The massive disk to the city's edge was a far cry from his graceful flight earlier in the day. Slow and packed with seated passengers, it was no more conducive it quiet study than the bustling station.
But, like the station before, it gave a glimpse into everyday life. Most of the people he saw were regular citizens, rather than powerful cultivators.
They were dressed not in robes but in fashions similar, yet different to those he was used to. When they moved, it was at speeds he could track, and they spoke of everyday troubles and triumphs.
The bulk of them, he suspected, were in the Body Cleansing realm at most. Most were a little too attractive and healthy to be regular mortals, but few lacked the signs he’d begun to associate with higher realms.
Perhaps Energy Realm cultivators were rare. Or maybe they made their way home flitting across the sky on personal flying devices. He lacked the data to know, but the second idea was nicer.
The thought that few people even reached the second realm was too sad.
Carlington Station was large, but less busy than the inner city station. On the inner side, it had a landing pad, on the other, a massive vehicle took up the entirety of a road.
The contraption looked like someone had stuck two buses together and doubled the length for the fun of it. Back home, it would have broken a dozen road laws, but it fitted the general cultivator atmosphere; everything had to be bigger.
A few dozen people were entering as he arrived, but when he rushed over, he found it was heading in the wrong direction. His hauler would not arrive for an hour, giving him time to begin a detailed readthrough of his cultivation method at last.
First, however, he glanced into the hauler’s windows. Like a train or airplane, internal walls split the inside into multiple compartments.
From the look of it, you could get a seat in the front section, a bunk bed in the middle, or one of a few cabins at the back. The price would undoubtedly increase in line with comfort; a regular ticket would satisfy his needs.
With a little searching, Kevin found a section of the depot where he could sit with a view of the nearest clock. He wouldn't be leaving tonight if he missed this hauler; he had to remain mindful of the time.
Opening, Sealed Land Cultivation Method, he delved into pages he’d only skimmed before. The writing was dense and small as if the author had attempted to cram as much into each page as possible.
Diagrams placed here and there were the only exceptions. Each was drawn in a delicate style and given whatever room was required to convey its meaning.
Thirty-seven pages might have been easy to finish in an hour for a regular book. However, Kevin found that with the dense writing, and his lack of background information, it took much longer to dig through.
But he wasn’t in a hurry. Even taking a few days to dig through the book with care, ensuring no hidden meaning was missed, would have been more than worth it.
While such a long period of study might be required for the entire booklet, Kevin found the initial exercise within the first few pages as he had earlier. Then he’d just been looking for the environment required; now he spent the full hour ensuring he’d memorized every part.
The idea was simple enough; just imagine a hollow orb within your body. If you stopped there, as he had earlier, you might consider the method easy enough, and you would be wrong.
Passing the first stage required working on the visualization until you found a consistent image you could replicate each time. This was critical, as you would fail in later stages if even a single detail shifted between sessions.
There was a diagram to help you begin, an opaque sphere floating in an empty void, but the booklet insisted that you make the image your own. Its shape and size had to resonate with you, the sole requirement being that it remained empty.
Then there was the location where you placed the image without your body. That too had to be consistent and figured out based on how each spot ‘felt’. The method suggested placing it below the heart initially, then varying the position between that and the Dantian’s traditional location.
Here, a diagram was of significant help as the human heart was far more central to the spine than he’d thought. As with the details of the visualization, the location you placed it had to be consistent before you could progress.
Such visualization seemed to stretch what he’d believed his mind capable of, yet the booklet insisted it was possible. Perhaps Qi would help along the way, or perhaps the human mind was more able than he gave it credit.
If all of that weren’t enough, the time commitment drove home why the method was so unpopular. Once you were practicing the full method, each second the image wasn't present in your mind reduced the progress you'd made.
While not important during this first exploratory step, the booklet still placed the information near the front; as if warning him what was in for. Would that mean he had to stay focused on the image for more than half of each day?
The hauler arrived before he found an answer. Despite his intention to remain focused on the time, the roar of its horn was the only reason he didn’t miss it.
Hurrying inside, he found the first compartment taken up by a ticket booth, and a large refreshments stand. With help from the saleswoman, he purchased a ticket with unfamiliar coins.
His section was in the next area, its rows of seats more reminiscent of a commercial airliner than a bus. Seating was not pre-assigned, however, and he found a spot in the back with no other passengers.
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An overnight trip in this direction hadn’t drawn more than a hundred people; not enough to fill a third of the massive vehicle. Even by the time they left the station, he still had half a dozen seats in his row between him and the next passenger.
Before he could return to studying his cultivation method, Kevin’s stomach reminded him he’d eaten nothing beyond a few sandwiches all day. He would need to find food if he wanted to stay focused.
The other passengers weren't hesitating to move around the crawler as it drove, so he followed suit and returned to the front compartment.
There, he found a collection of small pies for sale at the refreshments stand. They smelled divine, and as the line had cleared, Kevin purchased four, once more requiring the seller's help.
Memorizing the various coin values was something he’d have to do soon. At the moment, he couldn’t even tell if he was being told the correct coins to pay with, or if he was being ripped off.
But that would be a problem for another day. For now, he returned to his seat, flipped a little table down from the back of the chair in front, and devoured his meal.
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Skimming past fifteen more complicated pages, Kevin found what he was looking for in the middle. Past a final exercise were the time requirements to see tangible progress.
As the first exercise had warned him, whenever he wasn’t focusing on the image, he was losing progress. This even stretched to when he was asleep, suggesting at first a requirement or near-complete focus during waking hours.
However, that basic understanding was far from the full story. Your level of focus during your practice time had a significant impact.
The most progress would be made during intense meditation sessions with nothing but your final image in mind. Remaining less focused, but still keeping the image present throughout the day would provide less progress, but would still build up over time.
Finally, the booklet described a technique for keeping it in the back of your mind, even when focused on other things. While he wasn’t sure that was how the mind worked, Kevin was willing to take the method at its word for now.
On the negative side, how badly you lost focus mattered as well. Having the image vanish from your mind during the day would have the worst impact while sleeping had less of an effect.
Eight hours of lost focus while asleep, when the mind was resting, would have far less effect than eight hours of waking negligence.
The booklet even had a specialized dream technique to mitigate such loss, but Kevin skipped it for now. He’d found hope that progress was possible, and that was all he needed.
The hauler lurched to a stop, the sound of its horn dragging his attention from the booklet. They’d arrived at another station, pausing as people alighted or entered.
That would be annoying to sleep through, but he could see the need to warn people before they missed their stop. He’d best be prepared for a rough night.
Returning to his studies, Kevin paused as a second section in the middle of the book drew his attention. It held a detailed explanation of why consistency was so important.
While it might not be relevant at his current level, he couldn’t help but read ahead a little further. He’d always found it easier to comply with instructions when he knew the reason.
Being unable to keep a consistent image, it turned out, was even more damaging than regular loss of focus. If you couldn’t keep an image steady over different sessions, then each session would try to make progress on a new image.
If you could only remain consistent for a day, then you would never make more than a day’s progress. No wonder there were so many exercises focused on dialing in that perfect image before you reached this last stage.
Humbled but still hopeful, Kevin returned to the beginning. The task ahead might seem monumental, but he had faith Dr. Grange wouldn’t have given him an impossible method.
The man gave off an aura of cool competence throughout their meeting. Travis, too, had said the OIM used him for their outsiders, and that many of them had made it into sects.
Besides, the man had warned him the method would be difficult. If it worked in the end, then all the effort would be would be worth it.
With the sky darkening outside, Kevin used the last light to review the first exercise again. After ensuring he knew the instructions by heart and had gotten one more look at the two diagrams, he put the booklet aside.
Despite the rapid approach of night, he was filled with too much nervous energy for sleep to come soon. Nor could he bring himself to wait until tomorrow before beginning.
He’d studied long enough, there wouldn’t come a better time to start the Sealed Land method than now.
Closing his eyes and slowing his breathing, Kevin tried his best to clear his thoughts. It was difficult at first, and after minutes of little progress, he shifted his attempts.
The point of the method wasn’t to have an empty mind like he’d heard so often about meditation back home but to focus on a single image. This, he found, was a little easier.
Thinking about something specific helped focus his attention; soon he could keep the image of a floating orb in place for a minute at a time. Far from what he’d need in the future, but decent progress for a beginner.
It might have been enough for an initial attempt, but Kevin couldn’t resist playing a little with the more advanced stages. First, he shifted the orb’s shape, paying close attention to how each variation felt.
The initial orb felt wrong, contrasting with his idea of land as a flat plane. Perhaps that was taking the title Sealed Land too literally, but the more he diverged, the better the image felt.
He pushed the image flatter until he had an ovoid. It still felt far from perfect, but continuing further felt worse. Well, he couldn’t expect to figure it out in a single evening, anyway.
Moving on, Kevin tried the last step; placing the image within his body. Here, he ran into a contradiction. How could his ovoid be floating in a void, yet also be present in his body?
It was a paradox that stumped him for long minutes as the hauler quietened around him. All attempts to force the two images together failed until he found a trick to resolve the contradiction.
A void existed within his chest, just below his heart, and in that void floated an opaque ovoid shape stark against the black background. Was such a workaround allowed? He’d have to check the next exercise to see if it held any clues.
Keeping his attention on the image was still difficult for more than a minute. Even the slightest distractions could break his focus; a passenger moving to the bathroom, the snoring of a person two seats in front, and the occasional roar of the hauler’s horn.
Nor could he keep the image consistent between attempts. The shape was still changing over time, and where he placed it in his chest did as well. That was fine, however, as this was the time for experimentation.
Eventually, the focus required became too exhausting, and Kevin let his latest attempt fade away as he opened his eyes. The inside of the hauler was dim now, illuminated by faint sigils providing just enough light to move around.
Outside was darker still, lit only by a sliver of moon, and the glimmering of unfamiliar stars. None of the constellations he was used to were visible through the window, instead odd groupings teased at strange shapes.
Somehow this drove home how far he’d traveled more than all the strange powers and people combined. Everything had changed for the better in a single day, and he could only imagine what further changes were to come.
That was for the future, however. Now his body was demanding a trip to the bathroom and then sleep. Resisting the urge to push his practice further tonight, Kevin gave in and prepared to rest.
He would have to maintain a healthy lifestyle if he wanted to acquire the level of focus his cultivation method required.
Further practice could come tomorrow and every day after that.