faster than Ren. Was heading northeast.
Ren kept his pace and the distance between them stayed at forty meters.
The man was forty years old and had a strong and confident walk. He was still. Had not reached his limit yet. Ren wondered why he was not along and filed this observation away.
He did not try to catch up with the man.
— ◆ —
When Ren arrived at the entry clearing there were eleven cultivators there.
He stepped into the clearing. Counted them without looking like he was counting. Eleven. He would be the twelfth.
There were nine Core Formation cultivators, in three groups and two Foundation Establishment Late cultivators who were on their own. One of them was the man from the road, who had arrived before Ren and the other was a woman who was standing at the edge of the clearing reading the dimensional boundary.
She was fully focused on the formation. Was trying to understand its structure before it appeared. Ren found a place to sit at the edge of the clearing and ran the Aether Echo Script to read the other cultivators without looking at them directly.
The woman at the edge was strong and had a layered energy that was not typical of someone at her stage. She had an understanding of formations and was good at reading them. Ren noted this. Turned his attention to the dimensional boundary.
At the hour the gate appeared.
It took three seconds. Was like any other formation. The woman watched it closely. The other cultivators looked up when it appeared. She was the first in line. Ren joined the line at the seventh position.
At the position there was another Foundation Establishment Late cultivator, who Ren had not noticed before. He registered this. Continued forward.
He showed his token and the entry array read his energy. Foundation Establishment Middle. And opened the gate.
He stepped through. Felt the change, in the air.
Next step was to do the Qi compression eight times. All five paths were going to register the density change at the time. The Soul Path was going to have more to work with because of the density. The Energy Path was going to respond to the environment by drawing in a little more.
He stopped walking forty meters inside the gate.
He set the kit bag down on the ground.
He opened the notebook that had the map.
He started working.
— ◆ —
The outer layer started circulating Qi after one minute.
He was expecting the compression to happen.. He was not fully expecting the circulation to be like that. He had read about it. It is different when you actually feel it.
The Clearwater Sects outer layer anchor network was still working after eight hundred years. The network did not need any Qi to keep the circulation patterns going. The circulation was moving in directions. It was like many streams moving through the ground in a pattern. The Void Storm Wind Mist Scripture could map this pattern. No one had described it in detail before.
He did the adaptation procedure. This was a calibration that he had developed for the Seed of Still Current.
He had to find the frequency of the circulation and adjust the intake to match it. If he did not do this it would cause turbulence.. If he did it right the session would be much better.
He found out that if he did the intake during the peaks and release during the troughs he could get more done in two hours than in a six-hour session outside.
He confirmed this. Wrote it down in the notebook.
Then he set up the six formation stones in the quadrant. He ran a test to confirm the configuration and checked the reference point.
This was the time he was using the Abyssal Ice Shadow Sun Internal Scriptures conditioned stones in the Hollow environment. The Scripture was an Earth Grade technique that he had been running on some of the kit bags stones for four months. He was not using it for cultivation but for the stability function it provided.
The stones were seventy-five percent effective. He needed at sixty percent for the preparation platform to work. So he had a twenty-five percent margin.
He confirmed that the deployment was correct and wrote it down in the notebook.
Day one was done: he had established the outer layer ambient reference. The Void Storm Wind Mist Scripture frequency-aligned intake was working. The formation stone deployment was nominal.
He closed the notebook. Did a full frequency-aligned session.
The session lasted sixty minutes. The gain in efficiency was not about numbers. The compression and circulation made the session much better than twelve hours of practice.
He wrote down his estimate: one interior session was equal, to forty exterior hours. He needed to confirm this with sessions.
He was ahead of schedule.
He looked at what he had done in the fading light of the afternoon and thought about everything he had prepared for.
The day he would do the calibration marker and move to the middle layer.
Everything was starting now.