Chapter 23: Third Form

Eight days. Eight days of a strenuous search for specks of insight within the black world inside the violet stone.

'Nothing'. Zax heaved a long, agitated breath. His eyes opened and the one which he wanted to see has yet appeared before his eyes.

"Are you counting the seconds inside? It should be exactly four days since last you removed your awareness from the violet stone". Laivien was lying in her usual place in her pavilion.

Zax scowled instead of answering. Four days ago was the first time he halted his training. It was also four days since he began training after returning from Kingdom Earth.

He awakened from the meditative state of his inner mind, in which he ceaselessly created small combination of the many fragments he managed to appreciate, and from the meditative state of his outer mind, wherein he got closer and closer to understanding the Intermediate phase of the Soul Binding formation.

Zax could only raise his head and look at Laivien with imploring eyes.

"Huhuhu, fine, fine, little Zax, I will ask big brother if you are permitted to go to Kingdom Earth again". Laivien both felt for the young teen and found his cub like expression charming as well as amusing. She agreed to help his a second time, despite knowing her brother thoughts and the imminent refusal, simply because Zax down mood during this session of training was not due to its length of eight days, but the fact that Kartius did not give him an expiration date.

Touching the violet stone with her chin, the reach of Laivien's soul sense crossed caves, like that of the Sublime Soul Sense of a third realm expert. Zax knew about this trick of the violet stone, and that with this trick Laivien was able to observe and converses with everyone in the Essene Cave and the adjacent cave of Grandmaster Kartion. It was only a shame that unknowingly why, the violet stone rejected Zax's attempt of using this function.

Raising her neck, Laivien opened her eyes and glanced at Zax apologetically.

"Not yet". She quoted Kartius's response. 'He probably want you to make another advancement, not necessarily a breakthrough, but something, little Zax'. The latter part she did not say outloud of fear that Zax will then work himself out to the point of sabotaging his training or worse, harming himself.

"Thank you". Zax said in a low voice. Now that his relationship with Anet sprouted into the next stage it was difficult to just shove it to a temporary small space in his sea of consciousness. Nevertheless, after couple of moments Zax collected himself, like he did four days ago when Laivien passed his Master refusal, and put aside his desires to see his family and friends, at the very least, for another four days.

"Mm? Aren't you resuming his training?" As Zax kept sitting crossed legs, Laivien was a bit surprised that with the knowledge that the training session is still ongoing he did not immediately place his hand on the violet stone.

"Not yet". Zax smiled as he answered with the exact words she just used to deliver his Master's reply. "My advancement in the Soul Binding formation yielded fruits these past four days. Though I'm not confident in completing the entirety of the Intermediate phase, I have a hunch, which if confirmed to be right, it won't be long before I'll reach the Intermediate phase of the Intermediate of the Soul Binding formation. Before resuming my training, I want to affirm fast with my inner mind the hunch". Zax explained.

Ending the conversation on this note, Zax closed his eyes and delved into his sea of consciousness.

After eight days of trial and error, inside Zax's sea of consciousness were now, including the original one, eleven Soul Binding formations. The pale emerald formations remained fixed to their position and emitted a virtually the same dim radiance, far from the blur that was Zax's soul.

The hunch which Zax thought that will help him advance his accomplishments with the Soul Binding formations was based on a fundamental component in the creation process of the formation, it placement in the sea of consciousness.

It was a faint feeling that gave him the hunch about the placement of the formation. The idea was that in the right place in his sea of consciousness, it would be a hundred times easier to erect the formation, in addition to making it more refine, consequently, stronger. And then, only after completing one Soul Binding formation in the right place, it could be placed wherever in the sea of consciousness before creating another one.

The problem was that the space of the sea of consciousness was infinite. Finding the right spot inside of it was practically impossible. Furthermore, erecting each formation took Zax hours and was very, very tasking! Thus, Zax did not intend to erect countless formation until he will find the "sweet spot", no. What Zax wanted was to see if his subliminal mind gathered anything from him studying the scripture of the Soul Binding formation. It was a bet, but the time it could save Zax was either negligible or very considerable.

Entering the state of Adraak Meditation, the reason Zax did so without the help of the violet stone, was because he was too used to focusing in it on the spiritual knowledge that was related to the entity that was connected to the Black Core, and thought that by reverting to a rudimentary method of meditation he would be capable to concentrate with more ease on unrelated pieces of spiritual knowledge.

'There is something!' Zax was excited to sense new pieces of spiritual knowledge and that it was not demanding at all to separate them from the spiritual knowledge of the entity.

In a short time, a number of pieces of spiritual knowledge, gathered from the scripture of the Soul Binding formation, appeared before Zax as greenish dots.

'Carefully'. Zax cautiously said to himself before he got to inspect and appreciate the greenish dots. Those greenish dots were not at all the same to the spiritual knowledge of the entity. However much that Zax's subliminal mind was able to gather from the scripture of the Soul Binding formation, none of these pieces carried to the profundity that the pieces of the entity carried and Zax noticed it right away.

'The insights inside this pieces ... if I'll try to appreciate them, they will forever remain vague to me and will most likely hinder future achievement with the Soul Binding formation'. Zax was clear on it quite well.