Chapter 325: The Highest Level of Strategy
Throughout his life, Kai had faced many obstacles and been rejected by fate many times. He'd managed to keep up with his peers only by dogged persistence, working harder and longer, always attempting more. Even through the struggles, that drive had always taken him higher and he'd pushed past his limits time and time again.
Now, for the first time, he faced failure.
Talndim and the other elites were impressed by his progress and told him that attaining every single phase had never been realistic. He didn't want to give up, because he knew from Rosemount that it was possible for people to start at a higher level of power. Most likely the god-like beings he'd seen were born at higher phases and then grew from there. He'd never catch up to them if he didn't push past all limits and achieve the impossible.
Except he couldn't. Not this time.
Kai lay on his back after another failure, gasping for breath. Compressing his power was as difficult as the earliest mana exercises had been, except he had been able to learn those quickly enough. To attain a higher phase he needed total mastery of his own power, reflexive compression, and absolute focus. What he needed now wasn't willpower, it was just more training time than he had available.
All the elites supported him in his training, but he could tell that they were becoming frustrated as he kept throwing himself against the obstacles. No one had come to show him another path yet. While lying on his back, Kai suddenly saw Gunjin overhead, lean and gray and stretching into the sky from that angle.
"Come along, Kai. You're not my boy anymore, but I need you to see something."
There was no reason to refuse. Kai pulled to his feet and joined Gunjin as he stepped into a portal. On the other side, Kai discovered that they stood atop the great wall, which he hadn't visited directly since the incursion. This wasn't a random section: to the east he saw two points where the wall had been broken and vast amounts of construction activity.
One of the broken points had been filled by a wall that was wider at the base in order to reach equally high, and the second was under construction. The new wall looked sturdy but clearly didn't have the spiritual strength of the original, so it would be a weak point. That made him curious about the pit being dug on the inner side of the completed wall.