A short while later, Shen Zuo sat down and pulled the book out of his bag. He opened it and began reading with sharp focus, his eyes moving across the lines at a slow, deliberate pace. When he finished, he flipped back to the start and read it again, then repeated the process without showing any sign of boredom.
He closed the book once he'd memorized nearly all of it, then stood there for a few moments watching the sun edge closer to the horizon. The air was still, and the forest had begun sinking into evening silence.
Then he moved. His steps steady, his pace picking up little by little as he ran back toward the small cave, lost deep in thought.
When he arrived, he didn't eat. He didn't do anything.
He went straight to a rock near the cave entrance, took a small sip of the pooled water on it, without even washing his face or paying attention to anything around him.
Then he stepped quietly into the cave and sat down in the dark corner, back against the wall, hands resting on his knees.
He didn't move.
He didn't say a word.
Just a small body sitting in complete silence, as though everything around him had paused too, out of respect for whatever he was going through.
After a few minutes of stillness, Shen Zuo closed his eyes calmly and began trying to enter the Aether Field, following the technique he'd read. His breathing slowed, and every movement in his body settled into total stillness.
He focused all his attention on a point just below his navel, trying to feel something... anything. Time crept by slowly, and the night stretched out around him in heavy silence.
Hours passed without him shifting position even once. He stayed exactly as he was through the entire night, not moving, not speaking, not opening his eyes.
And finally... he felt something.
He found a faint weight below his navel, so weak he briefly doubted whether it was even real. It wasn't pain, wasn't heat, just a strange sensation of something still and present in a place he'd never been aware of before.
The feeling of a strange resistance, arising out of nothing, came paired with a headache. And for the first time, he realized his consciousness could gather itself and focus entirely on a single point. It felt like a paralyzed man pouring every ounce of his concentration into trying to lift a single finger.
It felt nearly impossible in theory, and yet he felt it...
He felt something like an invisible wall, untouchable, unseen, but undeniably present. A barrier... the Aether Barrier?!
He realized he'd found it.
He immediately began trying to push his consciousness into it, exactly as the technique had taught. He pressed his mind to focus sharply on that same point, and started working to break through the barrier, bit by bit, despite the heavy resistance surrounding him from every direction.
After hours of effort, right as the sun reached the middle of the sky, Shen Zuo finally succeeded in breaking through the Aether Barrier.
In the next instant, his consciousness entered the Aether Field.
At the center of the field, a Pit sat fixed in place, and around it, colored Aether points drifted slowly along random paths.
Shen Zuo appeared there as pure consciousness, seeing everything around him in a strange way he'd never experienced before. A mix of unease and awe washed over him at once; he had no body here, and yet he felt his own presence with total clarity.
He tried to move, and found that it didn't require any steps at all.
The instant he wanted to go somewhere else, his consciousness simply shifted there.
He paused for a moment, then tried again.
This time, he moved even faster, as though distance itself didn't apply to him here.
He began to notice something else.
He could feel everything happening inside the field, as though the place itself were a part of him. He could direct his consciousness to any point he wanted and observe everything around him without needing to get close.
For the first time, Shen Zuo felt a strange sense of control.
Shen Zuo's consciousness drew closer to the Pit and noticed it was completely dry, no water inside it at all. He looked around for a moment, then settled his gaze on the points that neither approached the Pit nor drifted away from it, just orbiting endlessly.
Everything was still. Nothing changed.
This was the initial shape of his field.
Shen Zuo thought: "Now... step two of the technique."
He steadied his sitting position and closed his eyes calmly. He began focusing deeply, this time not on what lay inside him, but on the energy surrounding his body in the air. It was similar to trying to sense the Aether Field itself... the hesitation, the slowness, the heaviness of actually pulling it off.
Bit by bit, he began to feel a subtle shift in the air around him. There was energy there... invisible, but present. Light, faint, drifting slowly through the air.
Something he couldn't see, but could now feel the presence of.
Aether was moving around him slowly, spreading through the air like a calm sea the eye simply couldn't perceive.
With steady focus, he began directing his consciousness toward that energy, trying to draw it toward himself.
And slowly... it began responding.
The feeling was strange... warm and comforting in a way he hadn't expected, like someone who'd lived for years without ever knowing what comfort felt like, finally standing beneath warm water flowing over his body.
It wasn't just a sensation of energy; it felt like something his body had been waiting for all along, as if he remembered it before he even knew it.
Then it slipped toward the Aether Field.
An exhausting, unstable process, but he succeeded in pulling the first surge of Aether energy from the air into his Aether Field.
Then a few drops of water began gathering inside the medium-sized Pit at the center of the Aether Field. Slowly, drop by drop, the result of the energy he'd been planting over all those hours.
Nearly half an hour passed, during which he kept steadily planting the energy, until he finally stopped training. He didn't move from his spot, just stayed sitting there, eyes closed.
He began thinking in silence:
"Alright... according to the technique's book, what I just did in one sitting usually takes an ordinary person a month or two. It might even take longer than that."
He opened his eyes and smiled to himself with a faint hint of mockery:
"I'm a genius... as usual."
Then he frowned slightly and went back to thinking: "But my Pit is Medium-sized... based on what old Bai Ren described, and what the book says, that means my talent is average."
He shook his head slowly, as if refusing to dwell on it right now:
"Doesn't matter for now. I need to train on this for a few more days... until I can actually call myself a 'real trainee,' like the book puts it."
Shen Zuo then rose calmly from where he sat, his body slightly stiff from sitting so long, but with a strange lightness inside him he couldn't quite place. He stepped out of the cave to see the sunlight, already dipping slightly toward the west, the air carrying the damp scent of the forest.
He headed to the water source and drank until he was satisfied, then went through a few small chores he needed to finish: organizing his tools, checking on the forest traps, and cleaning up his sleeping spot.
While doing this, he noticed something odd...
There was sweat on his skin, but its color wasn't normal. A dark liquid, almost black, seeping out of his pores, leaving a faint sticky residue on his skin.
He stared at it for a moment, then muttered: "...some impurities, just like the book mentioned."
He immediately decided to bathe, heading to the nearby stream and stepping into the cold water, washing off the traces of his first training session.
A full week passed like that.
Every day, Shen Zuo repeated the same routine: long sessions drawing energy from the air, planting it into his Aether Field, and sitting for hours inside the cave without moving.
As the days passed, change began to show.
Inside his Aether Field, the Pit that had once been completely dry started developing a thin layer of water. It wasn't a lake yet, but it clearly covered the Pit's surface now.
"Alright... this kind of training takes a long time," Shen Zuo muttered irritably, his eyes half-shut from exhaustion.
Then he burst out in pent-up frustration. "Damn you old bastards! If you'd just let me start training from the beginning...! And the worst part is they're sending a wave of beasts in just a few weeks!"
He paused for a few seconds, taking a deep breath to try to calm himself down. He went back to thinking calmly, sitting on a rock near the cave entrance:
"According to the book... the energy I gather inside the Aether Field will regenerate over time. But so far, the amount of energy I've planted barely covers refining a single Phantom. And with that same energy, I could activate it maybe twice... at most. That's only if the Phantom's requirements are modest."
He rested his head against his hands and said irritably:
"Damn it... at this rate, when am I ever going to reach the First Rank?"
Shen Zuo let out a slow sigh, as though every ounce of temporary frustration was leaving his chest along with that breath. He got up and walked over to the stone wall inside the cave. He reached out, grabbed his hanging axe, then his bow, and quickly checked his arrows before strapping them to his back.
It was getting close to late afternoon, and the shadows of the trees had begun stretching across the ground.
He walked out of the cave with steady steps, then broke into a run toward a specific direction, his pace quickening, his eyes carefully tracking the ground and the path ahead. He never stopped, as though he knew every turn and every crossing by heart.
He was heading toward a specific point fixed in his mind. The map in his hea
d was clear, and every step brought him closer to it.
He didn't stop, didn't hesitate. The goal was clear, and the next move had already begun.