Taking one of the trees he had left over as materials, Naath carved out a rough shovel. After doing this he started to dig along the outline he had just drawn. After two hours Naath had dug halfway down to the 8 foot depth he wanted for his cultivation dwelling. Once he hit this depth the dirt became coarse and filled with stones making it difficult to continue. Naath scratched his head for a moment and tried to figure out a solution. He thought of simply using his martial energy to attack the dirt and break the stones apart completely to make digging easy.
However this would also deform the shape Naath wanted. After a few minutes of thinking and not finding a solution a voice came from Naath’s soul sea saying, “Oh my god kid, just infuse your martial energy into the shovel! Most people can't do this without having compatible wood energy in their martial energy. However, your energy is unique and so is your art. Or did you forget you designed it to absorb ALL ENERGIES and use ALL ENERGIES?!” The rune sounded fairly annoyed at Naath oversight and Naath found it oddly amusing so he chuckled. He also said, “ah thank you senior.”
Naath heard the rune let out a “hmph” as he started to infuse the shovel with his martial energy. As the trace amounts of true void energy entered into the shovel it slowly transformed into wood energy to allow an easy fusion with the shovel. After this Naath began digging again, this time the hard stone felt more like clay. Still difficult to dig up, however now distinctly possible to work with. After another 12 hours, Naath had finally finished digging everything out. At this point, he was completely exhausted however now he simply had to place the wooden planks for a roof and then compact the dirt in the walls and floor.
In a matter of half an hour Naath was completely finished, taking a large pile of the leaves from the trees he had turned into planks. Naath made a rough bed. Despite the fact that it was incredibly uncomfortable Naath fell asleep immediately when he laid down on it. Naath woke up to rays of sunlight drifting in through the cracks in the ceiling, Naath after waking up enough said, “well, shit I'm going to have to patch those openings.” Naath rolled over and said “c’mon Brutus, we have work to do.” With that he got out of his rough bed of tree leaves on a large square mound of packed dirt. He made his way to the dug out living room and up the ladder he made through the hatch door.
Once Naath was outside he began to pinch the boards together making sure they were watertight this time. After a few hours of work Naath went back inside and made sure no light was coming in through the ceiling. However as he did this he realized ‘shit now I can’t see anything.’ Naath heard stifled laughter from his soul sea and his face turned into a scowl as he entered his soul sea. Naath saw the rune shaking and heard unending laughter coming from it. Naath’s scowl deepened and he asked “senior what might be so funny?” The rune spoke up and said “oh, so very many things but mostly two right now. For starters the fact that you didn't even think of this issue occurring in an underground house. Hahaha Th-th-the second is the fact that you don't even know how to set up a light emitting formation.”
Naath’s scowl disappeared as he asked “light emitting formation? What's that?” The rune took a moment and the sound of heavy breathing radiated from it for a time. When it finally calmed down from its laughing fit it said “okay, right I forgot you’re from some backwater village. A formation is a set of runes made from either martial power or soul energy to cause a specific effect. In this case a light emitting formation acts like a lightbulb from your world. The only difference is there is no switch, in that regard your world has us beat.” Naath nodded slowly and then asked another question.
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“Is there any difference between a formation made by martial energy and one made by soul energy?” The rune let out a long breath and said “that… you aren't ready to know that quite yet, maybe when your cultivation becomes much higher I will tell you.” Naath shook his head and exited his soul sea entirely, the rune flared up yelling, “Hey brat! Who said you could leave?! To think I was going to teach you the formation. Hmph!” Naath rolled his eyes and said, “yeah, yeah sure, that's why you were mocking me so much?”
The rune let out a breath and information silently flowed into Naath’s mind on how to make the formation out of martial energy. Naath smiled and said, “thank you senior.” The rune let out another “hmph” before going quiet once more. After gaining this information Naath went to work setting up this formation on the walls of his new cultivation dwelling. When all of this was finally done Naath sat down and began to cultivate once more, the energy he drew in was nowhere near what he performed in the formation. Of course Naath was completely unaware of this, however, the rune in his soul sea noticed and went into deep contemplation about this matter.
Even with the energy drawn in being nowhere near the level it had been in the formation it was still no small matter. In only a few hours Naath was once again on his 29th compression. Right in the middle of getting up from his meditation Naath sensed a cultivator's aura coming near his cultivation dwelling. Naath snapped into focus and stood upright immediately hearing the middle-aged guides warning ringing in his head. However Naath’s worries were unfounded as it was an elderly man who simply threw a letter at Naath’s feet and left.
Naath picked up the letter and read the contents. It read “welcome to the raging river sect new disciple. We look forward to your contributions to the sect in the future. The elders would like to meet you to personally welcome you to the sect. They will see you in three days. At this time you are expected to be outside of the elders’ hall on the tallest peak in the sect. If you are late another meeting will not be made. This a one time only opportunity so if you miss this you will forever only be a core disciple of the sect.” Naath let out a breath and looked at the mountain behind his new dwelling.
The tallest peak looked like it was a few miles high, Naath shook his head saying “come on Brutus we have one hell of a walk to go on.” With that he began to ascend the mountain with Brutus in tow. At first the mountain was only a slow incline that was easy enough to walk up on. However after a few hours of climbing it started to get steeper and steeper. Eventually, after 6 hours, Naath decided to rest in front of a sheer cliff in front of him. He set up a small campfire and tossed some of the jerky in his bag to Brutus and dug some out for himself.
After eating Naath went back into meditation to work on his compressions once again. Eight hours later when the sun rose up once more he had managed to get his total up to 34 compressions. Naath let out a breath of turbid energy and opened his eyes standing up to adjust himself and prepare to climb the rest of the way up the mountains in order to make it to the elders’ hall on time. Naath had originally planned on simply circulating his martial energy and forcing his hands into the rock face to climb. However after he tried this once he almost broke one of his fingers on the surface of the rock. He muttered to himself “well shit that's a lot harder than I thought it would be. Hard way it is then.”
Naath stretched out his body and then began to climb the old fashioned way finding loose footholds and grips. After climbing up the sheer cliff for half an hour Naath began to feel a bit of exhaustion coming over him. He started to look around and find a place to rest. After a moment he spotted a ledge a little higher up that went about 12 feet out. Naath smiled and climbed up to it after a moment and laid down on top of it as he looked up to see how much further he had to climb. Naath was annoyed and aggravated that he couldn't see the top of the cliff from here.