Gen and Lorel landed lightly on the platform of polished white stone before the first of the twelve halls. It was not a ruin, but a structure of breathtaking, silent majesty, carved seamlessly from a single, floating asteroid. They passed through the grand, arched entrance.
Inside was a massive, empty hall. Light fell from some unseen source high above, illuminating a floor so clean it reflected the vaulted ceiling. At the center stood a single, plain pillar of grey rock. But the walls… the walls told a story.
They were covered in intricate, flowing symbols and stylized pictures carved in deep bas-relief. The language was ancient, its characters more like condensed artistic concepts than letters, but the narrative was clear in its visual flow. Gen and Lorel moved slowly along the perimeter, their fingers tracing the cool stone. They didn't understand the script, but they could *feel* the intent—the journey of a single figure through mountains, under strange stars, facing monstrous beasts.
"It looks like a story," Lorel murmured, her voice hushed in the immense quiet.
Gen nodded, his eyes following the sequence. "It talks about the adventure of a lone cultivator… who wanted to touch the skies." He let out a soft, incredulous laugh. "How funny. Is that even possible?"
Lorel shrugged, her gaze fixed on a carving of the figure reaching towards a swirling vortex of constellations. "The domain of possibility is blurred by the Wheels of Destiny. It's not impossible." There was a wistful note in her voice.
"Let's go see the other halls," Gen said, curiosity overtaking him.
Lorel nodded, and they moved on.
The second hall was similar, but the carvings showed the lone figure studying, meditating under waterfalls of light, his hands weaving complex patterns in the air. The third hall depicted battles against energy-beasts of shadow and crystal. The fourth showed the construction of intricate, geometric arrays on the ground.
Time lost all meaning. They fell into a rhythm, moving from one silent, grand hall to the next, each a new chapter in the visual epic. Each hall plunged them into a deep, meditative state as they tried to decipher not just the story, but the *principle* behind the images. It was a puzzle designed to be solved not with words, but with comprehension.
After each hall, they would sit together on the cold floor, shoulders almost touching, and talk.
"In the seventh hall," Lorel would say, her brow furrowed in thought, "the way he redirects the beast's charge… it's not just Jingdao. He's using the beast's own momentum, manipulating the *intent* of its attack. It's a profound application of Shidow."
"And in the eighth," Gen would add, tapping a diagram he'd scratched in the dust, "the array he builds to contain the star-fragment. See the pattern? It's a stable combination, but the core is a repeated principle of Separation—Fendow—to keep the volatile energies from merging and exploding. He's using Heidow to bind Fendow. That's insane."
Over the course of another long, subjective month, the duo spent their time in the twelve halls religiously. They learned. They argued softly over interpretations. They practiced mimicking the energy flows hinted at in the carvings on their own, using minimal Qi to trace the patterns in the air. The halls were their library, their monastery, and their training ground.
On what felt like the fifth day of their third month in the Forgotten Realm, they stood once more in the twelfth and final hall. They had been here countless times before, but this time felt different. The final, massive wall depicted not a scene, but a vast, complex star chart, interconnected with lines of throbbing power that seemed to move if you looked at them sideways.
Lorel stared at the final, magnificent puzzle of the starry sky, and a slow smile spread across her face. "I think it's like you guessed, Gen. It's not only a story. It's a formation. A *combat* formation."
Gen puffed out his chest, a familiar, boastful glint in his eye. "I told you. I'm a genius."
Lorel rolled her eyes, but couldn't suppress an amused laugh. "You don't have to brag about it." Her heart lifted seeing it. Over this time, Gen had slowly reverted to shades of his old self—the confident, energetic boy. He wasn't *quite* the same; the grief and guilt were still there, a shadow in his amber eyes. But he smiled more. He boasted. Perhaps it was a facade he showed only to her, but she was happy to see it.
Gen then walked towards her, slowly and deliberately. His eyes lingered on her face, as if trying to see something hidden there.
Lorel's heart gave a sudden, traitorous thump. Her mind, conditioned by a month of growing closeness and her own swirling feelings, instantly ran through a dozen possibilities. He was very close now. Was he going to…? He seemed to lean slightly forward, towards her face.
Her cheeks burned hot. She wasn't ready for that. What if something went wrong? What if she misunderstood? What if—?
Then, Gen gently placed his hand on her hip.
Lorel tensed slightly, her lips parting, a soft sound of surprise about to escape.
But Gen simply, gently, pushed her a step to the side. "I can't see the rest of the diagram with you standing there," he said, his tone completely matter-of-fact, his gaze already locked past her onto the star chart.
Lorel's expression froze. The heat in her cheeks shot to the tips of her ears, blazing pink. A wave of acute, flustered embarrassment washed over her, followed by a spark of indignation. *He moved me like a piece of furniture!* For a wild second, she wanted to curse at him, to ask if he thought she was too wide, to *something*.
Gen, oblivious to the internal cyclone he'd just stirred, shook his head. "That's not what I said. I needed to see the full picture to understand." Not bothering with her anymore, he stepped forward, his entire focus consumed by the final starry sky.
*Right. The diagram. Of course.*
Swallowing her chaotic emotions, Lorel joined him, forcing her own focus back to the wall.
"So, it's like this," Gen murmured, piecing together the narrative from all twelve halls. "The whole story spoke of a man called Starli. A cultivator of a distant era who had one sole, consuming obsession, like most. The meaning of immortality. In his goal to find it, he studied the stars and the process of formation. For him, the secret was held there. But, alas…" Gen's voice softened. "After decades of learning, he found nothing but an ability to simply slow down aging. However, once he left the Forgotten Realm, time had caught back up to him."
Gen fell silent for a moment. It felt slightly sad. The Jade Emperor had been so close but failed. This cultivator, Starli, was no different.
"In this hall," Gen continued, tapping the wall, "he engraved his most powerful formation—the one he learned. The **Star Oblivion**."
What Lorel and himself had been learning over the month. They were not versed in formations at the start, but over this time, they had learned a tremendous amount. Gen was confident he could grasp its principles fully, eventually. The only problem was the requirement: to wield it powerfully, one needed to master the Wheel of **Creation (Zhidow)** to generate the stellar energy, plus **Manipulation (Shidow)** to shape it into the formation. The only person between them who currently met that requirement was Lorel.
"This is fascinating, don't you think, Lorel?" Gen asked, finally turning to look at her, his eyes alight with intellectual fervor.
Lorel looked pointedly in the other direction, not bothering with him, the last remnants of her earlier fluster making her stubborn.
But Gen, in his usual style, steamrolled ahead, his focus unbroken by peripheral emotions. "If one day we become strong enough, we definitely need to achieve immortality."
To that, Lorel somehow changed. She looked back at the diagram, her own scholarly curiosity overriding her pique. "Is that even possible? Just look at the number of cultivators who have all failed on this path."
Gen shrugged, as if the weight of eternity was a trivial hurdle. "They weren't like us. Me and you."
Lorel's smile grew brighter, not just because of his typically arrogant words, but because of what they *meant*. He wasn't talking about achieving immortality alone. He was talking about them, together. She dared not think too far, but if… *if* one day they did achieve that, then they would be forever together. Not even time would be able to separate them. She didn't know why, but a profound warmth flooded her heart.
She smiled, a soft, sincere thing. "If it's possible… I would definitely want to achieve immortality with you."
Gen nodded, raising a thumbs-up, as if they'd just agreed on a training schedule. "Good."
He then sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and gestured for her to join him. Lorel sat beside him, their shoulders brushing, and together, they turned their faces back to the wall, their minds syncing once more in the silent, shared pursuit of knowledge.
Most people needed a master, guidance, to learn this kind of profound application of the Wheels of Destiny—like Li Zhan with his puppet abilities. Without proper training or extreme talent, they would have never learned it alone.
Right now, the duo didn't have a mentor. But they had talent, they had time, and they had nothing else to do.
So, they learned.