**Chapter 8: Meditation Method**
After mulling things over, Jie Ming cleared his thoughts and sat at the desk, inspecting the box’s contents.
“Though I’ve passed the first hurdle, I can’t let my guard down. I can’t be sure there’s no monitoring in the dorm, so I need to be cautious. For now, I can’t openly practice cultivation-related things…”
Since he couldn’t cultivate, he’d have to learn something else.
With Clark giving him only ten days, his priority was mastering the wizard system’s foundational practice, the *Basic Meditation Method*.
Only by igniting his spiritual flame could he truly embark on the wizard’s path.
Jie Ming found a comfortable position on the bed and picked up the heavy book on the meditation method.
The pages seemed made of some metal, the text concise, each word imbued with a strange energy.
Skimming through, he grasped that the *Basic Meditation Method* centered on “visualization” and “inscription.”
The book explained that these patterns weren’t arbitrary; they were simplified forms of “truth runes,” developed by wizard sages over countless years to align with the wizard world’s energy system.
Successfully inscribing these patterns in the mental sea would draw in ambient energy particles, nourishing mental strength and forming a personal “mental circuit,” marking the entry to the wizard system.
The first meditation pattern for beginners consisted of five components, forming an abstract triangular pyramid when combined.
The book advised beginners to first master inscribing each component before attempting to combine them.
Jie Ming closed his eyes, placed the book under his head as a pillow, and blocked out external senses.
For ordinary beginners, the first few attempts required using the book as a pillow for assistance—not just for its rich content but because it was inscribed with arrays to help novices quickly immerse in their mental sea.
Jie Ming didn’t need the aid but did it as a precaution, keeping up appearances.
His consciousness deftly sank into his mental sea, where he sensed his highly refined mental strength, honed through years of cultivation.
Following the method’s guidance, he began using his mental strength to “draw” the first component pattern.
It was an odd sensation, his mental strength like tendrils delicately tracing lines in his mental sea.
Surprisingly, the process was remarkably smooth.
Perhaps due to his years of cultivation, Jie Ming’s control over his mental strength was extraordinary. Drawing patterns with it was as effortless as a mortal writing on paper.
The lines he inscribed were smooth, stable, and precise, the pattern swiftly taking shape in his mental sea, needing only one final stroke to complete perfectly.
But just as that final stroke was about to fall, a thought struck him.
He abruptly halted the stroke and deliberately skewed it at the last moment.
The near-perfect pattern was ruined at the final moment, and the gathered mental strength lost its guide, spiraling out of control!
An invisible mental shock erupted within his mental sea, jolting his entire consciousness.
Jie Ming grunted, feeling dizzy as his mental sea seemed stirred by a giant hand.
Though painful, he quickly stabilized his mind and assessed the impact of this “failure.”
The sensation of being hit by his own mental strength was uncomfortable but caused no real damage.
“That was close. I almost forgot about the control gap.” A chill ran through him.
Despite his low cultivation, years of practice gave him mental control far beyond that of an uninitiated novice.
His true inscription ability and mental control were not what a level-six aptitude apprentice just starting the meditation method should have.
Conversely, unless extraordinarily gifted, normal apprentices shouldn’t inscribe truth runes so easily.
So, he had to pretend.
Pretend to be a beginner who’d struggle, fail, and need time to fumble through.
“Not just the control gap—when a truth rune inscription fails, the stored mental strength releases completely, causing a mental shock to the mental sea… I’ll need to watch my endurance and recovery, too.”
Jie Ming’s mental strength and related attributes were equivalent to an unpracticed level-eight aptitude apprentice, meaning he experienced the same as they would.
But… what about apprentices with lower aptitude?
He was posing as level six, so besides control, he had to mimic other responses to mental backlash.
Fortunately, he’d noted the mental strength corresponding to each aptitude level during testing.
Jie Ming quickly calculated.
The backlash from failure was fixed, so while negligible to him, it would be painful or even dangerous for low-aptitude apprentices with fragile mental seas.
By his estimates, apprentices below level five would suffer significant mental sea disruption from such a shock, needing considerable time to recover before trying again.
Conservatively, even nonstop, they could attempt six to eight times daily, each failure a torment.
For his displayed level-six aptitude, that backlash, while uncomfortable, would allow recovery in about an hour to try again.
As for level-eight or nine geniuses… their mental strength and soul foundations were stronger, making backlash a mere nuisance.
Unless they failed repeatedly, one or two shocks were trivial.
Aptitude didn’t just affect cultivation speed and potential—it also determined trial-and-error costs and fault tolerance!
High-aptitude apprentices could endure more failures and attempts, naturally progressing faster.
“The advantage of aptitude is clear early on… Ten days to master this isn’t easy for low-aptitude apprentices.”