“So, what do you think?” Kevin asked, nervous tension racing through him as he looked at the agent.

They were sitting at his dining table, a cup of tea in front of each of them as the agent scratched his chin, holding up a finger to wait.

After their brief discussion on the street, he’d hustled Travis back to his place. This was not the kind of conversation he wanted to have in the open.

Then he’d whipped up a few drinks and gone through his current troubles with the Sealed Land cultivation method. He covered both the success and the current string of failures, not sparing his pride to ensure the agent had all the information he needed.

Now all he could do was wait and sip his drink to hide just how nervous he was. If this didn’t work, he might need to ask for another appointment with Dr. Grange.

Even if the method was expected to take a while to complete, almost a week with no progress seemed too much. Perhaps he wasn’t compatible with it at all?

“So, if I’m understanding correctly, your issue is that none of the images you think should fit in your sealed land feel right?” Travis said.

Kevin nodded; that about covered the issue.

“Well, I think I can tell you the problem right away,” Travis said with a wry smile. “It’s something everyone from a cultivator family knows, but the rest of us have to figure out.”

“I imagine it’s even worse for outsiders as well. The simple issue is you're starting from the end. That might work with mundane goals, but it’s never going to work for cultivation.”

“Starting with the beginning?” Kevin asked, mind whirling with ideas. He thought he might be getting what Travis was saying, but he needed confirmation.

“Yes,” Travis responded with a firm nod. “You want to be overflowing with life, a wellspring of life force and energy that never ends. But that isn’t what you are now. If you try to jump from your current spot straight there, you’ll never make it.”

“You have to accept your current state, that’s the only place you can make any change ]]s. Perhaps in the future, you can shift to what you think your goal requires, or perhaps you’ll find you were entirely wrong.”

“But either way, you must begin right where you are.”

Kevin bit his lip, he could see that. As he was, he didn’t have any more energy or lifespan than a regular mortal. If you compared that to his goal of eternal life, he might as well have nothing.

In other words, if his ideal was a sealed realm brimming with life and energy, he was about as far from that as possible. No wonder none of his ideas had worked.

Why then had those lovely fields been one of those examples? Perhaps other people had different beliefs, and so would progress differently? Whatever the case, it was a single example of three that he’d latched onto because it fit with what he wanted to believe.

He’d been spending so much effort dragging his thoughts back from those desolate landscapes, ignoring the obvious clue they presented. Thank god Travis had set him right after only a week, who knows how long he’d have wasted otherwise?

“Thank you,” Kevin said, his tone serious. “I wouldn’t have understood that for ages otherwise.”

“You're welcome, but I’m just doing my job,” the agent shrugged in reply. “Now, if we could just get this interview out of the way, I believe there’s a celebration I need to get to.”

“Right,” Kevin laughed as the mood changed for the merrier. “I wouldn’t want my door broken down by people looking for you. What do you need?”

“Just the basics,” Travis said, pulling a clipboard from nowhere. “How you’ve been fitting in, work, and so on. Cultivation too, but I think I’ve got enough details for that.”

“Sure,” Kevin nodded. “Works been going well…”

----------------------------------------

The interview lasted an hour and covered his life in more detail than Kevin had expected. Still, Travis seemed happy enough once it was done, and he hoped that meant the OIM would be happy too.

Given they were setting everything up for him, that was rather important.

After the interview, they left for the celebration. Gino’s was easy to find, you just had to follow the stream of dressed-up townsfolk.

Before long we’d arrived at a massive restaurant, filled with a few hundred people. The main floor had been cleared to hold three huge buffet tables with room in between where people could mingle.

The celebration had already begun but kicked into full gear when Travis arrived. Another massive cheer swept through the room, and he was quickly led off by a swarm of people demanding to hear about the fight.

Leaving Kevin alone, which would have been fine if he didn’t have a promise to keep. Shrugging, he began searching for Vanessa.

Finding her took a good half hour in the shifting mass of people, but he eventually came across her at one of the buffet tables. She was looking amazing, wearing a fancy robe-dress hybrid.

“Kevin! Finally,” she swept over at seeing him. “You owe me an introduction.”

“Yeah, that's why I’m here,” Kevin said back, hooking his arm into hers. “Come on, I’m pretty sure he’s this way.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Travis was not hard to find, you just had to look for the largest clump of people. Getting in to see him took a little more work, but eventually Kevin managed to complete his promise.

The introduction even seemed to go pretty well given how many other attractive young women clustered around the agent.

After wishing Vanessa luck, he extracted himself from the huddle and found the quietest corner he could. This was still louder than he’d have liked, but it would have been rude to leave so soon after arriving.

“Work with where I am currently, huh?” Kevin muttered, closing his eyes and casting his mind to the very things he’d been ignoring for so long.

That noisy room with a party in full swing should have been a terrible place to concentrate, and yet the images still came easily. As if welcoming his sudden change of heart with a burst of inspiration.

Instead of focusing on images linked to what he wanted, Kevin cast his mind back to landscapes that had stayed with him the longest.

The cracked yellow dirt that filled the fields during a drought in his childhood, the majesty of the Grand Canyon, and sandy deserts as far as the eye could see. All harsh places, yet filled with an enduring beauty.

Cracked earth split by canyons fitted the best; dry like a desert, but harder, more enduring. As if it would continue to exist no matter what happened, through drought or storm, until the end of time.

Kevin laughed out loud, shaking his head at coming full circle. After accepting that he had to put his dream aside for now, he’d still ended up with an image that somehow fit.

A sealed land that felt like it would endure forever; what better basis for further advancement could there be?

There was still so much to do, he had but a tiny corner of the landscape needed, but now there was hope.

He just needed to keep working on it.

----------------------------------------

Days turned into weeks as Kevin continued to build out his landscape. The theme stayed the same, though in a few places, the details changed.

Here and there, across the massive plains of hardened earth, stood tiny replicas of hills and mountains. In others, there were twisted, deadwood trees, plains of salt, or massive canyons.

All of it seemed small at the scale he was working at as if looking down on a vast area while flying. It was an ambitious project, and yet every part of it felt better than the last.

At first, the massive plan had felt good on its own, yet he knew it was missing something. The diagram of a mountain within a sealed land was his key to moving forward again.

That example in the booklet had been so lifelike, with roads and crags drawn in exquisite detail. So he’d begun his own work, no matter how long it would take.

Three weeks, in the end, to form the full landscape. Another month to ensure he’d memorized it down to the smallest detail. Sixty-plus days at ten hours of focus per day; over six hundred hours of work.

In the end, it was glorious, by far the greatest work of his life. Glowing with pride, Kevin took a full afternoon off on the last day before proceeding to the final exercise.

He managed to get all his friends together. Vanessa and the cultivation group were easy but Agent Travis was harder. Yet the man was due for another interview, and so wasn’t too difficult to convince.

For once it was Kevin talking about his advancement, instead of listening to those in the cultivation group. After so long, the validation was incredible, and he knew it would only grow once he’d finished.

The next day, he cracked open the Sealed Land Cultivation Method booklet and flipped to the third exercise. This time there was a full page of warnings, and despite his excitement, Kevin went through to ensure he’d completed everything.

He had.

With bated breath, he looked to the next page, expecting another large set of instructions. What complicated madness would it be this time? Whatever it was, he was ready.

Instead, it was only a couple of paragraphs. All they said was that he had to inject a sense of realism into his image.

He had to believe that it was real; not just some visualization in his mind, but a real prescience within his body.

That was it; no other instructions, details, or even a diagram to get started.

Frowning, he flipped to the next page. It was the instructions for time requirements he’d read so long ago on the train.

“Right,” Kevin sighed, leaning back. He’d have to read the time instructions again, but for now, he had to contemplate the third exercise.

Instead of being another prerequisite, as he’d expected, it seemed this was also the final step of the whole method. Just believe it was real, and eventually it would be.

Well, it couldn’t be that hard. Right?

----------------------------------------

Belief, it turned out, was that hard. More weeks passed as Kevin tried to inject that elusive ‘realism’ into his image.

The season marched forward as he did so. He’d been in the town for more than two months and now had to extend his lease week by week.

The harvest season was long in Ostale, and rumor had it old man Felton used formations to extend it further, but even then his job wouldn’t last forever.

From his talks with the other workers, he knew the farm drastically cut its workforce after the harvest season. This was the reason for the mass of part-time workers the farms around here hired, not taxes as he’d first thought.

Most then moved on to other seasonal or temporary jobs. Road work was common, or snow clearing in the winter. All options, but ones that would become very competitive for a while, with so many people looking for work.

As for his cultivation friends, they were in full practice mode for the fall acceptance examinations at the Severing Sword sect. Most had quit work entirely, putting everything on the line to practice their swordwork.

Perhaps he should do the same when the work ran out. With little progress so far, even more focus might move him forward.

Assuming he’d ever make it.

This third exercise was the hardest to keep up with. At least with the first two, there had been changes to focus on as time went by. Building his initial dome, and designing his landscape, they’d both come with a sense of change and progress.

Now he was just focusing on the same image every day, trying to believe it was real. A sealed land floated in a void at the base of his sternum, and within it lay a desolate landscape.

The same image, day after day, the only difference being how he thought about it. Some days he tried brightening it to a hyper level of detail, others tricking himself into thinking it was a memory.

Neither worked, and he even felt like increasing the level of detail changed the image too much. Leaving both behind, he tried to focus again on it being a real place located within him.

As more time passed, it was easy to doubt that it would ever happen. How much of his life was he wasting in this attempt to get a longer lifespan?

What kind of person sat inside every day, doing nothing but meditating on a single image? Who filled their mind with the same image throughout everyday tasks or conversations?

With the dream technique, he even dreamed of the same land; it was always there, with no escape. There were times he even felt like he hated it, yet the landscape felt so good to imagine he always came back to enjoying it.

Even conversations with Travis did little to help. All the man could say was that cultivation breakthroughs were often proceeded by the greatest amount of resistance. You had to build up enough energy and momentum to shatter them.

“Wait until winter,” the agent said, shaking his head. “If you haven’t made progress by then, we’ll return to Dr. Grange. Cultivation is a slow progress, and it’s best not to look for outside help until you're sure there’s a problem.”

“You need to believe you can move forward without always relying on others.”

Frowning, Kevin had agreed. Going back would have felt like a failure anyway, and he was terrified that the doctor would say the method wasn’t a good fit after all. That all his work so far would go to waste.

So he doubled down again, barely leaving his house except for work; spending every moment in the deepest meditation he could. Endless hours of just sitting there, believing in a fairy tale.

Until one day, it became real.