After finishing up at the hospital, his mother calls her brother, and he gives them a ride back home. Max goes to his room and lies on his mat on the floor while his mother tells her brother and his grandmother what happened.

  Not wanting to listen to the story he has told over and over again one more time, Max gets back up and heads into the bathroom. He brushes his teeth and jumps in the shower.

  Oh my god. Hot running water, how I have missed you. I don’t think there is much about this world I like better, but running water is one of the few things that is clearly better.

  I wonder what happened with Liz. I hope Rosalee is okay. I know she is with the margrave, so I doubt anything will happen to her until he leaves her with Sir Darvill.

  Please don’t let her be too upset that I have vanished again; I really cannot control it. At least this time she knows that I come from another world and should be able to put together that I have returned back here.

  Damn, this whole thing is so messed up.

  Max takes his time in the hot water and soaps up his hair. It isn’t as long as it was in the other world… my body still seems to have kept the weight I lost and the muscle I gained.

  This whole thing is so confusing.

  How does it decide what comes with me and what doesn’t? He looks down at the ghostly wound of where the bishop had stabbed him.

  Well, it doesn’t hurt anymore, and if it is anything like the needleleaf bite, then it should heal while I am over here. Max rubs his face, soaping it up as well before sticking his head under the water.

  So all our plans have gone to hell. First, we were going to head to The Terrace and learn what they know about Eschaton. Then we were going to go after Lady Elizabeth and rescue her from whatever she summoned, if the bishop hadn’t lied to me.

  Then all three of us were going to work together to get stronger and build up enough strength and allies to go after Eschaton. It wasn’t a short-term goal, of course, but me being gone definitely makes it harder.

  Max finishes his shower and, while drying off, looks at himself in the mirror.

  If she did summon a creature, then Lady Rosalee will be in danger when she goes after her. Sir Darvill is supposed to accompany her to Zenith Stronghold. I would feel a lot better if it was the margrave going with her.

  Sir Darvill should be able to spot the signs of corruption, and if what I was told is true, that the creature was turning the soldiers into its minions, they should be able to figure out that it isn’t safe before they encounter the true danger of the beast.

  Being a loyal knight, Sir Darvill will not stand by and let Lady Rosalee try to rescue Lady Elizabeth herself. She will insist that they retreat back to The Terrace and inform the Duke of what is happening.

  Once he knows that his daughter is in danger, he should bring up a force, and they will retake the stronghold and rescue her. After that, I have no idea what will happen to the two girls; they probably will be sent somewhere else that is safe.

  Max takes the necklace out of the pocket of his pants that are on the floor and looks at it. That means that Lady Rosalee will be safe for now. Even if I am no longer there, she will continue the plan and work with Lady Elizabeth to get stronger and build a force.

  Which means I need to focus on myself over here and get stronger. If magic works over here, I can practice my swordsmanship and try to figure out qi.

  We might even know something about it here, with the internet at school, I should be able to research even more efficiently than I was able to last time I returned.

  I need to learn more about the Greek Gods and ancient Greece, too. There might even be a way for me to travel back to her world from here willingly, though I bet I would have to actually go to Greece for that.

  Still, if I can find a solution to just being randomly flicked between worlds and am able to choose when I cross, I would be far better off. We are all still too young to go after Eschaton anyway.

  So I will take this time and prepare for everything I can. If I find a link to her world, then when the time is right, even if I am not pulled across, I can go over on my own.

  Max changes into his sleeping clothes and hides the necklace on him before heading back to his room. So I need to find out about Greece, gods, and qi.

  I don’t really need to learn anymore about survival; I pretty much have that covered. If I am alone again when I go back there, I will probably have to make money somehow, so I should look into blacksmithing as well.

  I am sure that with our knowledge, I will be able to make more and better things when I return. I should also look at weapons that were used in the past.

  While my tomahawks and this sword will be my best options for now, I might find something more suitable in the long run. If something better exists, I will also have to learn how to make it myself, so when I return, I can acquire it. Being foreign to their world, my tomahawks have worked wonders; who knows what else might come in handy?

  Sticking the necklace under his mat, he throws his dirty clothes into the hamper and lies down on the mat. He raises his hand in front of his face and focuses intently on it.

  ‘Focus on the energy that flows all through your body… feel how it moves and reacts inside of you.’ Remembering the margrave’s words, Max tries to feel the energy inside his hand.

  He also remembers the pulse of energy he felt when he heard Lady Elizabeth scream and how the energy had ripped through his body when the man from Eschaton had cast the spell on him.

  Lying there silent for hours, Max watches his hand.

  ? ? ?

  It is early in the morning when Max wakes up. His mom and grandmother are still asleep, and it is still dark outside. I guess I am still accustomed to the other world and getting up early to train before getting the horses and camp ready.

  Still works out for the best. Now I can train before school while everyone else is asleep. Max removes the necklace from underneath his mat and puts it on.

  He reaches his hand out and pictures the sword appearing in his hand just as he had practiced. The familiar lime green light illuminates his room as the sword appears in his hand.

  That… went far smoother than I thought. It responded almost easier than in the other world. I wonder why that is. You would think that in a world without magic, it would be a lot harder, not easier.

  Max practices several of the sword motions and stances while thinking on the subject. Yesterday, I could swear I could feel the qi in my hand, too. It wasn't very clear, and I couldn't feel it circulating; it was more just like I could feel that I was filled with energy.

  Could the absence of mana in the world actually help? I mean, in Rosalee's world, there was so much energy around us at all times that it took a large amount for it to be noticeable, but here, without all that background noise, it seems easier.

  I think Rosalee said that the sword was bound to me by my blood, making it almost a part of me. That might explain how it was able to cross over with me.

  To summon or unsummon it, I have to touch it with my qi and picture it basically changing size and shape. The margrave mentioned that it is very much like how the mages would use their qi to touch mana and shape it into spells.

  If the sword is part of me, it should share my qi. I reach out and let my qi touch it, and it responds to my desire.

  Hell, this might turn out to be for the best. In her world, like the margrave said, it is extremely hard for people to notice the energy and feel how it moves, but here it should be far easier.

  I will be able to learn how to use qi far easier and quicker here. If I had stayed, years might have passed before I saw any real progress.

  Not taking the risk of being found out, Max does not practice as long as he normally would before unsummoning the sword. Instead of getting changed and ready for school, he starts to exercise like he used to before. Sit-ups, crunches, push-ups, jumping jacks, and more.

  Keeping an eye on the clock, he wraps up his workout and heads to the bathroom around the time his mom wakes up. He takes a quick shower to wash the sweat off and brushes his teeth. He dresses for school and gathers the few things he needs to bring with him.

  Most of his things are still in his locker at school. Once he is ready, he removes his necklace and puts it in his pocket before heading out to talk to his mom.

  "Good morning." Smiling, he walks past her and opens the fridge.

  "Good morning, you sure are up early." Filling the coffee pot with water, she glances over at her fully dressed son.

  "Couldn't really sleep, so I decided to just get an early start. I think I am going to walk to school today to clear my head." Opening a pack of lunch meat, Max grabs two slices and pops them into his mouth before closing the fridge.

  "You know it is over half a mile, right?" Raising her eyebrow, she looks at her son as she finishes making the pot of coffee.

  "I know. Don't worry, I will be fine. I think the fresh air and exercise will do me some good. I will come right home after school, too. I will probably walk again, though.” Seeing the way his mother is looking at him, he shakes his head and pats her shoulder as he walks past.

  “I still don’t know what happened yesterday, but I am not going to dwell upon it. I doubt anything like that will happen to me again. I will be fine.”

  Max wanders around his house and tries to find busy work to fill the time until it gets late enough for him to head off to school. When it finally gets late enough, he kisses his mom on her cheek and then leaves the apartment.

  The morning is still dark at this hour, but the sun is trying to come up. His neighborhood is mostly silent, with most people still asleep or just getting up to get ready for work or school.

  It is still far earlier than when most of the kids will leave for school, but Max doesn’t mind; in fact, he doesn’t want to walk with a group of people but instead have some alone time.

  I haven’t even been back for a single day yet, and it already seems stifling. In Rosalee’s world, I only really see people when I want to, or we have a common goal. Here, I have almost no alone time. Even in my room, there is just a very thin wall separating me from either my family or my neighbors.

  Now I get to spend the rest of my day with almost all control over my choices taken from me and being forced to sit through lectures about topics that really don’t matter at all.

  Between the lectures and the other students, I probably won’t have silence again until tomorrow morning, before anyone is awake, because even walking home, the sound of traffic and other kids walking will fill the air.

  Everything here is so much more constrained.

  On the way to school, after he leaves his neighborhood, he has to walk around a small wooded area. The wooded area takes up over half the distance he has to walk, and what little it doesn’t take up is filled with a field and some longhorn cattle.

  Instead of walking on the side of the street as most people do, Max walks a little way into the woods before following alongside the road. I already miss the woods, dirt, and grass.

  This world has far too much blacktop and cement everywhere. How could we just stand by and let people take away the beauty of nature and create a concrete prison for ourselves?

  The walk doesn’t take very long, and he soon passes out of the wooded area and walks down the sidewalk next to the field. The cattle seem fewer than he remembers, numbering in only a handful. Stopping for a minute, he stands there and watches them before continuing on toward the school.

  Soon, all that stands between him and school is a four-lane street. He stands at the corner and waits patiently for the walk sign to light up and signal for him to cross, even though at this hour the street is practically empty.

  I am here a little too early, I think. While the janitors are already setting things up, I don’t think students will be here for at least another half an hour.

  Instead of heading to the cafeteria or the courtyard where most of the students gather before school, Max heads around the side of the school and to the football field. What few things he has brought with him, he stores on one of the benches and only now remembers to put his necklace back on after hiding it from his mother again.

  Once he is ready, he starts to jog at a pretty decent pace around the football field. Focus on my breathing, keep it under control.

  Try to feel the energy inside of my body. Don’t just focus on it radiating inside of me, but on the way it is moving.

  If what the margrave said is true, it should be circulating from my center to my lungs and legs as I run. It should be like blood in my veins. There will be a place where the direction changes and loops back to my center.

  Focusing on the qi inside of himself, Max loses himself in his jogging. After all the time he spent at the forge, wandering the woods, and fighting, he hasn’t really seen just how in shape he has become.

  By the time he would usually have been tired and out of breath, he is still going strong as though it takes no effort at all. It isn’t until he hears other kids starting to arrive and make their way out to the nearby basketball courts that he realizes that his morning alone is over.

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  If they are already here, then that means the school is open properly now. I should stop by my locker, get my things, and then find a computer lab and try to find some information.

  Max heads over to collect his things and gets a whiff of himself. Maybe I should stop by the gym locker room first and freshen up. I don’t want to stink the whole day, do I?

  There is a door leading into the gym next to the football field. Max enters through there and finds his locker. After washing up with his gym towel and feeling less sweaty, he puts the towel away and heads to his main locker.

  Most of the students stay out of the halls before class, so they are mostly empty as he hurries to his locker. Somehow, he manages to find it quickly, even though he had only been to it twice so far. He undoes his lock and grabs the things that he will need for the first half of the day and heads back to the courtyard.

  If I remember correctly, there should be a computer room somewhere over here. It takes him a moment to find the right doorway. He nods to the teacher, who looks up at him when he enters. Without saying a word, he heads over to an empty computer and turns it on.

  Looks like I am not the only one who likes to use the computers before school. There are at least five other kids in here already, and we still have like thirty minutes before school starts.

  Placing his things under his chair and out of the way, Max opens up a search engine and looks up the word qi. It takes him a few tries as he has only heard the word spoken aloud and has never seen it spelled out.

  After scrolling around the internet and reading multiple articles, Max checks the time and sees that it is only five minutes until the first bell will signal them to head to class.

  So it seems to be a Chinese principle about vital force. I was kind of expecting it to be related to Greek myths or legends, given the connection we found between our worlds.

  I guess that just means that maybe other ancient kingdoms might have been connected to this world as well. That might even mean that more than just Greek gods and demigods are real.

  I wonder what happened to all of the gods and why we no longer interact with them. Leaning back in the chair, he puts his hands behind his head.

  Even though it is seen as make-believe, it follows roughly the same thing that the margrave spoke about. Energy that is all around us in everything, linking us all together. The energy inside of us could link to that outside of us and allow us to accomplish unnatural things.

  Once you figure out how the energy flows, the qi will grant you a long, healthy life. That if you can control the flow, you can control everything from emotions to augmenting your physical body.

  That most illnesses and problems of the body can be solved by changing or fixing the flow of qi inside of them. They also spoke about an example of qi being related to fire and how the heat that you can feel radiating away from the flames is its qi being released.

  While I do think that some or even most of this is not accurate in the sense the margrave spoke of, I do think I can relate some of it over. Hell, at the moment, I even feel the radiating qi being given off by my body like that from the flames. If I want to learn to use the qi, I need to understand the flames, not the heat.

  The bell interrupts his thoughts, signaling the beginning of the school day. Picking up his things off the ground, Max checks his schedule and heads off to history class, his first period.

  Great history class. This is by far one of the worst classes they force me to take. You would think it could be interesting with all the amazing things that have happened in the past, but no, they focus on forcing us to memorize names, dates, and locations with only basic bullet points about why these things are important.

  Having to take a history class every year, they had the chance to give us in-depth lessons about different ages, but no, once again, it will just cover mostly the same dates, places, and people because they feel those are what is most important and damn the rest of history.

  The number of students is on the rise, and the school has not been able to keep up with this, so until the new building is finished being built, they have several portable classrooms set up in trailers around the outside of the school. His history class being in one of these, Max heads out to the portables for his first lesson.

  Just as Max had expected, the history class is the same as all of the other ones he has been in before. The lesson starts probably later in history than it should, and glosses over most of the information about events and things that had happened, focusing only on a few specific places and people.

  Listening to the teacher give his lesson, Max pretends to read along and takes notes down in a spiral notebook that he knows he will never look at again. History, being a first-period class, should be illegal.

  I was wide awake for hours working out, training, and walking here, but now I feel like I need a nap and will fall asleep any minute. This cannot get any worse.

  Luckily, the class only lasts almost an hour before the bell rings, giving the students five minutes to get to their next class.

  Stretching, Max picks up his things and yawns. Slowly moving with the group of students pouring out of the other portables, Max follows them back to the main part of the campus and into the biggest of the buildings.

  The halls are busy with hundreds of students, but navigating them isn’t that hard, and Max makes it to his next class in time. This period is science.

  I think that out of all the classes I have ever had, science is the most wildcard of them all. It is either extremely boring or extremely interesting, with very little in between.

  I doubt we will have any practical lessons this early in the year. It will probably just be textbook learning. I just wonder what the topic will be that we start with.

  Max finds an empty desk and puts all the things he won’t be needing this period under his chair and opens his textbook and spiral notebook. While waiting for the rest of the class to arrive and the teacher to begin their lesson, Max flips through the textbook, seeing what they might be learning.

  Elements, compounds, chemical change, forces, structure of the earth, organisms, and space. They really are just trying to stick a little bit of everything into this class, aren’t they? I have a strange feeling that this class might actually end up being more boring than history, if that is even possible.

  Much like the previous lesson, Max tries to pay attention, but his mind wanders as he scribbles down endless notes that he knows that he will never look at. While he is not the best student, his grades are always middle of the road.

  Between doing classwork and homework, he only really suffers on tests, but is usually pretty decent at taking them. Even if he has to guess, most of the time, the tests are multiple-choice scantrons.

  The bell finally rings about the time Max is getting ready to slam his head into his desk and give up. Grabbing his things, he heads over to the gym located in the middle of the school. He shoves his things into the small gym locker after taking his gym clothes out.

  After changing into the shorts and light t-shirt, he exits into the main gym to wait for everyone else to arrive and change. They are given an extra five minutes before and after gym class to change, so it is one of the shorter periods of the day.

  They go through the usual stretches and basic exercises for the first ten minutes or so of class before they are separated into their activities that they chose the day before. Max makes his way back into the locker room, where they have the gym equipment set up.

  A teacher walks around the room and has the kids rotate between the different machines and free weights while making sure they are using them correctly and not hurting themselves. At each station, Max takes his time and doesn’t try to lift the heaviest things he can, but focuses on repetition and doing the exercises correctly.

  He focuses intently on each muscle group that he is working out and tries to feel how the energy is moving inside of his body. Since this is a class that Max enjoys, it seems to go by way too quickly, and too soon the teachers dismiss the different activities and send the students to the locker rooms to change back into their school gear.

  He is probably the only student who decides to take a quick shower and wash off all his sweat. The other kids look at him strangely as he doesn’t appear weirded out by using the public showers in front of them. After he is showered and changed, the bell rings, and he is the last student out of the locker room.

  Jogging lightly, he catches up to the others and heads to his locker, putting his things away before heading to the cafeteria for lunch. Picking a line at random, he waits his turn to pick out a lunch.

  They have two sets of lines, and he isn’t sure what they are serving in either of them since he had vanished from this world on his first day. Turns out that the line that he has chosen is an American cuisine line, while the other line serves an international cuisine.

  Instead of choosing either of those two options, Max does as he always has, he picks a slice of pizza and grabs some fries as a side dish while ignoring the more healthy fruits and vegetable sides. Next to the register, he picks up a chocolate milk, not particularly liking the taste of the plain or pink milks they also offer.

  At the register, he enters his school ID number on the pin pad, and since he has free meals at school due to being low income, it lights up green, saying he doesn’t have to pay. Picking the closest table with a seat that doesn’t have someone who would be sitting directly beside him or across from him, he sits down and eats the small lunch.

  The lunch period is far longer than he needs to finish off the slice of pizza and fries. Once he is finished, he dumps his trash and heads to the computer room he found in the morning.

  Tentatively, he opens the door and looks inside to see if any class is in session, but only finds a couple of kids and the same teacher from this morning. The teacher smiles at him and goes back to eating the food on the tray in front of them while Max sits down at the same computer he had used this morning.

  Okay, so I have almost thirty minutes until my next class. I looked up qi this morning and didn’t find too much that would be of help to me.

  The articles did mention that there are some practices and martial arts that focus on building and using qi. I might as well look those up and see if I can incorporate any of that into my training sessions.

  Max opens up a typing program and the internet and starts to research some of the things that he found earlier in the morning. Once he finds what he is looking for, he starts to take notes in the typing program.

  Okay, so dantian are qi focus centers located in our bodies; there are three of them. One is located in my lower abdomen, around where my navel is, and that is the main one, that is where qi starts from. This seems like it could be an important step in figuring out the flow of qi throughout my body if it is accurate.

  The second dantian is in my chest near my heart, and that is where the qi is processed and stored. The last is in my forehead where the third eye is said to be located. This description makes the least amount of sense. What is wu wei, and why am I converting my qi into it?

  Max furrows his brow and goes down a rabbit hole of searches, trying to figure out exactly what this means.

  Okay, I think I get it now. Wu wei is a state of emptiness that allows one to grasp control over oneself. If I take the mysticism out of it and apply what the margrave told me, then I think that this might be where the qi is used to control either emotions or is directed through before being sent out to the different parts of your body to be used.

  It is almost like the control center. So in the end, we have a dantian for generating, storing, and using qi. Now this also talks about the meridian system inside of our bodies.

  I should print out this diagram along with my notes. I don’t have any idea if these are the actual pathways the qi travels through, but if they are, then this might be a huge shortcut in me figuring out how the energy moves throughout my body.

  The sound of the printer spinning up fills the small room, and Max gets up and grabs the printout of the meridian system before sitting back down and resuming his research. They keep mentioning this qigong, but looking into this topic isn’t yielding much results other than T'ai chi ch'uan, Baguazhang, and Xing Yi Quan being the main dynamic schools of movements.

  If that is the case, I should look more directly into them. I’m running out of time on my lunch break, so I should just print out what else I have found already and try to find a book on Tai chi.

  I think that Baguazhang or Xing Yi Quan will be a lot harder to find information about other than just online, and I don’t think that is the best way to learn them. Learning Tai Chi from a book doesn’t sound like it would be nearly as hard.

  I wonder if they will have any books in the school library about that? I doubt it, so I will have to take a trip down to the public library this weekend.

  After sending the notes he took to the printer, he closes everything on the computer and gathers his things. Grabbing the printout, he heads to his locker to grab the things he will need for his afternoon classes.

  While he is getting his things, the bell rings, and he follows the flow of people toward his next classroom. This class is my first elective; they didn’t have too many options to choose from. I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a mistake.

  The class starts, and Max has to introduce himself since he missed this class yesterday, and tries to get caught up on what he missed. Apparently, the class starts with a free drawing assignment based on a simple doodle the art teacher left on the whiteboard.

  Max gets to work and tries to figure out something to turn it into, but it turns out hideously. Why did I think an art class would be a good idea?

  After the free draw, the teacher shows them the project they will be working on first and the style that they will be doing it in. Max listens closely to the teacher and dreads every second of having to work on what he describes.

  The class turns out to be far more interesting than the other ones he had had so far today, and he quickly loses track of time while working. A few minutes before the bell rings, the teacher tells them to start putting their stuff away and get ready to leave.

  Well, that actually didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it was going to be. Sure, my piece looks like a pile of garbage, but I hopefully will have plenty of time to make it better and into something halfway presentable.

  The bell rings, and Max files out with the other students and heads back out to where the portable classrooms are located. His next class is located back out here, away from the main school.

  Once he passes the gym building and crosses the driveway the buses use, the number of students drastically decreases, and as they spread out to the different portables. Having less trouble than he suspected he might, he finds his class and enters.

  After introducing himself to the teacher, they show him where his seat is, and he waits for the class to begin. The lesson isn’t too difficult, and Max has never had any trouble with math.

  The equations and problems always seem rather simple to him, and he quickly follows the lesson and finishes both the assignment and homework that the teacher assigns. The only trouble he has ever really had in math classes is showing his work.

  Finding the answer is easy, but trying to explain how he got them is something Max very much has trouble with. All too soon, the bell rings, and he is heading back to the main part of the school, looking for another classroom.

  Max almost runs out of time locating this classroom and makes it just in the nick of time. He introduces himself to the teacher, and she explains that the first few minutes of class, they have to write based on the prompt she left on the board.

  Max finds his seat and takes out a notebook before getting to work writing some silly story based on the prompt. He just tries to get it to the required page length since the teacher apparently checks the journals at the end of every week.

  His story flows better than expected, but he still isn’t happy with it. The class starts soon after he is finished critiquing his work, and he takes out his textbook to follow along.

  Well, I have to say, compared to the morning classes, these ones in the afternoon are not nearly as bad. Art was frustrating but interesting, and this class seems to be similar with the daily prompts and being creative.

  Math was also rather simple. I don’t see why everyone has so much trouble with it. I should be able to stay awake through these far easier than the morning lot.

  The final class of his day is between the portables and the main school, located just on the other side of the bus lane. Now this should be interesting. I bet it will be almost as good as gym class.

  After entering the shop class, Max approaches the teacher and introduces himself. Unlike the previous classes, they don’t have assigned seats, so he just finds a stool at a bench and sits waiting for the class to begin.

  As Max expected, woodshop is one of his favorite classes, and he excitedly moves between the different stations, trying out all the different tools and machines along with the other students. They have a simple project that shouldn’t take more than one period to finish and is basically just to get them used to using all of the equipment.

  The class is over all too soon, and Max is left disappointed. While it definitely is not working at the smithy, this is probably the closest that I will be able to get in this world. I really like working with my hands and making things; if only I had a workshop at home.

  Max heads to his locker again and puts away all of his things before getting out his backpack and putting the things he will need to do his homework into it. He double-checks to make sure he isn’t forgetting anything before closing the locker and walks back through the courtyard for over the tenth time this day.

  I really don’t get how they decided on the location of our classrooms. I feel like after almost every period, I am walking through this courtyard to get to a different building.

  I feel like it would make more sense to do the three classes I have in the main building, then have lunch, followed by gym, and then the classes out past the bus lane in the woodshop and portables. It would take far less time to get between classes, and there would be a lot less walking around these crowded halls. It might even make the school less crowded.

  Max ponders this topic the entire time he waits at the light before crossing over to the field with the cows. Just like in the morning, once he passes the field, he enters the wooded area and stays away from all the kids walking on the sidewalk.

  Instead of cutting across through the wooded area like a couple of the kids do, he just follows the edge around the corner and down the street toward his apartments. Once he gets on property, he takes a moment and pockets his necklace before continuing so that his mom won’t see it.

  His evening follows the same pattern it has always followed since he entered elementary school. After eating an early dinner that his mom prepares as soon as he gets home. He spends several hours doing homework before having a small period of time to himself. Then, he has to get ready for bed so that he is ready to start the whole routine over again tomorrow.

  With his free time this evening, he spends it sitting in the middle of his room meditating and focusing on the dantian and his qi. Max opens his eyes and looks at the printout of the meridian system for a bit before closing his eyes and trying to feel the pathways that it shows.