Chapter 47: A Place to Rest

The cave was deep enough to shelter them from the wind. That was about all it had going for it. The entrance opened toward the frozen wasteland, where the storm still howled beyond the rocky walls. Snow whipped past in thick sheets, occasionally spilling into the cave before the wind changed direction and carried it away again.

Leon sat down near the back wall, then immediately got to work. Maya had barely finished removing her outer jacket when faint threads of Qi began appearing around Leon's fingers.

Lyra stared at him, entirely incredulous. "You're cultivating?"

Leon didn't look up. "I'm setting up the cave."

"You've been setting up formations every time we stop."

"Yes."

"You just fought through a group of Grade One beasts."

"Yes."

"You nearly emptied your Qi."

"Yes."

"And your solution is to cultivate?"

Leon finally glanced at her. "What else would I do?"

Lyra stared at him for several seconds, completely baffled. "Rest?"

Leon considered that for a moment. "I am resting."

Maya snorted, shaking her head. "That's not what resting means."

Leon ignored her and continued tracing the formation. His Sage Eyes followed every thread of Qi as it settled into place. The first formation was the same basic core he had practiced before. It was simple enough to serve as a foundation for everything else, allowing him to monitor and control the Qi flowing through the structure. Once it stabilized, he built another formation over it, causing Qi to begin gathering rapidly. A third formation followed right behind it, and heat slowly spread throughout the cave.

Maya moved closer to the warm air almost immediately. "Okay. That's useful."

"Obviously," Leon murmured.

Lyra shook her head, unable to comprehend his pace. "You really can't stop, can you?"

Leon continued working without losing his focus. "It's how I'm used to living."

"How?"

"I worked constantly," Leon explained. "Usually at maximum output. I'd keep going until whatever I was doing was finished, then find something else to do."

"Without resting?"

"I slept."

"That isn't what I asked."

Leon paused, checking his internal metrics. "Not much."

Lyra gave him a long, heavy look. "No wonder your soul is broken."

His fingers stopped for a brief moment, the air around him freezing slightly before the formation work resumed. "The soul is more resilient than you think," his voice had lost some of its usual lightness. "My lifestyle only made it tougher. It got cracked for a different reason."

Lyra waited, her curiosity piqued. "The different reason being what?"

Leon didn't elaborate. "Whatever. I don't want to think about it."

She let the sensitive subject die, choosing instead to look toward the saber lying beside his knee. "So. Your first fight with a weapon."

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Leon glanced down at the blade. "Nice."

"That's your review?"

"It's a significant improvement," Leon noted. "Something sharp is useful. I can fight around the same level as my True Strikes without burning through my vitality. That's a considerable advantage."

"Your insistence not to use weapons this whole time was weird," Maya raised an eyebrow.

"I was better without them," Leon countered.

Lyra looked at him as though that logical answer somehow made things worse. Leon picked up the weapon and examined the balance of the hilt. "Though I think I'd be better with a sword."

Lyra's expression immediately changed, her posture turning rigid. "No."

Leon looked at her in confusion. "No?"

"Don't use a sword."

"Why?"

"Sword users are two-faced liars," she said flatly.

A sudden silence fell over the cavern. Leon slowly lowered the saber. "How? Aren't sword cultivators known for being straightforward?"

Maya covered her mouth to suppress a giggle, while Lyra's eyes narrowed into a dark scowl. "That's my experience."

Leon studied her severe expression, realizing she looked genuinely irritated. "Alright," he replied, returning his attention to his formation.

The conversation ended there, and for the next several hours, the cave became strangely quiet. Lyra guided Maya and Adrian through their Sage Guidance while Leon focused entirely on his cultivation. He would fill his meridians to maximum capacity, then spend the accumulated Qi constructing another part of the defensive network, repeating the loop over and over.

A recovery formation joined the network, followed immediately by one designed to clear the mind, and then another that actively repaired the master formation itself. Leon stared at the growing structure. The formations were all basic individually, but linked together, they were becoming something entirely separate.

He adjusted one of the connections, aligning the pathways. The Qi gathered by the central formation flowed outward, smoothly feeding the heating formation, the recovery formation, the mental-clearing formation, and the self-repairing formation. The entire structure began maintaining itself.

Leon frowned, spotting a minor error. He changed another connection, and the flow stabilized. He changed a third, and the entire formation responded in sync. His eyes narrowed at the layout.

"This is getting annoying."

Maya looked over from her blanket. "What?"

"Too many things to manage."

"You built all of them," she pointed out.

"I know."

"Then stop building more."

Leon ignored her recommendation. He spent another cycle studying the intricate structure, recognizing that the problem wasn't the individual formations themselves, as he thoroughly understood each of them. The problem was that every additional formation exponentially increased the number of relationships between them. Energy had to be distributed, flow had to be monitored, and output had to be balanced; if one component consumed too much, another would weaken, and if the central formation gathered too little, the entire structure would eventually collapse.

Leon stared at the core, then looked toward the Qi-gathering formation. With a swift flick of his fingers, he dismantled it entirely.

Maya blinked in surprise. "Why'd you destroy it?"

"It was a basic, low-level one for initial practice," Leon explained, his amber eyes scanning the empty space. "I can do better now... and I need better now."

He began rebuilding the foundation from scratch. This time, the formation was considerably more complicated—the lines were much thinner, the patterns were denser, and different layers overlapped without ever touching. Leon adjusted the frequency of the Qi moving through each thread, letting his Sage Eyes follow every microscopic change until the structure stabilized.

Qi began flowing through the network again, causing the entire cave to brighten faintly with silver energy. Lyra looked around the stone walls as the warmth increased and her shoulders relaxed; she hadn't realized how tense she had been until that exact moment.

She leaned back against the stone wall. "You really love this."

Leon kept his eyes fixed on the geometric lines. "It's useful."

"That's not what I said."

Leon thought about her statement seriously. 'It's like my previous job. Simple commands and effects can be combined to perform basic functions, and various functions can be connected to have a proper program or a software that are useful.' "I suppose I do."

Lyra smiled faintly, closing her eyes. "That's nice to hear. Get some sleep though."

Outside, the storm continued to rage across the plateau. Inside, the four of them settled into an uneasy peace. Maya eventually drifted into sleep, and Adrian followed right behind her. Lyra remained awake for a while longer, watching Leon's hands move through another complex sequence of patterns, until eventually, even she gave in to exhaustion.

Leon didn't notice their rest, as he was still actively working. By the time the night had deepened, the cave was no longer merely a dry shelter; the formations were gathering Qi, regulating the temperature, clearing fatigue, accelerating recovery, and repairing their own structure. The individual pieces were still simple, but linked together, they had become something far more sophisticated than anything Leon had originally intended to build.

He stared at the completed network, then at the empty space beside it, his mind already moving toward the next systemic problem. 'Will I need to build all of this again everytime I reach a new cave...' A formation was powerful, but it was also completely stuck on the ground.

Leon frowned. "That's inconvenient."

The storm answered with another distant roar, and he quietly returned to his cultivation.