Now he is ready for the search of the stars.

Breathe in and follow the stars.

Lie Mo breathes in and follows his breath. The breath enters the mouth and nose at the same time. It follows the throat. Down into the lungs. So far it always stopped at the lungs.

But this time it is different. The breath just goes further and further. Throughout the entire body. At first the body seems uniform. But after a while he sees a twinkle.

One twinkle, two twinkle, three twinkle and so on until it stops at six.

He finally entered the next step. With the breath of the tiger he follows the stars. Over and over again. But there is something missing.

Follow the stars, follow the stars… It doesn’t say follow the six stars. It says follow the stars. What if there are more stars? It says follow the stars. The stars implies all stars.

Because of that he starts searching again. Over and over again.

It is almost spring when he finds another three. Several months later he finds another three.

He feels something rising. The stars are faintly starting to connect. But what if those are not all the stars? He just feels like he met the initial threshold. But there seems to be a sea of stars still hidden. Because of that he removes the faint connection of the stars again.

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And he starts looking again. This time it takes time. A really long time with barely any progress. Almost two years later he finds a thirteenth star. And then they start pouring in. 24, 36, 48…

At 144 he feels a qualitative change. But he still feels there is more to be found. This time he starts the most tedious training he ever had. It takes him over ten years to find the next one.

This star is very hidden. And it isn’t following the same structure as the previous ones. Since he knows what to look for the next one is a bit quicker. But those stars are all hidden and the position is hard to predict. One appears after the next. Sometimes he finds several on the same day and some times he has too keep looking for almost two weeks. After a bit over two years he finally found the last one. 361 in total.

He just knows he found every star.

During the martial training he notices that his control over his body is risen tremendously. And his awareness of what happens in is body as just as much.

After reaching this final milestone he starts releasing the constraints he put on the paths. The first twelve stars connect within the blink of an eye. After a breath of time the 24 are connected. Then the 36 and so on. Each of the next twelve take longer.

At the 144 mark the stars stop connecting automatically. The energy of the 144 stars starts gathering. But there are still 217 stars that are not connected. So he disperses the energy and tries to use it to connect the remaining stars.

Since the remaining stars don’t follow any specific structure it is difficult. There is an endless number of possibilities to connect them.

He tries to think of the best possibility. But whenever he stops to disperse the energy it gathers again in one point. How is he going to sleep that way?

After a bit of pondering he runs towards the grainy sand region. During his training the life draining energy of this area was able to slow down the connecting of the stars. Perhaps this helps.

And it does help. Just not enough. But by now he is able to permanently stay in the white powder region. And this is slowing it down long enough so that he can fit in his needed time for sleep.