Nilan opened his eyes.
For several breaths, he remained still.
The endless white space was gone.
The three ancient scrolls were gone.
The ancient voice had disappeared as if it had never existed.
Only the memory remained.
Formation Dao.
Puppet Creation Dao.
Artifact Forging Dao.
Three ancient paths.
Three possibilities.
But Nilan knew that his journey had only just begun.
He slowly raised his head.
A vast sky stretched above him.
And beneath that sky—
mountains.
Thousands of them.
Some stood alone, their peaks disappearing into the clouds.
Others were joined together, several enormous peaks forming a single mountain range.
Mist drifted between them.
Waterfalls descended from cliffs hidden among the clouds.
Dense forests covered the lower slopes.
And scattered throughout the mountains were countless trees Nilan had never seen before.
Some carried pale flowers.
Some had strangely shaped leaves.
Others were covered in soft pink blossoms, their petals drifting through the air whenever the wind passed.
Nilan stood silently.
For a moment, he forgot about cultivation.
This place was beautiful.
Not the kind of beauty created by someone deliberately decorating a place.
It felt natural.
Ancient.
As though these mountains had existed long before anyone had ever thought of naming them.
A road stretched ahead.
People were moving along it.
Some carried baskets.
Some pushed carts filled with spiritual materials.
Others carried bundles of herbs.
A few wore simple cultivation robes.
Nilan followed the road.
After walking for some time, he noticed several workers resting beneath a tree.
He approached them.
"Excuse me."
One of them looked up.
"You're new?"
Nilan nodded.
"What is this place called?"
The worker glanced toward the mountains.
Then smiled.
"That depends on who you ask."
Nilan frowned slightly.
"What do you mean?"
"Some call it the Three-Thousand Valleys."
Another worker nearby laughed.
"Others call it Flower Valley."
The first man shrugged.
"And some call it Heaven Valley."
Nilan looked toward the mountains again.
"Why?"
The man pointed toward the distant peaks.
"Look from above and you'll understand."
Nilan followed his finger.
The mountains stretched so far into the distance that he couldn't see their end.
"The peaks overlap like petals," the worker continued. "When the flowers bloom, the entire valley looks like one enormous flower."
He paused.
"That's where the names came from."
Nilan said nothing.
He couldn't see the entire valley from here.
But even from the ground—
it was already extraordinary.
He continued walking.
The road gradually became busier.
Buildings began appearing between the mountains.
Storage halls.
Stone houses.
Training grounds.
Small courtyards.
Countless paths connected them all.
Then Nilan saw a simple stone marker beside the road.
LABOR DISCIPLINE
His eyes stopped on the words.
So this was where he would begin.
There was no ceremony.
No welcoming speech.
No one cared that he had arrived.
He was given work.
Carry spiritual materials.
Sort herbs.
Clean storage areas.
Move supplies.
Collect materials from designated areas.
The work was repetitive.
Sometimes exhausting.
Sometimes painfully dull.
But Nilan accepted it without complaint.
Because this wasn't the reason he had come here.
It was only the beginning.
Every day followed the same pattern.
Work.
Rest.
Training.
Sleep.
Then repeat.
At first, Nilan could barely understand the formation's structure.
He watched others activate it.
He tried to imitate them.
Failure.
He tried again.
Failure.
He changed one spiritual-energy pathway.
The formation trembled—
then collapsed.
Nilan stared at the broken lines for a long moment.
He memorized the mistake.
And tried again the next day.
Some time passed.
The same formation appeared beneath his hands again and again.
Sometimes it collapsed immediately.
Sometimes it lasted for a few breaths.
Once, it even produced a faint glow—
only to disappear moments later.
Nilan didn't stop.
He began spending more time observing before touching the formation.
He watched how the spiritual energy entered.
Where it slowed.
Where it scattered.
Where the formation became unstable.
He didn't have the answers yet.
But he was beginning to recognize the questions.
More time passed.
The flowers around the valley bloomed.
Then faded.
New flowers replaced them.
The seasons changed quietly around the mountains.
The disciples who had once practiced beside him gradually changed as well.
Some moved forward quickly.
Some advanced slowly.
Others remained trapped at the same stage for a long time.
No one moved at the same speed.
The valley did not demand that they did.
And Nilan—
continued.
His progress was neither the fastest nor the slowest.
But every failure left something behind.
A mistake.
A pattern.
A small piece of understanding.
One evening, Nilan sat alone beneath the same old tree.
The formation lay before him.
He studied it silently.
"A formation isn't just a pattern..."
He looked at the lines.
"It needs a path."
The thought remained in his mind.
The next day, he tried changing the spiritual-energy route.
Failure.
The day after that—
failure again.
But this time, he knew why.
Slowly, Nilan began to understand.
A formation was not merely a collection of lines.
It was a path.
A route through which spiritual energy could travel.
It didn't directly command the power of Heaven and Earth.
It guided it.
Like a road showing a traveler where to go.
Like a river being given a direction.
The formation didn't create the power.
It didn't replace the cultivator.
It simply gave the power a route.
And the better the route—
the greater the result.
Nilan's understanding slowly deepened.
But understanding was not enough.
He still had to make it work.
A long period passed.
Nilan's movements became more precise.
His control became steadier.
He no longer needed to stare at every line for hours.
He could recognize problems before the formation completely collapsed.
But recognizing a problem was still different from solving it.
Another attempt.
Another failure.
Another night beneath the moonlight.
Nilan rebuilt the formation.
Again.
And again.
Time continued to pass.
His failures became less chaotic.
His corrections became more deliberate.
What had once taken him countless attempts to understand could now be grasped within a much shorter period.
Yet the final step remained beyond his reach.
The formation would activate—
then lose stability.
It would gather spiritual energy—
then disperse it.
It would glow—
then fall silent.
Nilan clenched his fingers.
He had improved.
But improvement was not mastery.
So he continued.
More time passed.
The mountains remained unchanged.
The roads remained busy.
The flowers continued to bloom and fall.
The workers changed.
The disciples changed.
Even the training grounds changed.
But the formation beneath Nilan's hands remained.
And so did he.
Sometimes he succeeded in activating it for a few breaths.
Sometimes for several moments.
Sometimes he failed before the formation even began to respond.
Yet each failure was different from the one before.
That difference mattered.
Because it meant he was moving forward.
Another period passed.
Nilan's understanding had reached a different level.
He no longer copied the movements of others.
He began creating his own method.
His spiritual energy moved with greater control.
His fingers moved across the formation points with confidence.
He could identify flaws almost instinctively.
But one problem remained.
Stability.
The formation could gather spiritual energy.
It could guide it.
It could even activate.
But it could not maintain the flow for long.
Nilan stood beneath the moonlight.
He looked at the formation.
"Why?"
He remained silent for a long time.
Then he noticed it.
One connection.
A tiny imperfection.
So small that he had overlooked it countless times.
Nilan slowly reached toward it.
He changed the route.
Nothing happened.
He changed it again.
Still nothing.
He took a slow breath.
Then tried once more.
The spiritual energy entered the formation.
One line illuminated.
Then another.
The third followed.
The light spread farther.
Nilan's eyes narrowed.
The energy did not scatter.
It moved.
Slowly.
Smoothly.
Like water flowing through a perfectly carved river.
Buzz—
The formation trembled.
Nilan's hand froze.
For a moment, he thought it would collapse.
But it didn't.
The formation stabilized.
The light continued spreading across every line.
One after another.
Until the entire formation was illuminated.
Nilan stared silently.
It worked.
Not because he had forced more spiritual energy into it.
Not because he had overwhelmed the formation with power.
But because, after countless failures—
he had finally understood how to give that power a path.
The formation remained active.
Steady.
Controlled.
Complete.
Nilan slowly withdrew his hand.
For several breaths, he simply looked at it.
There was no applause.
No celebration.
No crowd.
Only the quiet mountains.
The drifting flowers.
And the soft glow beneath his hand.
A small smile appeared on his face.
It was only a basic formation.
Nothing impressive.
Nothing worthy of being called mastery.
But to Nilan—
it meant something.
He had failed countless times.
And this time, he had finally understood one small part of the path.
Nilan slowly stood.
"Again tomorrow."
He turned toward the mountains.
Far away, hidden among the trees—
a figure quietly watched him.
The figure had been there for some time.
Watching.
Waiting.
But Nilan did not know.
He didn't even know that someone had noticed his repeated failures.
The figure's gaze remained on the formation for a moment.
Then—
it disappeared into the darkness.
The valley became silent again.
Nilan returned to his quarters.
He didn't see the figure.
He didn't know that someone had quietly left a small piece of formation material beside the stone platform.
He only knew one thing.
Tomorrow—
he would try again.
And somewhere beyond the mountains, something ancient had already begun to notice him.
---
Some time passed.
The rhythm of Nilan's life remained unchanged.
Work.
Training.
Rest.
Sleep.
Then repeat.
But Nilan himself—
was no longer the same.
The formation that had once seemed impossible had become familiar.
The basic principles that had once confused him had gradually become instinctive.
His understanding continued to deepen.
The same formation.
The same mountains.
The same quiet training ground.
Yet every time he returned—
he saw something new.
Another period passed.
Nilan began working with slightly more complicated formations.
The failures returned.
So did the frustration.
But this time, he understood how to face them.
He observed.
He analyzed.
He corrected.
He tried again.
And again.
Time continued to move.
The valley remained beautiful.
The flowers bloomed.
The petals fell.
The mountains watched silently.
And Nilan continued walking his chosen path.
Some disciples advanced faster than him.
Others fell behind.
Some changed their focus to different disciplines.
Some remained devoted to formation work.
But Nilan never abandoned the path.
His progress was slow.
Steady.
And real.
A very long period passed.
By then, the movements that had once required complete concentration had become natural.
His control over spiritual energy had improved.
His understanding of formation structure had reached a far higher level.
He could now recognize formations that once would have appeared incomprehensible.
Yet he still trained.
Because Nilan understood one thing clearly.
The first successful formation had not been the end.
It had only been the beginning.
More time passed.
The simple formation gradually became the foundation for something greater.
Nilan began studying more advanced structures.
His failures returned once again.
But they were no longer the failures of someone who knew nothing.
They were the failures of someone reaching for the next height.
And with every failure—
he climbed.
The days became years.
The years became a long stretch of time that even Nilan stopped counting.
He no longer measured his progress by how much time had passed.
He measured it by what he could understand today that he could not understand before.
The formation beneath his hands changed.
His movements changed.
His control changed.
His understanding changed.
Slowly—
quietly—
Nilan advanced.
And after an extremely long period of training—
the voice that had once seemed distant finally returned.
"Your training is complete."
Nilan slowly raised his head.
The words echoed through the training grounds.
"You may proceed to the next stage."
For a moment, Nilan remained silent.
He looked at the formation before him.
Then at the mountains beyond it.
Countless memories passed through his mind.
Failure.
Practice.
Failure.
Understanding.
Practice.
Progress.
Again.
And again.
Until finally—
completion.
Nilan slowly closed his eyes.
When he opened them again—
the hesitation was gone.
He turned toward the road ahead.
His training in this place had ended.
But his path—
had not.