April 16th

Danny was up in his office, interviewing the first of the two people Brent had suggested. Probably just a formality, considering the source, but Danny was in charge of actually knowing them all. I'd gotten a look at the two possible new hires and they really did both strike me as similar to all the people we'd seen at Fort Leonard Wood, just not in uniform.

Instead of interjecting myself into that process for the moment, I'd retreated to my own office to continue trying to parse through the information Brent had uploaded, figure out what all notes that Danny had mailed me to my school account before that email got deactivated, and put some of my own thoughts down as well.

Someone had spent a good bit of time writing up the military stuff into an easily read format, it was just a slog to read through it all. The synopsis and summaries for each section made it easier though. Conjecture that the dantian and breakthroughs were hard tissue, since MRIs and ultrasounds didn't reveal anything but the CT and PET scans did. The fluoroscopy videos were the most interesting, as they'd apparently injected the contrast dyes directly into where the dantian was at.

The fluoroscopy scans weren't done on internal dantian people from the looks of it, with a note about the location of that dantian too close to the heart to currently risk.

But each video of the external dantian scans showed a different flow of the contrast dyes though. It would start at the dantian, thin out, and then most of it would vanish while the remainder just slowly spread in the body near the injection site. The vanished parts of the dye would reappear in different locations between the dantian and the first breakthrough, but never be a full connection line. At the first breakthrough, a lot of the dye bloomed and spread there as well.

In two tests, the subjects were apparently pushing towards the second breakthrough as small bits of the dye appeared between the heart and the sternum but there was never a bloom.

By the time I'd even gotten close to linking enough of the wiki into the military research, several hours had gone by and I'd heard the two guys being interviewed leave. I'd done at least enough to get others into the specific sections, so I moved onto the next chunk of data.

Danny's information was more sporadic and dealt a lot more with his karate and training. He had some interesting insights though. Going through forms and kata apparently didn't push him into exerting himself anymore, similarly to how normal floor and bar routines didn't do anything for me either; hence we'd ended up setting up the balance beam run.

He'd only been trying to spar for the last few days and that provided a lot more useful exertion and use of dantian energy. I started pulling that data into the wiki in a reasonable format under the 'Usage of Dantian Energy' heading where I'd listed the other things including the increased durability, run speeds, and jumping. I then sublinked it to a testing question on if sparring negated the other person's energy, or just bypassed.

I tentatively put down the assumption they negated each other, since a bypass would probably hurt a hell of a lot more to get hit with the full strength. I thought of the fight with Tony on that.

Danny had wanted to test with me the difference in multiple breakthrough levels yesterday. That'd probably be good, although I didn't really know karate or other martial arts other than 'straight wrist and don't hold your thumb when you punch' from Dad.

If nothing else, it'd be interesting to try and might give me something better to do than debate how to set up ever increasing weird gymnastics setups to keep pushing myself.

Finally, my notes section was more esoteric than most and really needed good indexing. I'd written down everything I could remember about each breakthrough and what it'd felt like. My Art of Awakening, how it'd felt before and after I'd 'finished' it. And a few weird conjectures about what else I could do with it, but I'd need more understanding if I wanted to try to wake an animal's dantian. Could they even have one?

I'd made notes on all the different times the alien had given me personal attention, except during the Gasp. That time I still wasn't sure what to think about, but probably should at least discuss it with Danny or Brent.

Each of the different answers Zhaohui had given back about the strength of the world's soul, and how at one point he hadn't included me with being mortal. The strange sensation of building or molding something on my last breakthrough. Zhaohui hadn't answered with any additional interest that time, but it was weird enough to me.

In fact… "What is the strength of the world's soul?"

Your world has cleared the first block of the [Initiate's Realm] and grows to match.

The answer roiled through me. Again, amused patience. The interest was still there, but it felt like the alien wasn't really paying attention. That sense of more definition to the Initiate's Realm. I wish I'd paid more attention to the world's soul part when he was still saying that. 'World' by itself didn't seem to have the same connotations to it.

The alien's words seemed to strike me harder now that I had more breakthroughs, like I could feel it better.

Brent had uploaded the transcript from when Zhaohui had spoken at the United Nations to the system as well. It wasn't anything you could get additional depth from, but just the words had some value.

I didn't want to test bulletproof if third body meridian was the third breakthrough of the Initiate's Realm, but Profound Realm cultivator was interesting, though I didn't know what that would actually mean.

I dropped that into the tree I had built out with 'Alien' as the top part of it. The bottom part was Initiate's Realm, and the Profound and Heavenly Realms were on there with question marks as well.

Heavenly Realm was very likely higher than Profound, but was that the level of the alien?

"What is the Initiate's Realm?" I prompted to that sense of the alien. No answer. The only time I'd managed to actually get a response, I'd been panicking and thrown everything into pushing that mental concept of breathing out.

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"What is the strength of the world's soul?" I focused on the second part of the answer, bringing to mind all the information I knew about the dantian, the breakthroughs, and those rings separated but somehow still connected. I pushed energy, tilted through my second breakthrough, with the question.

Your world has cleared the first block of the I̠̱͢n͇̣̥̪̄̕i̠͖̻t̫́͒̆͆i̡͓̥͇͉̩ͤ͆̑̔͗ͬȃ̡̹͉̰̪̗̯̼͂t̲̳́ͬ͢ë͕̟̘̹̲́'͕̼̹̅ͯ͒ͣͥ͢s̥̮͎̟̝̩̞ͤ̓͗̄ ͖͎̖R͎̩̮̺̓͂ͧͮ̈ͨͩe͙̬͓̊̎ͯͭ͡ā̻͈̐̓ͯl̪̦͔̏̀m̧̰͕̬̹̗̑̒ and grows to match.

The words were the same, but so much more was packed into the phrase. A feeling of differences and growth and self.

I turned that sensation right back around. I'd only had a single breakthrough when I'd managed to talk directly to Zhaohui before, and I had more energy now to spare. I cycled, pushing a good bit of my stored energy towards that presence, along with my question. "What is the [Initiate's Realm]?"

I was overwhelmed with sensation as an answer was given, in that same reflexive tone as the original question's answer. The first step off the mortal path, preparing the body to energize the sleeping soul.

I could see a path in mists up a mountain. I couldn't see the end and I was only at the beginning, but each step I had already taken only led to a plateau, before the path continued again. I could see several plateaus before distance and mist swallowed them up whole.

The scene shifted and suddenly I was a warrior in a battle. Ahead, a command I could take. Further beyond that, a small army I could lead. The battle raged ever onwards, unending.

Shift again. A small spark, becoming the heart of larger and larger blazes until I could build up big enough to burn the entire world.

The imagery in the reply struck harder, shaking me internally as I felt the energy of my dantian ring like a struck bell, each of my breakthroughs ringing with it. More sensation and imagery as the form of me I'd seen slightly shimmered into being once again in my power, the rough self-image quivering in my energy; and I could suddenly feel the alien's presence wrapped around it, and around me. Define yourself or be defined by your actions.

Then the image and feeling faded away again as my temples suddenly throbbed in pain and stars exploded in my vision. "Damn, what happened?" I moaned, dropping my head into my arms.

Five, ten, then finally fifteen minutes later the pain finally started edging off from ocular migraine to just a head pounding throb, all the while I could feel the energy in me touching upon the headache, taking bits and pieces away.

I tried to cycle to make the energy take that pain away faster, but it only caused the energy to overflow into the headache, making it worse. I quickly stopped and let it do what it wanted.

I gently stood, trying to not jostle myself any more than I already felt shaken up. I was fairly steady on my feet, but I still felt weak. At least this time, I wasn't scraped raw and empty of energy. I got to the door of my office. "Danny, Brent? Either of you guys there? Melissa? Anyone?"

Brent came out of his little office after a minute and caught sight of me leaning against the wall. "What happened!?" He rushed down the hallway to me.

"I made the mistake of figuring out how to get better answers from the alien." My head still throbbed at the memories. "Can you get Brandon? I'd really like some aspirin or something."

A few minutes later I was nursing a glass of water in the conference room with several others.

"So?" Brent asked. "Can you share?" Danny, Brandon, and Melissa all looked interested in my response as well.

I thought for a moment. "Has anyone actually tried to understand more of what Lei Zhaohui is saying? I know I've gone over that before, where if you concentrate on what you know about what he's saying, you can actually kind of feel the word as a definition?"

"I know Ash has, remember, he said the breathe thing sounded different," Melissa recalled. "I've tried it a few times, but don't really notice anything, though."

"Anyone else?"

"Maybe? It is hard to tell, but his voice does seem to sound…stranger…on certain phrases." Danny added thoughtfully.

"I doubt he actually speaks any of our languages, so we've got to be understanding him somehow…" I remarked. "And you've all seen in my notes where I've done some dumb things that were interesting enough the alien actually spoke to me?"

Everyone but Brandon nodded their agreement.

"Yeah, you should probably go through and read the stuff," I said to him. I took a deep breath. "But yeah. My second breakthrough was yelling at him during the Gasp that we needed to breathe in and out. It actually caught his attention and he changed what he was saying. And basically called us babies needing our hands held."

There's the dumbfounded looks and Brent madly scrambling to take notes.

"I was putting together the different research notes on the wiki, and tried to poke some more information out of the alien. I figured out how to turn 'Initiate's Realm' back into a question to him. I wasn't ready for the answer." I winced just thinking about the overwhelming nature of what I'd seen, more than what I'd heard.

"Can you share the answer?" Melissa's question.

"The first step off the mortal path, preparing the body to energize the sleeping soul," I answered her. "That's not what hurt, though. I saw paths. Up a mountain, leading armies. Being a fire to consume the world. Others. Then the alien seemed to catch onto what I was doing and cut me off. He then said to define myself or be defined by my actions. I felt like my brain tried to literally break."

"Not something to try again soon then." Brent frowned.

"Not immediately, but we have to keep moving forward though, right? The only thing that was similar between all those paths were places that shifted greater. And there were at least four in each path, but I couldn't see beyond that."