He woke before dawn and started the technique before he was fully upright.

  The Sutra's first section had been clear about it. Morning practice before eating, before moving, before the body settled into the noise of the day. He hadn't understood why when he read it last night. After his first attempt, he did.

  The breathing pattern was precise. Four counts in, slow, through the nose, attention resting on a specific point two finger-widths below the sternum. Hold two counts. Six counts out through barely parted lips. Hold two. The counts themselves weren't the problem. Those were mechanical, he could hold counts in his sleep.

  What the Sutra called the attention point was the problem.

  It wasn't meditation. It wasn't emptying his mind. It was more like pressing a finger to one exact spot on a map and refusing to let it move. Except someone kept nudging your elbow every few seconds.

  He did it wrong for fifteen minutes straight.

  His attention drifted to the cold. To the sounds in the forest below the ridge. To what he still needed to figure out. Every time he caught it wandering he dragged it back without frustration, the way the Sutra had specifically said to. It named this the first obstacle. "A mind accustomed to thinking about things resists being asked to simply rest on one."

  "That's me. My whole life has been about thinking about things."

  He kept going.

  By the third round something shifted. Small, almost dismissible, the pressure he'd been carrying in his chest since landing changed its quality slightly. The constant low weight he'd been writing off as stress moved a fraction, like a door receiving its first real push.

  He almost chased it. Caught himself in time.

  The Sutra had been direct about that too.

  Do not pursue the sensation. The pathway will announce itself. Your task is to be present when it does, not to drag it toward you.

  "Right. Don't grab at it. Just stay here."

  He held the attention point. The sensation settled back. He kept going.

  The second section was the meridian trace, and that was where everything fell apart.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  While maintaining the breath pattern, counts and attention point both, he was also supposed to move his internal focus along the first pathway at the same time. The Sutra mapped the route precisely. Up from the attention point, branching left toward the shoulder, down the inside of the left arm to the palm. Then back up, crossing the chest at a specific angle, down the right side to mirror it.

  Both arms simultaneously.

  He tried it. Lost the breath count in four seconds. Reset. Tried the trace without the breath. Lost the trace at the shoulder, his focus slipping sideways off the route like a hand losing its grip. Reset. Tried building it in pieces, left arm only first, just the left, then add the right.

  The Sutra had not suggested building it in pieces. The Sutra expected the practitioner to simply do it.

  "Either this technique assumes years of training I don't have. Or the difficulty itself is the point. Failing at this enough times, correctly enough, is how the pathway learns it's being asked to open."

  He chose to believe the second interpretation. It was the only one that made getting up tomorrow worthwhile.

  Dawn came during his fourteenth attempt.

  He stopped, breathed normally, and checked the quest log.

  QUEST COMPLETE: ?

  Objective: Survive your first night in Eranth alone

  Reward: 3 Codex Fragments → Collected

  Codex Fragments: 3

  He opened the skill panels properly. Not a glance this time. Actually reading the status descriptions he'd skimmed the day before.

  Skill: Lightning Sense ★☆☆☆☆

  Type: Utility — Perception

  Description: Extends awareness through ambient Qi vibration. Detects movement and presence within range.

  Current Status: Unawakened — Minimal function. Short range. High effort. Output unreliable.

  Minimal function. Short range. High effort. Output unreliable.

  He looked at that for a long moment.

  "That's not a malfunction. That's the skill telling me exactly what to expect when I have nothing stored and no pathways open. I asked a Qi-dependent tool to run on a body that has none of the infrastructure it needs. Of course it gave me noise and a headache."

  That landed differently than it would have yesterday. It wasn't bad news. It was a clear statement of where he actually was, which was more useful than noise.

  Skill: Void Step ★☆☆☆☆

  Type: Movement — Space

  Description: Short range spatial displacement. Blinks the user through local space.

  Current Status: Unawakened — Non-functional. Requires minimum Qi condensation to activate.

  Non-functional. Not broken. Waiting for something he hadn't built yet.

  "Same chain. Technique opens the pathways. Open pathways let me hold Qi. Qi is what all of this runs on. There's no way around that sequence."

  He stood, rolled his neck until it stopped complaining, and started down the slope.

  The Sutra had a section on environment. Running water increased ambient Qi density in the surrounding area, which meant the pathway received a stronger signal during practice even when the practitioner couldn't generate any on their own. The river he'd seen from the ridge was the better place to be doing this.

  "I should have camped there from the start. I'll know better tonight."

  The large thing from yesterday moved somewhere in the trees to his left as he descended. He caught the sound of it, shifted his angle to put more cover between them, and kept walking.

  End of Chapter 3