"Answer the question."
Su Li scratched the back of his head. He closed his eyes and felt it out. Aether came from the air, passed through his skin, entered his flesh and blood, and flowed toward his core. The entire process was as quick as drinking water.
"There's no channel." He opened his eyes. "It just... goes in by itself."
Elonore's pen stopped in midair.
"Be more specific."
"There really isn't a channel." Su Li gestured. "It's like throwing a sponge into water—the water seeps in on its own. I'm the sponge."
Elonore stared at him for five seconds. Then she lowered her head, wrote a line in her notes, and closed them.
"That statement has no research value."
Su Li: "..."
At noon the next day, the travel vehicle stopped beneath a patch of shade by the roadside.
Elonore fished three low-grade crystals from the toolbox and arranged them on her lap. Closing her eyes, she placed all ten fingers against the channels along the inner side of her forearm. Aether seeped in through her fingertips.
Squatting across from her, Su Li fully spread his fifth-tier perception and watched the flow of aether inside her body.
An extremely fine guiding circuit formed along the inside of her forearm. Aether flowed through it slowly, like water running through an impossibly narrow ditch. The light on the crystals' surfaces gradually dimmed as their energy was drawn out and fed into the circuit.
"It's gathering," Su Li said.
Elonore did not open her eyes. A thin sheen of sweat appeared at her temples. The aether at the end of the circuit grew denser and denser, forming a point of light the size of a grain of rice.
Three seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds.
Su Li's perception remained locked onto that point.