"You can feel Shakti and absorb enough of it only when you are sitting on one of the Shakti Rekhas. But like you know, Shakti, originating from the primordial Goddess is inherently a feminine force. While the young maidens will have an advantage in absorbing Shakti, I hope the boys won't get discouraged by seeing their peers developing faster than them. Take it slowly, coax it inside your body, let it do its thing. You can never win against it, and can only channel it to give it a proper outcome. Your first lesson will be finding out the hidden Rekhas in this village and learning how to absorb it slowly into your body."

As everybody got up in a hurry and started running around, I kept sitting for now. I have seen and read enough literature to understand the hidden meaning of tests like these. They often conclude to: It had been within you from the very beginning, or it had been where you were, you just weren't looking properly. Cliche things like these. Me and several others had probably found the answer and were still sitting where we were proudly.

"Look at these..." One of the sages suddenly opened their eyes and scanned us.

"Either you guys fell asleep, or you're thinking too much. I can guarantee you that none of the Rekhas pass through here. Start running." he calmly stated.

I sprang up on my feet and ran away embarrassed. I should have followed my roommates instead. Stemming from the previous thought, that it might be in a place least expected, I tried to visualise the campus from the above. The imaginary picture was surprisingly vivid, courtesy of my Visualisation passive probably. While the Bhavanas were more or less ' h ' shaped, the dorms here was only ' ---- ' shaped. Where does the girls' dorms lie? On the same line or a different one? I went to the left most part our our dorm building and looked straight ahead. Yeah, I could see the right end of their dorm directly in front of me. Things fell into place giving the same feeling you get while solving a Wordle. I ran to my room remembering how the yoga mats were placed on the floor, on the same horizontal line through the middle of the room. It was actually right in front of me from the very beginning. I also realised that the Sages were sitting on the line connecting the two dorms too. They probably didn't get up, thinking students might try sitting once in their spots. As I passed rooms on the way to mine and saw people already sitting on their mats, I realised I was correct in my hypothesis.

Just as I was going to enter my room, I heard Panna's voice in my mind.

P: "Don't just follow what others are doing. I'm sure you're proud that you found one of the answers by yourself but doing only this much won't be enough for both of us. Especially for you. There is a constant amount of Shakti flowing through a Rekha between two Peeths. Once the Shakti in it is depleted by getting absorbed by us, it again replenishes the divine energy in the next power center connected to it." she stopped me midway.

Me: "So the amount of Shakti you get to absorb is directly dependent on the number of people already sitting before you. Got it. So we have to find a new one?" I tried to summarise what she wanted to say.

P: "Technically yeah. But you'll need to trust me.With the little amount of my sap that you have inside your body, I can try finding a new line for you, which was probably hidden by Maya." Panna theorized.

Why would it be hidden by Maya? Do they deliberately want us to absorb less Shakti? How will we develop otherwise?

P: "They know that taking in more amount of Shakti with our bodies which doesn't have a chakra point yet, will cause harm to us instead. The sages are still sitting on the line to make sure that all the students get a balanced amount of it. Whenever they feel like someone might get overloaded, they suck up more Shakti and reduce the amount flowing through the Rekha." Panna explained the mechanism leaving me perplexed.

How much storage space does they have inside their bodies to be able to store a quantity, that will directly influence the amount flowing in the line?

P: "In terms of the status windows, their Shakti stat will lie somewhere over hundred. Every chakra point can hold twice the amount of Shakti than the previous one. Since there are seven chakra points... you can calculate it to be somewhere around 128."

"Do everybody with seven chakra points have that amount of stats?" I asked getting excited. This was just like browsing through the tutorial systems of a game where you have to read quite a bit to understand the underlying mechanisms of the power systems there.

P: "No, this is the maximum one can get. Most people don't have that much capacity even with seven Chakras. There might be seven of them but their efficiency to store Shakti varies from person to person. Not all your chakra points can hold Shakti with the same efficiency too. Some points do better, some relatively worse. So the best chakras need to be created last." she emphasized this part.

This was actually important information. I need to properly understand chakras before I can start creating them. I was afraid my overthinking mind will commit some irredeemable mistakes.

As if Panna sensed my worries, she consoled me, "What am I here for? Trust me, okay?"

I started feeling a tugging sensation in my left arm and followed it outside the dorms. I crossed the Bathroom stalls, the Dining Hall, a shooting range and a cow shed, finally reaching the shrubs in the outskirts of the clearing. The mountains were now a lot closer as they loomed above me like a huge Danava.

P: "If you have 51 centers with all of them connected to each other, how many lines will you get? 51 centers will all have fifty lines coming in, or going out of them. Do you think this huge place will only have one Rekha going through it? That huge Banyan tree is suspicious, I can feel the Maya getting bent around it. They have created the infrastructure in such a way that it increases efficiency in an organised manner. Students can meditate sitting right in their rooms while the sages can keep an eye on them. They pulled the closest Rekha using Maya and set it up like a line passing right through the front of the Banyan tree, joining the two dorms. Quite fascinating." she finally stopped her monologue.

As I reached the base of the twin waterfalls which had created a small pool underneath, appearing like it was afflicted by an eternal drizzly rain over it, I felt my left arm getting zapped with some kind of static.

I could feel the air vibrating infront of me, as if some kind of hydro electric plant was working incessantly below the waterfall. Isn't this quite cliche? Training under an ancient waterfall? I thought suppressing a smile. If people came for some sightseeing and found me meditating here, they'll surely tag me as a martial arts fan.

"Ah!" I felt Panna getting embarrassed. "A slight miscalculation on my part. It seems that the line lies within the mountain."