CHAPTER 178
### Wang Fei's Position
Wang Fei's message arrived on the second morning.
*I have been at the hollow's eastern boundary for six days.*
*The faction's advance scouts reached the valley two hours ago. Four practitioners. They read the hollow's frequency from the ridge and did not descend.*
*They left.*
*They will report to the main group. The main group will arrive tomorrow.*
*I need to know what you want me to do.*
He sent back immediately.
*Document everything. The exact moment the disruption begins. The frequency change. The depth of the disruption. Send it the moment it starts.*
*Do not engage.*
Her response: *I was not planning to engage forty-seven practitioners.*
*I am documenting.*
*Also: the hollow's continuous frequency is different today from when I arrived six days ago.*
*I do not have the domain reading capability to identify the difference precisely. It is subtle. But it is there.*
*Mo Xuan should know.*
He sent it to Mo Xuan.
Mo Xuan's response came back in an hour.
*The hollow's frequency has been changing since the undocumented stage breakthrough. The crack-sword-domain loop making contact with the hollow seven days ago — I believe the contact changed something in the hollow.*
*Not damaged. Changed.*
*Activated is the word I would use if I were being imprecise.*
*The hollow's continuous frequency has been deepening independently since the contact. Not from the thread you are maintaining. From the contact itself.*
*The between quality found something in the hollow that responded.*
*I do not know what this means for the faction's disruption attempt.*
*It may mean the disruption will not work as they expect.*
He read this message.
He held the thread.
He reached through it toward the hollow.
He read the continuous frequency.
Mo Xuan was right.
The hollow was different.
Not disrupted. Not damaged.
Deeper.
The same way the grey blade was different after the undocumented stage — not changed in character, more fully itself.
The hollow had been the source.
The contact had reminded the source what it was.
"Li Shan," he said.
"Reading," Li Shan said through the relay.
"The hollow's continuous frequency," he said. "It has deepened since the contact seven days ago."
A pause.
"I see it in the cascade data," Li Shan said. "I attributed it to natural fluctuation. I should not have." Another pause. "The frequency has deepened by eight percent over seven days."
"Eight percent," he said.
"Above the twenty-one percent propagation increase from Wei Han's restoration technique application," Li Shan said. "The hollow is producing twenty-nine percent above baseline propagation."
Twenty-nine percent.
He held the thread.
He thought about the faction coming to disrupt the source.
He thought about what disrupting a source looked like when the source had just reminded itself what it was.
"The suppression technique," he said.
"Yes," Li Shan said.
"Against a source that is eight percent deeper than it was a week ago," he said.
Li Shan was quiet.
"The suppression technique works against inert conditions and against developing conditions," Li Shan said. "It is less effective against generating conditions. The hollow's continuous frequency is not generating in the seeded section sense. But it is producing independently."
"What is it," he said.
"Between generating and producing," Li Shan said. "The hollow is its own category."
"And the suppression technique against its own category," he said.
"I do not know," Li Shan said.
He looked at the thread.
He thought about the oversight cultivator's Void Anchor at the formation site.
The Void Anchor had been calibrated against the formation's deep structure.
It had failed because the between quality found the gaps in the calibration.
The faction's disruption technique would be calibrated against the hollow as they understood it.
They had read the hollow from the ridge.
They had not touched the thread.
They did not know the hollow had deepened.
They were calibrating against a source that was eight percent less powerful than what they would encounter.
He held eighteen breaths.
"Tell Wang Fei," he said.
"Tell her what," Li Shan said.
"The hollow is not what the faction read from the ridge," he said. "Their calibration is off."
"She will not know what to do with that information," Li Shan said.
"She will know to observe carefully," he said. "And to document what happens when the calibration meets something different from what it expected."
Bing Xi was beside him.
She had been listening.
"The faction is going to be confused," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The disruption will not work the way they expect," she said.
"Possibly," he said.
"And the confusion will cost them time," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"How much time," she said.
"Enough," he said.
She looked at him.
"You do not know how much," she said.
"No," he said.
She looked at the thread.
"The twenty-three sections," she said. "Li Shan's model depends on the disruption occurring within a specific window."
"Yes," he said.
"If the disruption is delayed by confusion," she said.
"The window shifts," he said. "But the window is wide."
She was quiet.
"You are trusting the between to find the gap in the faction's disruption," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The same way it found the gaps in the Void Anchor," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"And in the suppression field," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She drew the Frostbite Edge.
She read the hollow through the thread alongside him.
"The continuous frequency," she said. "It is warmer than it was two days ago."
He looked at her.
"Not temperature," she said. "Frequency character. The hollow's between quality is — warmer. More present. The way a fire is warmer when you add fuel."
"The thread," he said.
"I think so," she said. "I think maintaining contact with the hollow has been adding fuel to the between quality at the source."
He held the thread.
He thought about seven days of maintaining the thread at ninety li.
Seven days of the between quality touching the source.
The source responding.
Deepening.
He thought about the faction arriving tomorrow to disrupt something that was eight percent stronger than what they had read.
And still deepening.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"Yes," Bing Xi said.
"We will know tomorrow," he said.
He held the thread.
Eighteen breaths.
He committed.
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