On March 25, 2018, Ankit received a gift from Free Fire thanking him for his dedication to making videos. The package contained a T-shirt emblazoned with the Free Fire logo. Ankit found it amusing—he remembered that in the future, Garena would send diamonds to YouTubers, but now, it was just a simple T-shirt.
His subscriber count was steadily climbing, now at 1,200. Ankit was beginning to earn money from his channel.
With knowledge of trading and stocks he would acquire in 2027, he planned to secretly invest his earnings in big companies, steering clear of using his father's money since his father disapproved of trading.
His friends were also moving forward. Yash had started earning from his YouTube channel with 1,100 subscribers, and Sumit and Amit had begun theirs after buying better devices.
Meanwhile, Ankit was focused on mastering the yellow specks of energy he had been practicing for over 15 days. He could now move this energy freely but was unsure how to use it.
Borrowing from his knowledge of cultivation novels, he thought that gathering spiritual energy within the body would make its use easier, reducing the need to continuously gather from the surroundings, which was draining.
However, Ankit struggled with locating where to gather the energy. In novels, the energy accumulates in a core or dantian, but he didn't possess such a structure.
Frustrated, he almost gave up but noticed the calendar on his wall displaying the seven chakras from Indian mythology.
Ankit laughed and thanked his ancestors for solving his doubts.
This inspired him. He decided his body's seven energy centers could serve as cores for gathering energy. Sitting cross-legged, he focused on forming his root chakra at the base of his spine and tried moving energy there.
He gathered a single yellow pixel but frowned at the slow progress. "At this rate, I'll be 100 years old grandpa before this fills," he thought, still hoping to achieve incredible feats like flying or shattering mountains will be impossible.
While contemplating, his mother entered with a vacuum cleaner. Seeing it sparked an idea—if he could mimic suction, like a vacuum drawing in energy, gathering would be easier.
He imagined forming a small cyclone of energy around his root chakra. Initially, it was difficult, but with intense focus, he managed a cyclone about one-fifth the size of his core. It wasn't large, but it was a start, allowing him to pull energy from about a meter around.
Unbeknownst to him, his mother watched from a distance, noticing his strained expressions and sudden smiles.
Worried, she wondered if time travel had unsettled him but wisely chose not to disturb him, deciding to discuss it with his father later.
Ankit remained absorbed, unaware of her concerns. He knew filling his energy core fully might take a decade because he had noticed after coming home that essence flow their is many times high from here and felt the urge to revisit the hut but recognized the timing wasn't right without his father's help.
With his father busy and his mother caring for his sister, he resolved to wait and gather as much energy as possible in the meantime.
He then pondered a name for the energy—something to distinguish it from electrical or thermal energy in conversation.
He settled on "essence flow"—a fitting term for the energy streaming from the surroundings into his core, essential for his growth.