For the third time that week, Evening Session attendance exceeded the assembly hall's capacity.
Zhou Mingyuan stood beside the podium and counted. More than two hundred people filled the hall, while nearly another hundred sat in the open space outside. The Rootlines standing outside had spread their coats over the steps and sat on the ground. The glow from their cores formed a warm golden backdrop in the dusk, spreading from the assembly hall entrance to the edge of the street like an entire riverbed covered in luminous water.
That day, he lectured on practical applications of network perception, using data from the latest formation training session at the Northern Sector Defense Line, specifically the recorded curves of changes in coordination efficiency. As he reached the latter half of the lecture, he noticed a distinct synchronization in the rhythms of the cores below. Unlike the synchronizations he had observed before, this one lasted longer and was stronger. During it, he could sense a subtle shared change in the expressions on the faces below—as if everyone had realized the same thing at once.
After finishing the final case study, he paused and allowed the discussion below to unfold naturally. A Rootline seated in the second row raised a hand, and Zhou Mingyuan nodded for him to speak. When the man stood, his movements carried a sharp decisiveness that clearly had not come from training. It was more like he had just made a decision he had hesitated over for a long time.
"Teacher Zhou, I've noticed something recently on the defense line. When formations move as a group, the cores inside us produce a resonance that makes us extremely focused. In that state, it feels as though the Lord's will is transmitted directly into every person's core through that resonance. There's