Early the next morning.
Dawn had barely broken, and dew still clung to the bamboo grove.
The four of them were already awake.
After the lesson of their first day, no one rushed to sit cross-legged and force their mind to go blank.
The harder they tried, the more stray thoughts came, and the thicker the mist grew.
Gon simply got up and walked slowly along the stone path through the bamboo grove.
He did not think about Spinning Rock or Xiwei Control.
He just listened to the wind rustling through the bamboo leaves and watched dewdrops roll from their tips, breaking into tiny splashes on the ground.
As he walked, his mind grew calmer.
Killua leaned against a bamboo stalk with his eyes closed.
He stopped puzzling over how to refine his lightning or improve Godspeed.
He simply felt the wind brush his cheeks and listened to birds calling in the distance.
His shoulders, tense for so long, slowly relaxed.
Leorio took the most practical approach.
Since he could not quiet his mind anyway, he slung on his herb basket and wandered around the foot of the mountain, gathering whatever medicinal plants he could use.
He hummed as he picked, putting cultivation completely out of his mind.
The longer he wandered, the more at ease he felt.
Genos shut down his unnecessary calculation programs too.
He stopped calculating energy efficiency and modeling his compatibility with Xiewei.
He stood quietly in place, scanning ecological data from the mountain forest like an ordinary observation instrument.
The load on his core dropped to its lowest level.
A day passed like that.
No one deliberately sat in meditation. No one forced themselves to "clear their mind."
Strangely, though, the mist before them was a little thinner than it had been at first.
They