After the formation was activated Naath’s vision went completely black for a moment. Naath had the sensation that he was traveling at a ludicrous speed through an almost completely empty space. The sensation only lasted for the briefest of moments before Naath’s vision returned. He was now in a large and spacious hall, at the sides of the hall placed evenly, roughly every 20 feet were pristine white marble pillars. In the center of the large hall was a red carpet with golden trimming. The hall floor visible beneath the carpet consisted of white marble that looked like it had just been polished and waxed.

Naath was snapped out of his own thought while admiring the large gleaming marble hall. He heard footsteps coming from behind the large pair of wooden doors at the end of the hall. Naath turned his head towards the direction of the door as the footsteps stopped. The door slowly swung open and on the other side was a middle-aged man with black hair that was starting to grey in a few places. The man approached Naath and stuck out his hand expecting Naath to pass him something. Naath understood quickly and handed the man his badge.

The man ran his martial energy over it examining the badge in a quick and practiced manner. After his martial sense was done looking the badge over the middle aged man’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly. He spoke saying “hoho, not bad kid you actually managed to earn a spot as a core disciple on your first go. Whooo a meeting with the elders too, not bad, not bad. However the elders are busy at the moment and cannot give you an audience at this time. Because of this you will temporarily be given a core disciples’ residence. However if you fail to attract the attention of any of the elders then it will become permanent.

Now then please follow me to your temporary abode.” Without giving Naath a chance to respond the man turned around on his heel and began to walk back out of the doors. Naath followed after him as he led Naath down a long hallway and around several corners and finally through one final door. Behind the door, Naath was greeted by the sight of a massive mountain range surrounded by hundreds of miles of open green fields. Scattered here and there in this field were varied buildings, some of them clustered together. Others were separate and there was no other housing near them for a mile or so.

However the middle-aged man leading Naath gave him absolutely no time to admire the scenery. The man said “since you are only at the middle stage of the second level of bone hardening it will take roughly 8 hours at your top speed to reach the base of the mountains. Sigh, so be it.” With that the middle-aged man sped up significantly until Naath was just barely able to keep pace with him. Naath thought to himself ‘he wouldn't be expecting me to run like this for eight hours without rest would he?!’ Naath looked behind him and saw Brutus keeping up almost easily and looking like he was having a grand time stretching his legs.

Naath shook his head slightly when he saw this and turned his head back around focusing on following the middle-aged man in front of him. After six hours Naath was sweating profusely and his breathing was starting to become unsteady. The middle-aged man leading him asked, “what is this all a genius who can become a core disciple in a single bound is capable of?” This remark firmed Naath’s resolve and he forcibly changed his breathing and regulated his body.

The middle-aged man nodded imperceptibly at this and sped up ever so slightly. Naath noticed this and while gritting his teeth sped up past his already maximum limit to keep up. Two hours later when they arrived at the base of the mountain range and the middle-aged man slowed down and stopped and Naath's body was screaming. He collapsed and started gasping for breath while on his hands and knees. The middle-aged man chuckled and said “not bad kid most people break down completely halfway through. I guess you pass then. In that case here, take these materials and get started on making your own abode.

Oh right I should explain, the closer one’s abode is to the mountain the higher ranked they are in the sect. Outer sect disciples can only build near the walls of the sect, inner sect disciples can build in the middle area. Core disciples are allowed to make an abode at the base of the mountain range. Direct disciples of the elders get to make a cultivation dwelling in the mountain range itself. The mountain range is on top of a ley line and is exceptionally good at producing more natural energies to absorb that you will find in most places. So essentially the closer to the mountain the thicker the energy and the more beneficial it is to one's cultivation.

Ah right, before I leave a quick warning. Most people won't take kindly to someone who just joined the sect being a core disciple. As they say, the heavens envy those with too much talent. Anyway someone will come to pick you up when the elders are ready to meet you.” With that the middle-aged man turned and left, in a single step the man had already disappeared from Naath’s line of sight. Naath realized the man held back quite considerably earlier for his own sake and was testing him.

When Naath finally caught his breath he slowly got back up and examined the “materials” he was left to build his abode. When Naath saw the pile he cursed out loud “Motherfucker! You call this building material?!” It was in fact simply a large stack of chopped down trees. Naath let out a groan and went up to the logs and infused martial energy into his hands using them to carefully and slowly cut apart the wood. After a few minutes of this monotonous work Naath had a realization. He began to circulate his true void energy allowing it to slowly come out of the pores all along his body.

Once the energy was a tenth of a centimeter thick Naath once more shaped his fingers and palm like a blade to cut into the wood. However this time Naath did not apply any pressure, he simply rested his hand upon the wood. After five minutes there was a noticeable difference. A half-inch of the wood where Naath’s hand had been placed had completely disappeared. The edges of the wood around the missing wood were unbelievably smooth, it was almost reflective and looked slippery and polished. Naath was ecstatic the most important of the third level of his true void arts was working.

Naath was using the true void energy to break down physical materials into their base elemental energies and then absorbing them for himself. After getting over his initial joy Naath frowned and said to himself “ugh at this rate though it will take a year to fully make a single plank with this method. The current rate of absorption is abysmal! Sigh then again I need to train it, I just entered the third stage recently. Not only that, this ability just became available to me. I’ll have to train it relentlessly. Once I hit higher stages of the true void arts it will become more potent, ugh work.”

After nodding his head and firming his determination Naath went back to simply making rough planks with his martial energy like before rather than his true void energy. In about four more hours Naath was done and had enough planks for what he planned to do for his cultivation dwelling. After getting all of the boards made Naath grabbed a stick off of one of the trees and drew an outline onto the ground. In a matter of minutes, Naath had drawn a complete interior design for the cultivation dwelling he was going to “build”. It had a large spacious living room with the entrance at the corner of it, the living room acting as the center of the building to the north of it was the bedroom. To the west was the kitchen, to the east was the cultivation room. To the south was the bathroom, after looking it over a few times and making sure there were no errors Naath got to work.