As soon as I received the technique, Kiwi said he didn't like my stats.

"Your Fist dominates too clearly over everything else. You'll have trouble with sensitivity, which is crucial for dust collection, and with executing the technique itself. You need to raise your Air," he said firmly. "The Garden lends essence. One vial equals four kilograms of dust."

Judging by the rate I got when purchasing the technique, 90 kg for 90 points, the Garden's essence came in at a point per vial, meaning it was 20% cheaper. The offer was tempting, but I was already in debt and wasn't about to take on new obligations just like that.

Besides, at the very least, I shouldn't have any issues with sensitivity.

"Potentially, yes," I agreed. "But I haven't tried the technique yet, and I don't know the specifics of the work. Maybe you could show me first?"

"Logical," Kiwi nodded and gestured for me to follow.

He led me along the canyon wall. We didn't go far — just past a few niches carved into the stone. Behind some of them were staircases that led upward, others housed large steel cabinets built into the walls.

Kiwi stopped at the third niche and approached one of the cabinets.

Naturally, I followed.

Up close, my interface displayed some kind of schematic overlay on the cabinet — it looked like a grid of devices, some outlined and others blurred out.

"Check which dust collector is free and take it," Kiwi said, opening the cabinet in front of me and pointing to the right side of the open doors.

Behind the large doors were a bunch of smaller compartments, though judging by Kiwi's nod, the dust collectors were the bulky, angular rectangular packs. There were six such compartments marked with matching icons, and only one of them was transparent, so I figured that meant it was available.

I reached out, opened the small door, and even before I'd pulled the thing out, I received a message confirming the dust collector had been registered in my name.

The unit was indeed a large metallic backpack — angular, dark grey, with thick straps and yellow stripes along the sides. It looked more like a portable reactor than something meant to be carried for long.

Thankfully, I didn't have to carry it far.

We continued along a narrow path lined with bushes that looked like bundles of wire. Here, the wind was stronger than it had been at the station exit. It came in bursts — aggressive touches, but not yet merciless. Kiwi stepped off the path and pointed at the sand.

"Set it down here."

I lowered the pack onto the ground, and he pressed the central button on the back panel.

Four stabilising legs extended from the bottom, embedding themselves into the sand. The upper casing opened, and a metal tube began to rise from inside, ending in a sealed cap with a lever and a small indicator light glowing green.

"You perform your technique," Kiwi said curtly, waited for a stronger gust of wind, and flung his right hand forward as if to snatch something. His fingers clenched into a fist, and the air swirled like liquid. Dust particles, microscopic debris, and invisible currents coalesced into a dense, uneven brown mass, like someone had scooped up water from a muddy river.

The mass hovered a few centimetres in front of his fist.

With his left hand, Kiwi flipped the lever. The pipe's cap opened, and the status light beside the lever turned red. He brought the compressed sphere to the tube and lowered it in, then released the lever — the cap sealed again, but the light didn't go green just yet.

Only when Kiwi slowly unclenched his fist did the compressor kick in with a hum, and the light turned green, indicating it was ready to continue.

"Try to control pressure normalisation," Kiwi said. "Qi detonation reduces dust quality significantly — you'll get penalised. Aim for gusts rich in qi — you might qualify for a bonus. But for that, you'll need to raise your Air root. And don't try to cheat the Garden by scooping sand off the ground. You won't like the consequences," he added, now with a more serious tone.

"Questions?"

"Could you show me the technique a couple more times?"

"I could, but…"

"For a few kilos of dust in credit," I finished for him.

"Smart lad!" he laughed, clapping me on the shoulder like an old friend. "You'll figure it out. Return the collector to the same niche."

"Can I return it now?"

The horned worker tilted his head.

"What are the chances I'll collect anything on my first day?" I asked. "I haven't even tried the technique yet, let alone learned it. And building channels will take at least a week."

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"I get that. But this thing," Kiwi nudged the dust collector lightly with his foot, "is also your pass into the Garden. As long as you've got it with you, the administration won't bother you with extra questions."

"Interesting," I muttered. The Fist Garden didn't allow idling either, but they didn't hand out massive passes like this. "But I'll literally be bringing it back empty the first few times."

"Why? You're not planning to train the technique here, are you?" Kiwi asked. "Do both of us a favour — take a look around, get a feel for the place, and then go find yourself a hall. You didn't want to gather fruit, so there's no point in being here until you've learnt Heaven in the Palm."

I nodded, though not entirely confidently.

That was from his perspective. He didn't know about the hypersensitivity formation. Though, to be fair, it probably would be better suited to fruit collection.

"I understand. I'll look around, and then head out."

"Glad we understand each other. If you need essence — give me a call," said the horned worker, and left me alone with my thoughts and the dust collector.

I was alone in the brush with the collector.

This place didn't look much different from anywhere else, just another spot beneath the canyon wall. Overhead, whirlwinds and gusts burst out of ceiling-cut vents, stirring dust through the air. It was the cultivators enriching the Garden with Air Qi — the qi from their techniques mixing with the dust I was meant to collect.

From what Kiwi had said, not all dust was equally charged, and not every gust carried qi.

I closed my eyes and spread my arms, giving myself over to the elements.

The wind poked and slapped at me, in the side, the head, the face, the back, but never with enough force to knock me down. The pressure struck my armour and dulled the sensations somewhat.

The wind was far too erratic to be natural, but it didn't carry that razor-edge danger I'd felt from Omar's attacks.

There was something there, at the very edge of perception, but it kept slipping away.

I activated the hypersensitivity formation.

The howling hit my ears, and beneath it came the rush of my own breath, the drumbeat of my heart, the rasp of sand across my armour. I forced those internal sounds away and focused on the wind.

It split into thousands of tones. Layers, plates, currents overlapping, merging, and wrestling in a chaotic, mesmerising dance.

The wind felt angry, as if it were trapped in this canyon, its freedom denied.

It wanted to break free.

It was angry!

I felt that rage gathering, accelerating, twisting a little deeper into the canyon.

A flicker of instinct made me open my eyes and turn towards the sensation. Around a hundred metres away, the sand swirled into a spiral and instantly surged into a towering column of dust reaching for the sky. At first it was narrow, no thicker than my torso, but it quickly doubled, tripled in size, tearing shrubs from the ground and sucking them in like an enraged vacuum cleaner.

Now that was power. A force of nature not to be argued with.

At least, I couldn't argue with it.

When the living column tilted in my direction, I was already preparing to grab the dust collector and leg it.

But then, layered over the howling wind, came the familiar roar of jet engines.

Just like last time, two cultivators in black-and-blue and black-and-green armour streaked toward the tornado on jetboards, circling around it in the opposite direction of the dust spiral. Transparent techniques flew from their hands, visible only by how they bent the streams of dust.

And my formation rewarded me with a familiar signal of danger, for a change, not aimed at me.

The cultivators took positions opposite each other and spiralled upwards, climbing to the very top of the column, as if grabbing the mini-tornado by the head like a rebellious serpent.

The base, the tail, slammed the ground in protest, thrashing from side to side, but the funnel held still.

Then, in perfect sync, the cultivators struck the tornado.

The will of nature clashed with the will of man, and nature relented.

They spiralled downwards in a sharp dive all the way to the ground, tearing the tornado in two.

The boards hovered a few centimetres above the sand, then bounced away, sending the cultivators into niches cut into opposite sides of the canyon wall.

Not a trace of the tornado remained.

For a moment, all winds fell silent. Only the uprooted bushes crashed to the ground, and the great column of dust slowly began to settle.

It probably would've been the perfect time to collect, if I actually knew the technique.

I saw a cadet do just that — he ran straight into the fading column, dust collector on his back, vanishing from sight.

As the dust began to clear, his shape came into view. His collector was deployed. One hand held the lever on the lid, the other was guiding the dirty air into the pipe. His movements faintly resembled Alan's smoke control, the dust twisted into a tight stream and dropped into the opening.

The dust made the technique visible.

Wait, does that mean the Air Technique Hall is always full of dust? I don't remember Marlon ever mentioning that.

Wasting no more time, I activated the training mode for Sky in the Fist and began reviewing the execution.

The hologram displayed the channels. They coiled in spirals, wrapping around the arms just beneath the skin. The spiral was, in fact, the core shape of the technique.

One thick channel ran from the shoulder, splitting into two from the elbow. One extended all the way to the final phalanx of the thumb, and the other forked in the palm and continued to the tips of the index finger and the pinky.

I'd never channelled qi through my fingers before. Fist didn't require it.

Another difference with this technique was that I essentially had to release the projection into free flight. I knew it could be controlled mid-flight, but that was a separate, optional skill, one I hadn't learned yet.

But with Air Qi, post-release control was mandatory. Without it, there was no motion. I had to keep the qi flow spiralling outward while widening it, and then suddenly clench my fist to compress the air into shape.

It all looked complex and demanding.

If I confuse the qi, I'd just break my fingers in a blast. That lesson with Rene was deeply etched in my memory.

I needed a proper trainer. And a safe way to learn to handle Air Qi. I definitely needed to raise my root.

I'd thought that after my big breakthrough, things would get easier, that I could finally rest a bit. Instead, the pressure kept growing. So did the expenses.

I'd have to check if any essence ampoules appeared in the shop for units. Because if they were only available for points, I'd need to ask Novak to pull some strings.

Speaking of dust.

When I returned the collector, my interface informed me of a partial debt repayment. There were 4 grams of dust inside.

Which meant Kiwi could clear my debt with 22,500 executions of the technique. And that's him, a seasoned cultivator with a high Air Root.

Me? Once I learned the technique, if I was lucky, I probably might collect one gram per execution.

That meant I'd need to perform it 90,000 times.

At best, 15 seconds per attempt...

1,350,000 seconds = 22,500 minutes = 375 hours.

And that's not counting travel to and from the Garden, or time spent suiting up in armour and setting up collector.

I'm a bloody idiot.

This is a bloody labour sentence!

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